Chapter Four
Jacob’s joyous cackling burst through her phone speakers. “Aaah! Get your ass home! I’m buying dinner!”
“I can’t. I have to book a practice room.” Gwen crossed Eighth Avenue with barely a glance at oncoming traffic.
“We have to celebrate this, Gwen!”
“I have to practice,” she hissed, darting through the crowds gathering for Broadway matinees. “I—I have no idea what I’m going to play, or—”
“Gwen. Do me a favor?” Jacob said. “Can you stop where you are? Just hit pause for a second?”
Her feet stopped. She leaned against the outside of a building and closed her eyes. “What?”
“This is a good thing. This is heading in the right direction. And this is what you deserve.”
“I can’t do this meditation bullshit in the middle of Times Square, Jake.”
“Just pause and tell me you’re happy?” His voice lifted, leading her.
Gwen took a deep breath. “I’m happy. This is…” She cleared her throat. “This doesn’t just happen, you know? First chair is something I never would have dreamed of.”
“That’s not true. You’ve been talking about moving up the ladder since your first season. This means solos, which you’ve also been talking about. Maybe it’s a step toward a solo career!”
“First chair is not a stepping stone, it’s a destination.” She hefted her tote higher on her shoulder and pushed through the tourists again. “It’s kind of like…the rest of my life, maybe. I don’t know. I could be first chair of the Manhattan Pops until I retire, and that’s job security. That’s a life. It’s also not something I have ever envisioned for myself.”
“Then don’t take it,” he said. Gwen stopped at the corner and frowned. “Don’t audition if it’s not the destination you want.”
Gwen looked up at the billboards flashing over her head, letting her future wash over her. What destination did she want? Featured soloist gigs, like Hilary Hahn and Sarah Chang? A pop career like Lindsey Stirling? Where were those opportunities? Where was she supposed to find them from seventh chair at the Manhattan Pops?
“I do want it,” she said, deciding. “I want the opportunity to audition. I want first chair.”
“Hell yeah, you do!”
She snorted. “I’ll be home by six.”
After she hung up, Gwen was tempted to call Mabel—to ask her what piece to play, what to wear, what to research. But she could just hear it now: What about Juilliard?
She dropped her phone into her bag and hurried to Carnegie Hall for a rehearsal room.
Gwen was twenty-five minutes early, reading the nameplates on every door on the way to Nathan’s office and killing time so she wouldn’t gnaw her fingernails off in anticipation.
She’d only been to one audition in her life, and that was for the Manhattan Pops. It was such a stark contrast to today. Four years ago, she hadn’t told a soul, looking over her shoulder on the subway like somehow Mabel would find out. Gwen was supposed to be in Intro to Psych, three of nine units Mabel was helping her pay for at the community college.
Mabel had wanted her to take general education classes while she prepared to audition for Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music again. Every time Gwen mentioned the Manhattan Pops, Mabel would get quiet and tell her that real symphonies would hire her someday. Ones that played Mozart and Bach. Not “Jingle Bells” once a year.
But Gwen liked “Jingle Bells” and Lady Gaga and the Broadway singers that would appear for guest engagements. She’d gotten to sit in the balcony at Carnegie Hall with her high school every time there was a scheduled field trip, and it was so vastly different from the “real” symphonies Mabel idolized.
Mabel had shown her videos of the New York Philharmonic one rainy Saturday, when she was just starting out on violin. It was Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in D Major with Hilary Hahn as the guest violinist. Gwen hadn’t understood what it was all about—why people would pay money to sit in a chamber hall to listen to old music when there were recordings of it. But as she’d watched the conductor, something clicked. She watched intently, trying to figure out what it was he was telling them all with his body and his wand; it was like he was conducting magic. And suddenly she wished more than anything to be in that room and listen to it live.
When the first chair violinist entered from the stage right door and the entire orchestra stood, Gwen turned to Mabel and said, “Is that Hilary Hahn?”
“No, not yet. That’s their leader.”
“I thought the conductor was their leader.”
“He’s their director, and she’s their representative. He takes care of the room and sound. She takes care of them.”
Gwen looked back to the screen. A small Asian woman with long hair and warm cheeks took a bow.
Mabel told her about the first chair: why the position was referred to as the concertmaster, why she got her own entrance and bow, what she did during rehearsals, and how much work she had to take home with her.
Gwen split her focus during the second half, keeping an eye on the first chair as she respectfully stood for the re-entrance of Hilary Hahn, and respectfully watched Hilary Hahn play the second and third movements, and respectfully smiled and applauded.
When the video ended, Mabel asked her why she was frowning.
“Why didn’t the concert—” She tried to remember. “…Concertmaster play the solo? She’s the best, right? It was probably hard for her to let another violinist come in and play lead.”
“Hilary Hahn wasn’t playing lead, though,” Mabel said thoughtfully. “She was playing solo. She was the guest star. Hilary Hahn will go on to other symphonies and other countries, but the concertmaster will always be here, leading them.”
Gwen frowned at her fingernails, trying to understand. Mabel continued, “It’s like inviting a guest over for dinner. Maybe you spend all day cooking the food, but once everyone’s seated at the dinner table, you chat with the guest. It becomes less about the food, but there would be no reason to have a guest over in the first place if you hadn’t made the dinner.”
“If I spent all day making dinner for the New York Philharmonic, I would want them to talk about how good the food was all night,” she grumbled.
Mabel laughed and leaned in to her. “And that’s why you would get your own entrance and your own bow.” She smiled and started closing up the shop, leaving Gwen to ponder whether she wouldn’t rather be a dinner guest for the rest of her life, if the table was only going to thank her once or twice for making them dinner.
As she approached Nathan’s office, she could hear voices inside. She hoped she wouldn’t have to sit here and listen to someone else’s audition. That would be mortifying.
She sat in the chair outside the door and was just closing her eyes to visualize her audition piece when there was a sudden shouting. She jerked, listening to a man’s voice, growling and gruff. “—my whole life!”
Listening closely, she could catch only a few words. “…lead me on?”
Gwen sat silently, praying she wasn’t getting in the middle of something. She heard Nathan’s voice again, but couldn’t make out the words. Nathan sounded calm while the other man’s voice was agitated.
Should she put in her headphones? Gwen hated gossips and eavesdroppers. She blocked out the sound and tried to focus on the sheet music, but the argument persisted.
Just as she wondered whether she needed to call the police, the office door flew open and Xander Thorne stalked out, face furious and hands pushing through his hair.
Gwen stood swiftly, and he stopped, noticing her. His eyes brightened in shock before spinning to yell back at the doorway, “What the fuck is she doing here?”
Gwen felt her breath coming quickly as Nathan stepped out and said, “Xander, stop behaving like a child.” There was an edge of familiarity in his tone.
Xander ignored the comment and pointed at her. “You’ve got to be fucking joking. She has no technique. Her intonation is awful—almost no vibrato. She holds the cello like a subway pole—”
“Cello?” Nathan said, with a curious glance to Gwen. “Gwen is one of our finest violinists. You’ve only been working together for a full year, though, so I understand why it would have been beneath your notice.” He lifted a brow at Xander.
There was a still silence where Gwen could count her own heartbeats. He thought she was auditioning for a cello position? Possibly his cello position?
Then Xander laughed. The deep sound reverberated in her ribs.
He turned his eyes on her and whispered, “Of course.” His gaze dragged over her, sliding around every curve of her legs and hips. “She’ll certainly make for a pretty picture on the brochure. Doesn’t matter if she can play, I guess.” She felt her skin heat, but before she could open her mouth to bite back, he stepped in close, looking down at her. She felt his breath on her forehead. “Be careful with them. They can take it all away from you.”
He shot one last glare at Nathan and then swept down the hall, heavy boots clomping, and the air sizzling as he cut through it.
Gwen waited for the sound of the stairwell door clanking open before she turned back to Nathan. She was surprised to find Ava behind him, almost hidden, with arms crossed and looking at a point in Nathan’s office Gwen couldn’t see.
Nathan cleared his throat and smiled at her. “Gwen.” Like she’d just arrived. “Let’s head down to the auditorium.”
Gwen nodded and smiled weakly at Ava’s pink nose and wet eyes.
She followed them down to Stern Auditorium in Carnegie Hall, the stage where the Pops performed their main engagements every other month. Nathan ran a comforting hand across Ava’s back on their way downstairs as he chatted with Gwen about her day, like nothing was out of the ordinary.
Once in the auditorium, she noticed an older gentleman sitting in the front row while a thin woman leaned against the stage. They were laughing together like old friends. As they approached, the older man stood and turned to grin at them. Nathan shook their hands, and Ava kissed both of their cheeks.
“This is Gwen Jackson.” He gestured to her, and Gwen fumbled with the violin in her arms so she could shake their hands properly as Nathan said, “Gwen, this is Rebecca Michaels and Dr. Adriel Bergman. They’re on the board of directors for the Pops.”
Gwen thought she might have squeezed Ms. Michaels’s hand a bit too tightly. “Pleasure to meet you both,” she managed to mumble.
“Gwen, don’t think of this as an audition,” Nathan started, leading her up to the stage. “Rebecca and Adriel are old friends of ours, and they’ve never heard you play solo before.”
“Nice try, but there’s nothing you can say to make this ‘not an audition.’”
Nathan grinned while Gwen opened her case.
“Miss Jackson, how old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?” Ms. Michaels called from the front row.
“I’m twenty-two.”
“She’ll be twenty-three in June,” Nathan said, looking to Ms. Michaels with some kind of secret smile. Ms. Michaels whispered to Ava, and she nodded, smiling brightly at Gwen.
“What do you want to play today, Gwen?” Nathan jogged down the steps and took a seat next to Ava.
“Beethoven, if that’s all right.”
They agreed, and she lifted the bow. The Beethoven Violin Concerto flowed through her arms, into the strings.
It started quick and grand, and Gwen closed her eyes to concentrate on the melody. She’d played this with Mabel for several years after seeing the New York Philharmonic videos, working the bowing and vibrato until she could play it without a single mistake in the allegro movement.
She wished she had the sheet music now, but she opened her eyes, gaze resting on the edge of the stage, and imagined the page. The difficult fingering came next, and she quivered through the passage, imagining how Mabel needed to turn the page for her. Gwen had asked why they had to put the page turn there and she’d said, “It had to go somewhere.”
She was aware of four sets of eyes on her, and her neck started to tighten. She breathed into the music, trying to relax. The allegro movement was about twenty minutes long, so at a moment of pause, Gwen lifted the bow from the strings, and looked to Nathan to see if she should continue.
He was beaming at her. They all were. Actually, Dr. Bergman had his eyes closed, nodding along.
“That was remarkable, Miss Jackson,” Ms. Michaels said.
“Thank you.”
“She needs to relax a bit,” Dr. Bergman said abruptly, eyes still closed. She felt her shoulders creep to her ears with the reminder of her main failing. “But overall, most impressive.”
Nathan leaned into Dr. Bergman’s ear, and the older man nodded at whatever he said.
Ava whispered to Ms. Michaels, “…been playing only since she was eleven…self-taught…” Gwen caught only a few words and frowned.
Mabel liked to tell people that Gwen was self-taught too, but that wasn’t really true. Mabel had put the first violin in her hands when she was just a lonely sixth-grader, cutting school. Mabel was the one who gave her the practice room, the posture, the finger exercises, the beginning violin books, and later, the violin itself—the very one hanging limply from her fingertips.
“…auditioned for us at nineteen—”
“So you’ve been playing for us for how many years?” Ms. Michaels called to her.
Gwen was so surprised that they were finally addressing her that she had to take a moment to hear the question again.
“Four. This is my fourth season.”
“So the Pops is your first paid, professional violin gig?”
“It is. I…I played in subway stations for tips when I was a kid, but I don’t think that’s what you mean.” She laughed awkwardly, and something in Ms. Michaels’s eyes lit up at the knowledge. Ava smiled at her, sharing in the memory.
Nathan stood. “Gwen, I’m going to give you a piece of music you’ve never seen before. Is that okay?”
“Um, sure.”
She’d done this plenty of times in lessons. She knew she could sight-read. But as Nathan grabbed a music stand and laid out two pages, she realized she’d never sight-read for an audience before. She thought about Xander, who apparently sight-read at the Pops just for kicks.
“Mark the bowing,” he said softly. He dropped a pencil on the stand. “Take your time.”
Take your time was the worst expression in the human language. Take your time, but everyone is watching. Take your time, but don’t take too much time.
Gwen picked up the pencil and made a few notes indicating the up-bow and down-bow for herself. She glanced over the phrases, noting the tempo markings, and lifted her instrument under her chin.
The four people in the front row were silent.
She pulled, and then devoured the music notes with her eyes, skipping through sixteenth notes, sliding over tied quarters— barely listening to the melody while simply sight-reading the page and her own markings.
She just stared at the page and played. She couldn’t take the time to get nervous or tense—her brain was elsewhere.
A deep voice floated into her ears.
There’s something exciting about sight-reading. Don’t you agree?
Gwen let her heartbeat sync to the drawn-out rhythms, tumbling over the staccato notes and arpeggios. She came to the end, bow falling away from the violin, and just as she lifted her eyes to find Nathan in the front, smiling at her, a hulking shadow in the corner of the balcony, two hundred feet away, shifted in his chair.
Oh god.
Oh god oh god oh god. Xander Thorne had just watched her sight-read, possibly watched her play Beethoven.
She stared at his figure, hunched over in a chair, elbows on his knees. She couldn’t see his expression from here, but she was sure he was scowling down at her, watching her audition to lead the string section. A place he was no longer welcome, she guessed from the limited conversation she overheard.
He sat up, running his hands over his face, leaning back into the too-small chair and crossing his arms again just as she realized Ava was speaking.
“Gwen, darling. Come sit with us down here.”
She stumbled like a newborn fawn down into the audience, ignoring the dark figure in the balcony, and took a seat next to Ava as the older woman took her hand.
“Gwen.” Nathan took her other hand, smiling widely at her. “On behalf of the Pops, myself, and the board of directors, we’d like to offer you the position of concertmaster. First chair.”
Gwen waited for the words to form in her ears. Waited for the phrases to glue together into something intelligible. An entrance. A bow. Nathan smiling at her from the conductor’s platform, extending his hand to her like he did for Ava, presenting her to the world like a proud mentor. A proud parent—
“I’m sorry,” Gwen whispered. “You’ll have to say it again.”
Ms. Michaels chuckled behind her.
“First chair, Gwen,” Nathan said again.
Her heart started to beat again.
“I think you should know, in all transparency,” Ava said, pulling her around to face her, “that a twenty-two-year-old in first chair would be excellent publicity for the Pops—”
“Oh, don’t…” Nathan interrupted. “Don’t tell her that.” His face pinched, and he glared at Ava.
“She’s not a child,” Ava snapped. “She can handle it.” Gwen whipped back around to listen to Ava. “On top of the fact that you are one of the singularly most talented musicians I have ever encountered, Gwen, the press and the subscribers will eat you up.”
Gwen buzzed with the praise and blanched at the prospect of that kind of attention.
“The Pops…” Ms. Michaels began, “is not having our best season. Financially.”
“She doesn’t need to hear all this,” Nathan said, standing.
“She does. She’s going to be a member of the team, not just its trophy.” Ava turned her attention back to Gwen. “We think you are qualified. We think you are remarkable. We think, with my guidance, you can take over this orchestra.” Ava squeezed her hand. “But we also know that the youngest first violin in the history of New York orchestras will bring in an audience. I wanted that to be clear to you before you accept. It wouldn’t be fair if you didn’t know some of our motivations.”
“I…Thank you. I understand,” Gwen hummed, focusing on the way Ava’s thumb stroked her hand, feeling her skin tingle at being taken care of.
“You can take a few days to think about it,” Nathan said.
“Well…” Ms. Michaels piped in. “The sooner the better. We’d like to send out the press release before the Fortieth Anniversary Concert. When the subscriptions get renewed.”
That was in a few weeks. And then it would be off-season for the summer until the September concert.
Something twisted in her stomach. Gwen thought of Henry, who had been seated at eighth violin for twenty years. Mary, the current second violin and assistant to Ava—she’d been with the Pops since its inception in 1984. Did Gwen deserve this?
Xander’s comment from the hallway swam in her ears: She’ ll certainly make for a pretty picture on the brochure.
Xander, Ava, and the board members were clear. They needed a pretty face in that chair to sell tickets. Pretty and young.
A voice that sounded a lot like Jacob’s rang in her head, reminding her that Ava Fitzgerald wouldn’t hand her chair and her father’s orchestra to someone who couldn’t succeed.
Gwen glanced at Ava, examining her smart eyes and trusting smile. “I accept. I mean, I think you’re all out of your minds, but I accept.”
She thought maybe the hug Ava gave her, Nathan’s hand on her shoulder, Ms. Michaels’s hands clapping together, and Dr. Bergman’s sleepy nod would be worth the mess she was getting herself into.
When she retrieved her violin from the stage before heading off to grab a celebratory lunch with Nathan and Ava, she couldn’t help but notice that the shadow in the balcony had vanished.