Improvisation Read online

  “I’m still not sure how long I’m staying. If I can get through my obligations sooner than expected, I’ll go home. Besides,” she added with a half smile as she stepped closer to Jan, “I don’t want to give any houseguests the wrong idea. That I’m here to stay. I’m sure you understand what I’m saying.”

  Jan felt her cheeks flush, proving she knew exactly what Tina meant. She had a feeling Tina’s presence, so close she could feel a slight caress of Tina’s breath when she spoke, had as much to do with her blush as her innuendo did. She hadn’t imagined Tina bringing dates back to the apartment, but of course, she couldn’t expect Tina to remain celibate all summer. The sudden image of Tina in this room with a woman, kissing her as they moved toward the bed, groping blindly past fabric to flesh, hit Jan with such a rush of arousal and frustration she felt weak. She walked quickly to the closet and stepped inside, brushing against a silk blouse of Tina’s and catching a trace of the scent she had already come to associate with her. Pine and peach. Not a perfume, but maybe something Tina kept in her closet back home. She pulled a heavy box off the shelf and handed it to Tina before grabbing a second box.

  “Kitchen table?” Tina asked and Jan nodded, following her out of the bedroom that was suddenly infused with an imagined musky smell and the sound of climactic gasps and the disturbing vision of Tina, nestled between some stranger’s legs.

  Tina set the box on the kitchen floor and tidied the small stack of notebooks and loose papers scattered on one end of the table. Jan just watched, in awe at how quickly she could remove any trace of her presence from the kitchen. Tina lived in the corners of the apartment. Her violin case and a music stand were tucked in the corner of the living room, her suitcases in the bedroom, and her work supplies on the table. As if pressing toward the middle of the space would somehow trap her there, removing any chance of escape.

  “Is that your new logo for the nursery?” she asked, spotting the green-and-brown sketch before it was whisked away. Tina put the drawing back on the table and unzipped a small plastic pouch. She pulled out a drafting pencil and made a few changes to the logo.

  “This was one of my first ideas. The one Peter finally chose will be curved here and here. And the capital letters will look like this.”

  “Oh, very appealing,” Jan said as she leaned over Tina’s shoulder to watch her work. She tried to concentrate on the lines flowing from Tina’s pencil, not her slender and sure fingers as they moved across the page. “Like an old-fashioned country store.”

  “Exactly the look I was going for,” Tina said as she put the pencil away. “Because the image carries with it all the suggestions of personal service, wide selection, and community feel you’d expect from a store like that.”

  Tina put the papers on the kitchen counter. “Now I just need to come up with a slogan. Then I can get to web design.”

  “You’re enjoying the work, aren’t you?” Jan asked. Tina normally looked so confident and measured, but a restless edge passed over her face when she talked about her work. As if she had a buildup of creative energy and was about to set it free. Jan liked the hint of wildness, of passion, something Tina usually seemed determined to hide as she stood apart from everyone in her cool, detached way.

  Tina grinned. “I am, but don’t tell Peter. I’m trying to maintain my reputation as the long-suffering, put-upon cousin. I like being in charge of the whole creative process, from concept to application.” She went to the fridge and peered inside. “I don’t know if you’ve eaten dinner yet, but I’m starved. All I can offer is cold pizza and beer. Typical bachelor-pad food. Or we can order something if you’d rather.”

  “Sounds more like college-dorm food,” Jan said, settling at the table and pulling a stack of photos out of her box. “And it sounds good to me. How about some music while we do this? I can play one of Dad’s old records.”

  She returned to the living room and hunted through the old LPs until she found the one she wanted. The faded and torn cover showed an old Cajun band, including a fiddle player. She picked it because it was one of her dad’s favorites, not because she thought Tina might enjoy it.

  “Cool music,” Tina said when Jan came back to the kitchen, the slightly scratchy sound of stylus on vinyl following her. “I study all kinds of fiddle styles—just as a hobby—and Cajun is one of my favorites. Great dance music.”

  “Dad was stationed near Shreveport for about five years, starting when I was four. Just a few years after my mom left. It was the longest we ever stayed in one place until he came here to Fairchild when I was in college. We went on day trips every time he had a day off, and when I think back, those years seem like a long string of county fairs and city tours. Lots of great food and music and horse-drawn carriages. I think he was trying to make up for her not being there.”

  “Do you keep in touch with her?” Tina asked. Jan had noticed her habit of sitting very still when she listened, as if she was carefully observing and mentally recording everything she heard and saw. Jan avoided eye contact and instead picked at the label on her beer.

  “I had lunch with her twice when I was fifteen, a sophomore, because we were in California for six months. She lives in Pasadena, just a half-hour drive from the house we were renting.” Jan started with the numerical details because the emotions were too difficult to explain. “She had a new family, and there was just no real connection between us. I couldn’t remember much about her, and I sort of felt empty when we talked. I guess I had expected to finally find some sort of home with her, a place where I fit. But she was a stranger. We were polite, but our relationship ended there.”

  “Weren’t you angry? I mean, she abandoned you. You must have been pissed when you finally confronted her.”

  Jan shook her head. “Just disappointed, I guess. I resented all the moving around. Like something was missing, but every time I thought I might have figured out what it was we had to leave again. I thought she was the answer, but she wasn’t. Truthfully? Nowadays, I rarely even think about her.” Jan laughed, but it only came out as a dry sound, like a cough. She took a sip of her beer. “I’m not one who should be lecturing you about staying in touch with relatives, am I?”

  “Families are complicated,” Tina said. “Maybe someday you’ll want a chance to get to know each other. When you’ve found your sense of home and can meet her without any expectations.”

  “Maybe.”

  They fell silent, and Jan munched on her pizza as she sorted through the photos. They had been stored with no respect to order or date, and she felt as if she was watching her life flash before her eyes in a decidedly random way. She was sixteen, she was two, she was five. Each picture brought an onrush of surrounding memories, and the haphazard journey through the ages disoriented her. She eventually stopped and concentrated on her beer instead, watching Tina go into work mode as she shuffled through the memorabilia of virtual strangers. She seemed to have some sort of system in place already, and she rapidly sorted her photos into piles, occasionally asking Jan about a person or location.

  Tina extracted a couple of pictures from one of her piles. She looked up at Jan with a quizzical expression. “How many pink bedrooms did you have? I’ve seen at least three.”

  “All of them,” Jan said without hesitating. “They were all pink because it was my favorite color. Dad always painted my room first thing when we moved to a new place, even if we were only staying for a few months.” Jan frowned as she tried to mentally count how many different rooms she had lived in while growing up. The familiar color on the walls had made them blend together into a comforting image of one room. “Twelve,” she finally said.

  “That’s a lot of pink paint,” Tina observed. “Shh…I like this song.” She listened to the faint music, her head cocked to one side and a faraway look in her eyes. Like a wild animal listening to a noise in the distance. When the song ended, Tina went into the living room and Jan followed. Tina seemed to be on some sort of mission, so Jan quietly sat on the couch, waiting to see w
hat happened. Tina switched off the record player, went over to the corner of the room, and opened her fiddle case. Jan gave a small gasp of surprise when she saw the delicate instrument. Just the shape of a violin, the mere idea of one, outlined in bright-red curving wood. Sexy and slender. As if it had been carved just for Tina.

  Tina seemed focused on the music in her head, and she quickly plugged the violin into an amplifier and adjusted the settings. She rosined her bow, and something fell into place in Jan’s mind. She scooted down the couch and picked up the cake of rosin. She sniffed it. Pine, with a hint of peach.

  Tina began to play the song she had just heard. Without music, without fumbling for notes. Jan sat in stunned silence as she listened. She remembered struggling for days to memorize a simple piece for her one-and-only piano recital. Luckily, she had moved soon after, and her nomadic lifestyle had made regular lessons impractical. She had never gotten past playing a few simple songs out of a book, let alone repeating entire pieces after one hearing.

  When Tina finished, she smiled almost shyly at Jan as if she had forgotten she wasn’t alone.

  “How did you do that? Have you heard the song before?”

  Tina shrugged, her violin still propped under her chin. “I learned by listening to my grandpa and my parents, and then trying to repeat what they played. By the time my dad died, I could mimic pretty complex pieces, without too many mistakes. I didn’t know any other way. The first time I had any formal musical training was in my middle-school orchestra.” Tina lowered the violin and frowned. “My teacher thought I was a troublemaker. I couldn’t read a note of music, but we played simple songs, all familiar to me. So I’d read the title and play the song, but never just as it was written, of course. My family played fiddle music, so I was accustomed to improvising and embellishing, especially when I was bored by the other students who could barely string two notes together. She kept shouting at me to play the correct notes, but I had no idea what I was doing wrong. The songs sounded right to me.”

  “Didn’t you tell her you couldn’t read music?” Jan asked. She heard the edge of frustration in her own voice as she imagined the gifted young musician being cruelly and unfairly criticized.

  “I tried, but she didn’t believe me because I was playing so much better than the other kids. My mom would have helped me through it, but she had just been diagnosed with lung cancer, and I worried I’d make her sicker if I complained about school. So I stuck it out because it was so important to her that I have music in my life.”

  Jan moved over as Tina sat next to her on the couch. She held out her hands for the violin and Tina handed it to her. The wood felt smooth and cool to her touch, polished to a glossy finish and fitted with metal levers instead of wooden tuning pegs. Such a modern, restrained instrument, but in Tina’s hands it sounded so warm as it brought traditional music to life.

  “I promised Mom I’d play in high school as well,” Tina continued. “Although I probably would have quit for good after I graduated if I’d had another bad experience. I thought I was muddling through okay, but after a couple weeks, my new orchestra teacher asked me to stay after class. He put a piece of sheet music on my stand, with the title blacked out, and asked me to play it.” Tina laughed at the memory. Jan handed the instrument back and watched as Tina ran her hand over the ebony fingerboard. “I had no clue what song it was, so I just sat there. I figured he was going to kick me out of the class. Instead, he asked a few questions about how I had learned to play, and then he calmly started teaching me the names of the notes. What a gift he gave me.”

  Tina elbowed Jan gently in the side. “I had some teachers who really made a difference in my life, who helped me through when things were so bad at home,” she said. “I never would have graduated without them. You have an amazing opportunity to help kids, and from what Chloe said, it sounds like you’re doing a great job at it.”

  “I love what I do,” Jan said. Tina watched her twist a lock of hair around her finger as she spoke. The gold of a wheat field, heated by the sun. “I feel I have an opportunity to teach so much more than geometry, although the subject fascinates me and I enjoy sharing it with my students. But I also want to teach them how to solve problems, to think, to enjoy learning. I’ll bet you’d be a wonderful music teacher.”

  Tina picked up her bow and brushed rosin dust off her lap. Anything to keep her from staring at the way Jan’s hand sifted through her own hair and made it catch the light. Suddenly restless, she got to her feet and played “Jolie Blon.” Because it was one of the first songs she had learned from her grandpa. Not because the pretty blonde on the couch had any effect on her.

  “What song is that?”

  Tina laid her violin in its case. “I don’t remember the title,” she lied. “It’s just an old Cajun tune.” She paused, thinking back to her sophomore year and the decisions she’d made. She had taken classes in education and loved them, but the thought of being a teacher had terrified her. Being responsible for all those kids, like being the head of a big family. They’d have needed her, relied on her, depended on her. She couldn’t do it. “You know, I thought about becoming a teacher when I was in college. But I was too anxious to get away from the rules and routine of school to sign up for a lifetime of structure. I can’t imagine giving up the freedom to move if I want to and to set my own hours. I like to keep my options open in work…and in other areas of my life,” she said, with a casual wink at Jan. “I like variety.”

  “Must be nice,” Jan said briefly. Tina sighed. Good. She had managed to break the moment of connection she had felt with Jan, the moment caused by the weakness of nostalgia, not by any real bond between them.

  Jan stood and got her things. “I should be going. Dad will be expecting me.”

  “Sure. And I think I’ll head out to check the nightlife around here. I’ll call if I have any questions about the photos.”

  Jan paused with her hand on the doorknob. “He wants to meet you sometime. I said I’d ask if you want to go to lunch, but if you’d rather not…”

  “I’d like to,” Tina answered too quickly. “For the project, I mean. It’d be helpful if I got to know him a little before I start piecing his life together.”

  “Okay. I’ll call, and we can set a time. ’Bye.”

  Tina watched her walk down the path and across the street to her car before she shut the door. She really needed to get out. Put on a sexy outfit and head to the nearest bar. Maybe later. She turned on the phonograph and played along with the music, weaving her own version of the melody around the band’s recording.

  Chapter Seven

  Peter dragged Tina around the bar on Tuesday night and introduced her to each person in the room, whether they were there to play at the open session or simply to drink and enjoy the music. He seemed to know everyone, but the faces had no meaning to Tina, and she forgot names as quickly as Peter said them. Once she heard people play, learned their individual styles and sounds, she would know them. As she had come to expect, there was no one type of person at the session—male and female, college students and old-timers, all of them there because they loved the music and the traditions they were about to share. Tina followed Peter around the bar with a beer in one hand and her violin case in the other, feeling more relaxed and at home than she had since arriving in Spokane. She occasionally put the drink on a table to shake hands with someone. She tried to focus on the faces in front of her, but half her attention was on the front door.

  The only reason she cared about Jan’s anticipated arrival with Chloe was because she had a couple of questions about Jan’s dad’s military career. She had agreed to come to O’Boyle’s with Peter because she had spent the weekend working on her two projects and needed a break. The sooner she finished the DVD and Peter’s PR work, the sooner she could get back to Seattle where she belonged. Spokane was proving to be a lonely place.

  Someone captured Peter’s attention for a moment, and Tina took a break from swimming through the crowd of strangers.
She knelt near the small square table Peter had claimed for them and checked her amp, making sure her settings were low enough so her violin would blend with the group. She’d be able to adjust the volume as the night wore on and the bar got noisier. After a quiet weekend in the apartment, she was looking forward to the sounds of an open session, the cacophony of varied styles, abilities, and interpretations of the music. Tina loved the chaos because it occasionally produced an unexpected and harmonious magic. And sometimes it was simply loud and fun and surprising. Exactly what she needed tonight.

  Tina had planned on having the past weekend to herself. She had decided not to answer the phone when Jan or Peter called, to give herself a break from their demands on her—to be nice to the family, to unpack, to settle in—when all she wanted was to be left in peace, to go her own way. Her defiance wasn’t tested, though, since neither one of them tried to contact her. She had called Andy and Brooke to pass the time on Saturday night, but about an hour into their conversation she realized she was being as demanding and needy as the people she was trying to avoid. She had hung up the phone, resolved to get through her projects as quickly as she could. Then she’d be free to return to her life in the city. Anonymous, unfettered, and fun.

  “Hi.” The single word, spoken in Jan’s quiet voice, startled Tina. She rose out of her crouched position and banged her head on the edge of the table.

  “Ouch, damn it. Hi yourself.” Tina stood up and rubbed her head. She let her hand drop when she saw the drawn look on Jan’s face. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, making them look almost navy, and the familiar frown line creased her forehead. “You look like hell. Are you sick?”