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Everyone fell instantly silent.
“Who’s that?” I asked Cordelia in a hushed tone.
“Stefan,” she whispered. “He’s filling in for Felix.”
Filling in? From my perspective, he had swooped in. I couldn’t help myself. I was overcome with the need to rudely stare at him as he arranged his music across the broad stand. The man had presence. To my horror, my chagrin, he looked directly at me. He parted his lips, curled them upward slightly. A smile? A smirk? What the hell was that?
“Ah,” he said in a deep voice. “I see the first clarinetist is back in our midst. Excellent. Let’s begin.”
Oh, God. I ducked behind my stand, praying that nobody could see my mortified face.
I had to survive an hour of sight-reading with a new conductor. Stefan threw me in at the deep end by asking everyone to start halfway through the first piece—Capriccio Espagnole—right in the middle of a difficult clarinet solo, then proceeded to extract a level of interpretation Felix had rarely bothered to seek. My brain exploded with an instant headache. The concentration needed to sight-read and pick up on all of Stefan’s precise directions left me swimming in a stream of notes and pencil marks, which littered my score.
I followed Stefan’s meticulous beating arm out of the corner of my eye and managed to keep pace. I fluffed a few notes. Well, quite a few. I missed one entrance, which drew his attention for a second. He furrowed his brows and, underneath, his bright eyes narrowed. I squirmed in my seat. When he had us repeat the section, I came in perfectly. He nodded at me. No smile, but no frown either.
Every few bars, he would wave his arm before him, halting us. A few chosen words articulated at a particular section of the orchestra to highlight his expectations.
“Crisper. It’s meant to be a dance,” he said, addressing the violins.
He delivered his critical appraisal sharply and without cruelty. His voice mesmerized me. I couldn’t define its appeal. His Rs rolled off his tongue with a slight drawl. Something lay behind his clinical pronunciation. The more I heard his terse tone, the more I realized he had a particular goal in mind. A pusher, a driver, he wasn’t just conducting, he was rewriting the music for us—making it ours.
He jabbed at us with his arms, but his shoulders didn’t hunch up and down. He moved with grace, almost dancing. The baton held exquisitely, lightly, between finger and thumb, he twirled, swirled and occasionally whipped it across his face. Now and again, he stuck out one arm and pointed it straight at a lead player—Kevin the trombo
nist, Bill the cellist, David the flautist— One by one, they came under his scrutiny and exact timekeeping.
“You’re late!” he bellowed at Heather, the bassoonist. She went pink.
I dreaded his baton being aimed at me, but he only frowned. A subtle downturn of his lips. I heaved a sigh of relief. In one hour, he’d exhausted me. I didn’t think it had anything to do with my lack of practice. It was emotionally draining. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Underneath his stern expression, something reached out and grasped at me. My insides cooked, turned feverish, and my fingers zipped about on the clarinet keys.
Once he’d dissected each section of the orchestra, he brought everyone together for a unifying run-through. It didn’t help that my arm ached ten minutes into the practice session. I winced and did my best to ignore the dull pain.
The coffee break was welcome. Somebody at the back had dashed out to fire up the urn, lay out polystyrene cups, a jar of instant coffee and a pile of tea bags.
Steam rose out of the urn as I filled my coffee cup. I usually drank tea, but I needed the extra caffeine kick to survive another hour of Stefan’s demanding directions.
I grabbed a rich tea biscuit out of the torn packet, spun around on my heels and collided with a white shirt. Black liquid splashed across the fabric. The droplets leaped across the space between us in slow motion, splattering upon impact.
He swore under his breath. I recognized the voice. It had been ringing in my ears for most of the evening. For some ridiculous reason, I tried to mop the spots up with the palm of my left hand. Black marks smeared over the cotton. His belly sucked in as he inhaled. No, not a belly. Too firm for such a description. More like a muscular, flat abdomen. His white shirt hid him well.
As I smeared the coffee spillage around, brushing the stain into the fabric, my hand trembled.
He tapped my wrist. “I don’t think that’s helping, do you?”
I ceased my futile efforts at damage limitation and looked straight up into Stefan’s dazzling eyes. I retracted my hand as if spring-loaded. My face bloomed with unwanted heat, my jaw dropped and I desperately wanted a hole beneath my feet to swallow me up.
“I am so sorry.” I backed away, my coffee cup shaking in my right hand. “I’ll get a tissue,” I stammered.
He patted his stomach and grunted.
“Oh, God, I didn’t scald you?” I hunted around for a napkin. Nothing. The coffee soaked into his shirt.
“Callie, isn’t it?” He swept the back of his hand against the stains. Under the dark mop of his bangs, his eyes peeped out, pinning me down.
I cleared my throat and squeaked, “Yes.”
“How’s the arm?” He dropped his hand to his side with a shrug, resigned to losing the coffee-stain battle.
“Fine. I mean… It’s fine. I am so sorry,” I repeated feebly. I was Calamity Callie that evening. The late bus, my sodden trouser roll-ups, the new music and now chucking coffee at this rather impressive and hunky replacement conductor. I wanted to vanish and come back a week later with a clean slate.
