Page 13 of Solo

“No,” she replies dryly. “I’d just hate for any complaints to complicate your bid for tenure. They’re not wrong, you know. Tenure is yours, so long as you don’t burn the building down. So stop playing with the goddamned matches already!”

I’m taken aback by the hiss in her tone. It’s very un-Maureen-like.

“Maureen, you don’t understand—”

“Please, Drew. I’m not blind. You’re not the only one who sees the resemblance. But Kate isn’t Casey.”

I feel my lungs suck in a breath that I didn’t tell them to take.

“Is that what you think? That I confuse her with Casey?” I ask, trying for indignant but coming up short. Instead, my words end up sounding petulant.

She smiles at me now. It’s a strange smile, though. Part pity, part fondness, and part insanity.

“I think that Casey still makes you furious even after all this time. And I think that Kate is a convenient proxy for your anger.”

“Oh, please. You know what, Maureen? I’m sick and tired of being painted as the villain—”

“No, stop right there,” she says, holding up her index finger in warning. “I am very fond of you, Drew. You know that. But do not make the mistake of thinking that you are above reproach. You harass, threaten, or coerce that young woman again and it just might cost you more than tenure. You might not have a job at the end of it. So get your act together and get over it. Get over her.”

With that, my boss stands up, grabs her belongings, and leaves me sitting at the table, wondering exactly which her she’s expecting me to get over.

Chapter Five

Kate

He’s handing back the papers. One by one, he peels the manuscript pages off the pile in his hand and folds it in half, discretely delivering it to its owner. I try not to look too interested as I watch my classmates surreptitiously. Joanie the flute player grumbles and rolls her eyes. Not the grade she was expecting, I guess. From the desk next to me, pianist Craig lets out a long sigh of relief. Not the grade he was expecting either, apparently, but for different reasons.

Markham passes the assignments back until there are none. Despite my efforts to remain disinterested, I can feel my face heat with the embarrassment of being excluded. I make a point of pretending to be engrossed in the notebook on my desk, hoping no one will notice. Well, he did say he wasn’t going to accept it. Just because I left it here doesn’t mean he even looked at it. In fact, it probably hit the trash can before the door closed behind me.

“Ahem.”

My head jerks up at the sound in front of me. He’s standing at his desk, reaching across it with my assignment in his hand. My hand is trembling slightly as I take it from him. God, I hope he doesn’t notice.

“Thank you, Dr. Markham,” I mutter quietly.

“Don’t thank me till you look it over,” he says in an equally soft tone.

He walks behind his desk to the board and starts to write out a few bars of music. With his back to me, I decide it’s safe to take a peek. Slowly, I pull the two ends of the folded paper apart, afraid of what I might find.

“Excellent inversion of the motif!” he’s written next to a fragment he circled. Further down the page I get “Yes!” where I have given the bassoons an unexpected solo. There are a few other scrawling compliments in red ink as I get down to the bottom and flip to the second page. And there it is. I skip past a few other remarks he’s made to get to the space under my last line of music.

“Overall, a very well-thought arrangement. I hope you’ll continue along these lines as you complete the project. And I hope you’ll bring it in on time.

Grade earned: 95. Grade Received: 0. –D. Markham.”

When I glance up from the paper, he’s watching me. Everyone else is so busy reading their own comments that they don’t notice when he raises a single eyebrow at me. It’s a question. And a dare. I don’t answer, nor do I bite. I tuck the pages into the back of my notebook and pull out a piece of blank manuscript paper so I can copy down the phrase of music that he’s written on the board. I suppose I should be grateful that I got the comments out of him.

“All right, enough ogling the papers,” Markham says after a few minutes. “I’ve been getting a lot of questions in regards to the midterm assignment. And, quite frankly, I’m alarmed by them. You should be just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s at this point. Not emailing me questions about basic music theory. So, I’m going to do some one-on-ones with you for the rest of the class, to go over a few key points that appear to be throwing several of you off.

“You are graduate students, not freshmen. Everything we’re doing now is built on the foundation of the last three semesters. And the last four years before that. This isn’t anything new that I’m pulling out of thin air. These are concepts we’ve studied in other composers’ music at length. Now, I’m asking you to apply them here. Okay, if you’re not doing a one-on-one with me, then please copy the measures that I’ve written on the board and give me a quintet orchestration of it.”

When he seems satisfied that we’re all clear, he sits down at his desk and pulls up a chair next to his, inviting each student to check in with him to address their questions. Time is almost up and I still haven’t decided if I’ll take a turn or not. Sitting so close to him, I have the advantage of hearing him speaking with my classmates. And, so far, he’s been nice enough to everyone. Helpful, even.

“You can’t have the violins playing a C-natural while the violas are playing a C-sharp,” he’s telling a bassoon player named Evan.

“I, uh—I don’t understand,” Evan replies, scratching his perpetual bedhead.

I try to keep from smiling as I work on the assignment in front of me. I can’t help but notice that Markham doesn’t give Evan a nasty lecture or a warning about failing.