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“Don’t worry, my parents are calling your parents. Give me your phone. I’ll charge it.” She held it out, her fingers shaking. “You can call them from my phone when you’re ready, so you can let them know you’re okay.”
Here we were, fucking around with our phones and chargers when she’d almost fuckingdied. I left her phone on the counter and took her mug as she sat frozen in place. “An explosion,” she said to herself. “My apartment?”
I sat beside her. “The Michelin building. I think it must have been pretty bad.”
“But we didn’t hear anything. Wouldn’t we have heard it? I live just a few blocks away.”
Did she want me to tell her it was all a mistake? That it probably hadn’t happened after all? My parents’ hysteria said otherwise. “I’m sorry. Do you want me to find more information? We can look online.”
“Oh no,” she cried, covering her face. “Oh no, oh no.”
I put an arm around her, wanting to offer comfort, but how did you comfort someone who’d just lost her home and everything in it? “I’m so sorry,” I said. “But thank God you weren’t there. If Blue hadn’t kept you here…”
She shook her head. “I can’t… I can’t…”
“Take a deep breath. Everything’s going to be okay. I’m so sorry, Alice.” I pulled her closer as she dissolved in tears. “Things are replaceable,” I said gently.
“Not everything! My violin,” she sobbed. “My Grapeleaf. My Fierro.” She gazed at me, her wet eyes tormented. “It was my own beating heart.”
She turned her face into my chest. I held her, stroking her hair. “It’s going to be okay. The Fierro is replaceable.”
“No, it’s not replaceable. Not that one. I loved it. It was perfect for me. I’ll never find another one like it.”
I hugged her, offering silent support as she trembled and cried for her lost instrument. To a musician at her level, it was an indescribable loss. Her “Grapeleaf” Fierro had been made by my father, with special care for his best friend’s daughter. He’d crafted an instrument for a prodigy, a violin that could be passed from her and her family to musicians and collectors hundreds of years into the future, to become their heart.
I remembered when my father gave it to her on her seventeenth birthday. I remembered it vividly, because I’d done secret work on that violin, etching a heart into the back of the body, curving the edges so it would blend in with the maple as I varnished it. Varnishing was all my father trusted me with at that stage.It will make it sound better, I told myself, scratching the infinitesimal curves like a shaman casting a spell.
Somehow, he never noticed the heart, although I could pick it out from any distance. Alice didn’t notice it either, not in the uproar of applause and congratulations at her party. I remembered the trembling, reverent way she’d accepted the violin from my pop. She’d played it for all of us, her eyes shining with tears. My father had known, as any good maker knows, how to craft a violin that would complete her, and I’d put my spell on it too.
Now it was gone. There’d been an explosion, and my handiwork was gone, along with her musical heart, and nearly, her life.
“You should call your parents,” I said, after she’d cried enough to wet my tee shirt. “They’ll need to hear your voice.”
*
My mom anddad arrived from Chappaqua within the hour, bringing clothes, coats, and shoes from my mother’s closet, even though she was shorter than Alice.
“Everything will be all right,” my mother assured her, over and over. “You poor girl.”
I was glad she was there, taking charge. I used Blue as an excuse to go out on my balcony to collect myself. I felt numb, encased in unresolved feelings. I was anxious and sad for Alice, and freaked out at what might have been, but I also kept thinking about last night’s makeout session, which seemed extremely crass under the circumstances. I thought about the warmth of her body against mine, the way it felt so perfect and necessary. I remembered kissing her, a kiss that had simmered for untold years, then caught fire in five reckless minutes before I regained control.
No, I couldn’t think about fire. I stroked Blue’s smooth fur to keep him warm, and waited in the wind for my hands to stop shaking. My cheeks grew irritated by the winter air.
“Let’s go back in,” I told Blue, and he traipsed down the hall before me, energized by his foray outside. He went right to Alice, shoving his muzzle into her welcoming embrace.
“What a cold nose you have,” she said, petting him. Her voice was thick from crying. “And what a good dog you are, bud. Thanks for making me stay.”
While she gazed at Blue, my mother and father started a fierce conversation in Italian, softly, under their breath. They were arguing about where Alice would go, whom she should live with until she found another place. They lived too far away for her to be able to commute to the city, and having just moved here, Alice didn’t have any friends she knew well enough to move in with.
“The building’s insurance,” I said in Italian, interrupting their whispered fretting. “They’ll find her a temporary place to live.”
“When?” my mother replied. “It’s the holidays. And where? A hotel in a bad part of town?”
“I don’t know, Ma. I don’t know how it works.”
We paused and looked at Alice, curled in the corner of my couch, her head held high, but her eyes closed.
“She might as well stay here,” said my father, in English.
