The Metropolis Case_ A Novel - Matthew Gallaway [131]
Over the years, Martin had often remembered this episode with Keith, but this time for once he felt free from the shame and embarrassment that had haunted him. His pain, it seemed, had evolved into something more wistful than wounded—something he could even smile at—and made his past feel more resolved, so that he was no longer agitated by a gnawing, debilitating sense of wishing things were different when they so obviously could not be. He poured himself another drink and settled into the couch, where he imagined driving over the glittering bridge to states he had never seen.
36
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
NEW YORK CITY, 1989. Though almost seven years had passed since Maria’s graduation from Juilliard, they felt pleasantly distant and unimportant as she—accompanied by Anna Prus—sat down at Linda’s wedding reception. It was a period marked by cheap apartments uptown and a series of unremarkable day jobs and equally unremarkable if necessary stints singing in churches and synagogues. If at times she had been frustrated by the failure of things to come together exactly or as quickly as she had hoped, at this second it all seemed to make sense, given that she was pleasantly drunk and that Anna had just confirmed that Bradford Irving, who managed the young artist program at the Met, was about to offer her a contract, meaning that Maria would be singing full-time starting in the fall. They were in a ballroom at the Pierre, idly sipping wine while the rest of the tables filled up. “You sounded lovely today,” Anna complimented her, referring to a Brahms piece she had sung at the ceremony, in a small chapel on East Seventy-third Street. “I think you impressed more than a few of the guests.”
“That wasn’t exactly at the top of my list,” Maria remarked, for she knew that Anna was referring to some of her former classmates who had yet to arrive at their table.
“I know”—Anna smiled—“but these things are important, now that you’re emerging from your cocoon.”
“So it’s finally happening,” Maria said, and sighed. “I’m trying to enjoy it—just for today—because I know that as soon as I start, it’s going to be so much work.”
“As you should.” Anna remained impassive as she looked around for a waiter. “It’s an end and a beginning, which above all calls for un coup de champagne.”
“Yes, un coup de champagne,” Maria agreed and was distracted by the commotion of the wedding party, which had just entered the room.
Wine followed champagne as Maria stiffly conversed with her tablemates, three Juilliard alums and their husbands. Only one was still singing, and she made a point to tell Maria within five seconds of sitting down how jet-lagged she was after a flight from London, where she had just finished a Handel opera that Maria was sure would have bored her to tears, and so she could express genuine admiration for the accomplishment of performing it. The woman’s husband was a fastidious little mouse who taught music history somewhere and said that he didn’t appreciate anything later than Bach. The other two, whose voices had never particularly impressed Maria, both had husbands whose striking resemblance made her imagine a grove of trees from which pasty but aggressive bankruptcy lawyers were harvested by young sopranos more interested in marriage than in a career.
“So Washington Heights—is that in New Jersey?” one of them responded with what Maria felt quite sure was a sneer after she mentioned where she lived.
She decided that, under the circumstances, it would be quite appropriate—and even amusing—to play the diva. “No, it’s on an island known as Manhattan,” she emphasized with an exaggerated sigh. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”
He teased out the exact location, at Broadway and 160th, before he addressed the table at large. “Doesn’t it make you wonder why they didn’t keep the numbers going all the way upstate? ‘Hey, I live on 5,634th Street, how about you?’ ” He laughed moronically and then addressed Maria. “So what’s it like up there?”
“Oh, it’s a drug-infested war zone,