James Meader stared at her, bug-eyed.
“Come on, Ray, let’s get some dinner,” she said.
Once they were outside, Ray said, “Wow, you really ripped him a new one.”
“Let’s hope so,” she said.
The advantage of debuting in his hometown meant that Ray could run home and change. He could have stayed in the dressing room, but Janice thought this would ease him into performance life a little more smoothly.
He had just moved into a small two-bedroom house near campus—he’d converted the back room into a practice room. It was run-down, but cheap, and the neighbors were far enough away that they wouldn’t be disturbed by his practicing.
Tonight, preoccupied with the Bruch, he pulled open the door and stepped on the mail waiting on the mat: a new offer from the cable company, a flyer from a moving company, a letter from the Fraternal Order of Police addressed to the previous tenant, and a slim white business envelope with his name handwritten on it.
Dear Mr. Mcmillian,
We wanted to congratulate you on your newfound success. As you can imagine, we, along with the rest of the world, have heard about your wonderful fortune. Discovering that you have such a rare instrument must be overwhelming. We are certain that you are getting all the support as well as the admiration you have earned.
It has recently come to our attention, after extensive research, that the violin in question actually belongs to our family. They came over from Italy and their name was Marcello. They changed it to Marks. The violin was owned by my great great great grandfather Thomas Marks. Letters to his family in Italy mention the violin. Stories from our family along with the letters from our families genealogist research confirm our ownership. Imagine our surprise at the wonderful news that you have found the violin! You can imagine how excited we all are in anticipation of the return of our family heirloom.
We would like you to make arrangements to return our violin in a timely manner. We will of course reimburse you for your efforts. We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Andrea Marks
Just another lunatic, he thought—he’d gotten several dozen letters claiming ownership. But this one knew the Marks name; none of the others had. Could this claim be real? Something about this letter felt different. We would like you to make arrangements to return our violin. Was the violin not Ray’s after all?
This Andrea Marks must be nuts, no question. And in the meantime he had to perform the Bruch, not the Mendelssohn. And tonight was his debut as a soloist.
He put the letter in a drawer, shrugged off his clothes, went to take a shower. He tried to make words from the Marks letter sluice down the drain: that terrible pronoun, our, as in their violin. As in not his violin.
Lying on his bed, he checked his phone: a dozen or so texts, many from his family. They hadn’t patched things up between them after that last disastrous video call, but all the relatives were checking in regularly with him, seemingly polite and benignly interested in his success. He wondered what they were really plotting.
Uncle Thurston: Go get em boy
Aunt Joyce: Sorry I can’t be there for opening night! Break a leg!
His aunt Rochelle called to wish him luck. “Seems like every channel I turn on, there you are,” she said. “It’s crazy, that’s for sure.”
Nothing from his mom. He hadn’t heard from her at all.
Dressed in his crisp clean Bloomingdale shirt and trousers, carrying his hand-tailored blazer, Ray headed back to the symphony hall, trying very hard not to think about the Marks letter crouching in the kitchen drawer.
A twenty-minute drive back to the auditorium, waiting backstage. Janice said she’d be there, but she hadn’t come in yet. The house opened, and even in the depths of the theater Ray could hear the roar of the mob taking their seats. Full crowd. Everybody wanted to see the new kid with his shiny Strad. He wondered how many of them wanted to watch him make an idiot of himself on the stage: he knew he was just a curiosity, something to tell their friends about later. “Yeah, I heard him play. Shitty violinist. Nice instrument, though.”
In a few minutes the opening of Rossini’s overture to La Gazza Ladra wafted into the room. The stage manager knocked on his open door. “Five minutes.” Where was Janice? He made his way to the wings behind the stage.
And then the Rossini was over, and the conductor was coming offstage, smiling broadly, extending his hand, and Ray followed Meader as he strutted out onto the stage, into the rolling applause. James Meader acknowledged Ray, who bowed slightly and nodded in the way he’d often seen big soloists do on YouTube. He’d practiced many times in front of a mirror. Did he look as terrified as he felt?