She was sitting on the bed in a daze. “You want me to come? I’ll come if you want.”
“Nah.” He grinned at her. “You have a lie-down, as they say on this side of the pond. I’ll check out the Moscow hotties and report back.”
He grabbed a taxi outside and went to check out his competition—not the Moscow women （although, to be fair, there were several head-turning young women on the drive）。
The press photos of the Conservatory’s auditoriums were dauntingly impressive. Soaring ceilings vaulted over intricate plasterwork, rows of theater seats encircled perfectly proportioned half-moons of stages. Everything in the pictures gleamed gold and blue and white, stunning in its magnificence.
Reality was, as usual, less enticing. Outside the main hall and the smaller performing halls, the classrooms, offices, and practice rooms were decidedly more run-down and pedestrian. The stone floors and the off-white paint on the walls seemed slightly exhausted—just a bit grimy, as if the building had been waiting for an enormous hand wielding a mop dipped in a truckload of industrial-strength bleach, to make it sparkle. The public glamor and private grubbiness made him feel welcome and immediately helped him get his bearings. Despite the Cyrillic signs everywhere, this place was similar to all the other theaters he’d played in over the past year.
He felt similarly about the other competitors. Before he’d arrived, and even though he’d watched a lot of the internet footage of previous competitions, he’d somehow expected everyone to be wearing tuxedos or ball gowns and to be dignified and austere. He imagined a lot of bows and curtsies, the kissing of gloved hands. He knew, of course, that this was a competition for the young, but seeing many kids younger than himself—seventeen or eighteen—dressed casually in jeans and sneakers, complaining about waiting in line or wondering if they could get a cup of coffee, made him feel like he belonged. He was as good as they were. No one was Black, but he didn’t expect that. Besides, he’d gotten used to being immediately distinguishable from the crowd: people knew who he was just by the color of his skin.
When he’d first pulled open the enormous doors into the towering vestibule, he thought that the people were looking at him because he was the only Black guy in the crowd, but when an older woman with tired blue eyes and a gentle handshake immediately approached him, telling him in a heavy French accent how sorry she was to learn about his Strad, he realized that the heads turning had little to do with the color of his skin and everything to do with the loss of the violin. In minutes he was surrounded—dozens of hands reached out to pat him on the back, and he heard what he thought was “sorry” in dozens of languages.
The crush of people scared him for a moment, but then he realized that this was his tribe, people whose lives centered around music—who would understand like no one else what losing his violin meant to him.
He stood in line for registration. People were still constantly tapping him on the shoulder, talking to him in heavily accented English, Russian or other Eastern European languages, or French, German, or Japanese. Sometimes he could distinguish only the words “sorry” or “Stradivarius.”
Then he caught sight of not one but two camera crews from medici.tv, which would circle the hall, streaming the performance live to its five million viewers. The lights were disorienting, casting unexpected shadows. He needed to be interviewed, so he could appeal to its listeners to go to his crowdfunding site. As soon as he was registered, he’d introduce himself to one of the camera crews.
Many kids had come with their parents, luggage in tow, straight from their flights. A tall, slender guy, two contestants ahead, carried a cello case. A Canadian A bumper sticker with a maple leaf on it shone red and white against the black fiberglass.
A tall Slavic woman with acne scars on her cheeks and a bloom of pimples on her chin said, “Excuse me, you are Ray McMillian, yes?”
“Hey. Yeah,” Ray said, holding out his hand. “Violin. And you are…？”
“Svetlana Svotsolov, voice,” she said. “So sorry to hear about your violin,” she started, and Ray got ready with his standard “Thanks, I haven’t given up hope” response; but she went on, “My friends and I have bet that you would speak with Mikhail and I won this bet. So thank you.”
“What bet? Who’s Mikhail?”
“My friends”—she indicated the two girls with her—“bet that you would speak to him, and I bet that you would not. I have won this bet, and they must take me to special dinner, so thank you.”