All the things I never knew

 

 

I SUSPECT the concert might have started by now as we sit in some backstage room colonised by the PYO’s instrument cases.

Micky picks up the occasional case and looks at the name tag. I think maybe he’s building up to tell me something important, but the only thing he says is “Have you ever played a clarinet?” I shake my head. “Can I show you?”

“Okay.”

Micky picks up one of the cases nearest him. With a kind of reverence, he opens it up and starts piecing the shining instrument together.

Won’t they mind? I want to ask him. The thing looks like it must be worth a fortune.

When he’s twisted it all into one, he holds it out to me, but I shake my head. “I don’t want to break it.”

“You won’t,” he says with a smile. “Put your mouth here and kinda blow from deep in your stomach.” He touches his stomach then stares at my mouth.

“Show me how,” I say kind of tightly, because it feels as though the atmosphere between us is a giant sticky spiderweb, and we both want to be trapped where we are, but it’s kind of frustrating too.

His gaze is intense, like the way he looked at me when I licked across his knuckle. He puts the clarinet to his lips and takes a deep breath. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it isn’t Micky belting out just about the fastest piece of music I’ve ever heard.

“Wow,” I say, my ears still ringing from the sound. I’m not a “wow” sort of person, but Micky can really play, like properly and well.

“Gershwin,” he says, catching his breath. “Used to get sent out of rehearsals for doing that—butchering beautiful music.”

That was beautiful. I’m beginning to think maybe he was in this orchestra, in Phoenix. When he smiles, I know he knows what I’m thinking.

“Just an orchestra. Not the PYO,” he says with a shrug.

Micky never talks about music, so it’s either not that important to him or it’s too painful a memory. He doesn’t look pained now, though. That time beneath the London Eye, he told me makeup was his thing, and I don’t think he was lying about that.

“Here.” He passes me the clarinet again, positions my fingers on the neck. “Blow from here,” he says, reaching over and placing a hand flat on my stomach.

I guess he was aiming for my diaphragm, but he ends up much lower down.

I suck in a mouthful of air and choke.

Micky put his hand over his mouth and laughs as if he knows he should be embarrassed, but he sort of isn’t. “Sorry,” he says, biting his lip as I blush.

The next half hour is spent with Micky teaching me how to make a clear sound instead of a musical fart. It’s kind of wonderful. I can’t remember the last time anyone sat down with me and showed me something like this, taught me something. And I don’t care that we’re missing an orchestra playing out on stage. This feels way more precious.

The way it takes me out of myself is precious. I don’t think about Dashiel or Dollman, I don’t think about sharks, nothing but my hands and mouth on the instrument, and Micky’s eyes on me.

We do eventually sneak our way into the auditorium from backstage. We’ve missed one orchestra and there is a lull as the stage is being set for another. Micky tells some woman with a name tag and a clipboard that we urgently need to get through to sit with the rest of our orchestra. She peers at her list and tells him they’re seated on the other side of the stage, and we need to go back out and around. Micky draws himself up, looks at her in a really sort of haughty way and puts on this real deep cowboyish drawl.

“Little lady, my daddy has bought up all the seats in the front row for this performance. I promised him I would sit with him a while before I go and see my friends. I’ll see to it that he knows your name.”

I’m not sure if this is supposed to be taken as a threat or a promise, and by the looks of it, neither is the clipboard woman, but she sighs as if this is more trouble than she wants to deal with right now, and waves us through. Micky grins at me all conspiratorially and takes my hand as we try to find two empty seats in the dark.

 

 

THE CONCERT leaves me dazed. Even when it’s over and the lights are up and everyone makes their way to the exits, I stare at the stage, feeling space expanding all huge and empty around me. Everything is too quiet after all that sound.

“Did you like it?” Micky asks, leaning over and resting his head on my shoulder.

I nod and squeeze his hand, too close to overwhelmed to say anything.

Most people have left by the time we make our way to the door. The corridor is still packed, though. I don’t like the crush. Without a word, Micky leads the way back through the auditorium to the backstage exit we came in through. It’s pretty noisy and busy this way too, but it’s calmer, with mainly people picking up their instruments and talking instead of rushing for the exit.

I want to hug him, stroke his back, touch him, for all the little ways he knows me. Maybe I will when we get out of here. Maybe I will pretend I’m someone special, someone he’d be really attracted to, and get the courage to do those things.

“Dominic!” someone yells suddenly.

Everyone sort of shuts up and looks around, because whoever is yelling sounds really desperate.

Micky’s hand tightens around mine, and he starts to walk faster.

“Dominic!”

I stop to look, trying to work out who’s shouting. People don’t shout like that unless something’s wrong. Micky keeps walking, pulling me. I shake my hand out of his grasp and instead try to grab his arm to stop him for a second, but I’m transfixed by someone surging through the crowd behind us. When I look back for Micky, he’s not there—he’s running, weaving in and out of the crowd as if his life depends on it. He doesn’t even glance over his shoulder once before he disappears around a curve in the corridor.

Confused, I take off after him, but I only manage two steps before someone grabs my bad shoulder hard. I cry out in pain, trying to curl away from the touch but only managing to trip over my feet and land in an awkward tangle on the floor. I struggle up, and someone grabs my arm again, trying to help me, I think, but really they’re only hurting.

“Please don’t touch my arm,” I gasp, wishing I had a curtain of hair to hide behind. “Hurts.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Hey.”

I blink at the person in front of me, wondering if I just hit my head and my eyes have fucked up. Micky—with neater hair, a slightly bigger build, a rounder face, and somehow a more masculine vibe, looking all concerned and upset. Not angry upset. Upset like his heart has been pulverised.

Everyone is looking at us. Micky Who’s Not Micky wipes his eyes with his sleeve and says with a really heavy American accent, “You were with Dominic, weren’t you? Please, don’t lie, I just need to know.”

I’m still too shocked to react. Dominic?

He looks around at all the people watching us. “There are too many people here. We should go somewhere a bit more private.”

And this is how I find myself in a bathroom of the Albert Hall with Benjamin da Silva, a renowned clarinetist and son of a Texas oil baron, whose older brother Dominic is missing, suspected to be in London.

I stare at him as he spills his heart, and I say nothing.

At first it’s mostly because I’m completely stunned. As if he’s shot me right between the eyes with his superpowerful stun ray of words.

“I saw you with him,” he whispers.

He looks like he might cry again, and I feel really bad for him. I hate seeing people cry. I don’t want him to cry—he’s so much like Micky. But it’s funny because however much he looks like Micky, my heart doesn’t speed up like it’s injected with adrenaline when I catch his eye. He doesn’t glitter in the same way. No one does, maybe.

I want to like him (I think I probably do like him), but I know I have to keep my distance. I pretend I’m Iceman, and he’s not getting through my berg, not even a little.

I may be a bit stupid about a lot of stuff, but I know some things aren’t black-and-white. If someone runs away, there’s always a reason.

“Okay. I get it. You think you’re protecting him. I would too,” Benjamin says finally, looking super resigned and actually in a lot of pain. He reaches into his pocket and hands me a card with his name and address and other contact details on it. “I won’t tell anyone back home, but I’m so worried about him. Tell him I love him. I’ll always love him, whatever.”

Then Benjamin da Silva gets up and leaves me alone in the bathroom with just about all the questions I could ever think of crowding my brain.