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  Josh touched my arm. I jerked away from him.

  “We’ll be okay,” Josh said. “It’s j-j-j—” He shook his head. “Just one wedding.”

  I clenched my fists. Reputations were made and ruined one wedding at a time.

  Harrison said, “They’ll pay up. Remember that pretty little contract my brother designed? An hour in small claims court will get us a check.”

  Shreya said, “I’m sorry, Joey. The whole situation was just so ridiculous, I didn’t think. I whipped off the one song, and then it snowballed.”

  Harrison pffed. “I’m not sorry. The guests loved it, and if anything, we’ve proven we can do what I said. Imagine if we’d had pieces already practiced.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Weddings are not about us.”

  Harrison said, “I don’t see why they shouldn’t be.”

  No, of course everything should be about Harrison.

  I sat with the viola case on the table in front of me, draped my arms over it and laid down my head, then kneaded my neck and upper arm. God, it was late. Not by my regular schedule—at ten-thirty I’d be only halfway through my shift. But it felt like the day should have ended by now.

  Then, gentle pressure: Josh behind me, massaging my neck and back. I closed my eyes and let my shoulders melt so he could work out the tightness.

  Harrison said, “Hey, Josh? Come take care of me next?”

  Josh laughed. “Bite me.”

  Shreya chuckled. I couldn’t find the energy.

  A click as Harrison snapped the clasps on his case. “Well, if the groom takes after his sweet mom, maybe the couple deserves each other.” He put on his coat. “Are you guys starving? I am.”

  Harrison had no problem thinking about food five minutes after the world ended, so he suggested a mid-priced restaurant he knew nearby. We locked our instruments in Josh’s car and went on a hike.

  Once we were seated and with menus in-hand, Harrison said, “This one’s on the group,” and I let off a breath. I could order more than water and a cheese sandwich.

  “I hope the server comes soon.” Shreya fingered her earring while taking a pass over the menu. “I’m tired of waiting for people.”

  “I should have known.” Harrison drank some water, then turned to me. “Do you remember when we booked this one?”

  Seriously? This exhausted, I wouldn’t have remembered interviewing this bride while she juggled torches. “Enlighten me.”

  “The one we met at her office.”

  My eyes flared. Her! She’d invited us for 10:30. We’d arrived to learn she wasn’t in yet for the day. Cracking her gum, the secretary said, “She’s running late,” with the same tone you’d use to say water is wet. After twenty minutes, I voted to leave, but Harrison stayed because we’d had a contract drought. After that we heard nothing for so long we assumed she’d signed different musicians, and then one evening I was stunned to find in the mail, of all things, a signed contract and a check.

  I frowned. “Wasn’t she someone your mom knew?”

  Harrison leaned forward. “Her father? Is an executive for an airline.”

  That did it: we laughed so loud heads turned.

  Shreya asked, “Which airline?” and I replied, “Any of them!”

  Harrison said to me, “Are you going to be late for our wedding?”

  “No, because I’m not marrying you, Harrison.”

  “Damn.” He looked so disappointed that my heart dropped. “You’d show up on time.”

  The waiter arrived. Hello I’m some unforgettable name may I take your order. Harrison: barbecue chicken sandwich and a Coke. Shreya: Vegetable minestrone and a garden salad, just bottled water.

  And then Josh: “I’d like a hamb-b-b-b—” He gasped, and his voice dropped to barely audible. “Ham-bur-ger. And a C-c-c-coke.”

  I flushed right to my ears.

  The waiter smirked. “And do you want fry-fry-fries with that?”

  Josh looked up, pale.

  Still glancing over the menu, Harrison said abruptly, “You know, I’d like to change my order. Cancel the barbecue chicken sandwich, and instead bring me the manager.”

  The waiter dropped his pen. “What?”

  Icy-hard, Harrison stared the waiter dead in the eye. “I said, fetch me your manager, unless I should head to the kitchen to get him myself.”

  His voice had dropped an octave. The last time the world heard that tone was John Jacob Astor on board the Titanic. The waiter backed away from the table.

  My vision speckled. Harrison felt fifteen feet away from me. “What are you doing?”

  Settling his napkin on his lap, Harrison shrugged. “I’m going to give the waiter the opportunity to brush up on his job application skills.”

  Josh shot back from the table. “D-d-d-don’t!”

  Harrison’s eyes glinted. “I’m not letting him get away with that.”

  Josh grabbed his jacket. By the time I got out of my chair, he’d already left.

  On the street, I jogged to catch up. “I’m sorry.”

  He hunched his shoulders, and I hurried to keep pace.

  Eventually he had to stop for the Don’t Walk at the corner. While a dozen cars whished by on the wet pavement, I tried to touch his forearm. He just jammed his fists in his pockets.

  This sucked. We were already tired—why’d the idiot waiter have to do that? How hard should it be to get a burger?

  “He’s j-just a jerk.” Josh stared as if he could see the subway through forty feet of concrete and earth. “He shouldn’t lose his job.”

  We shared a sphere of silence amidst the cars and pedestrians. I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t known in first grade, hadn’t known in second grade, hadn’t known when I destroyed things for us when I was sixteen. Right now, guess what? I still didn’t know. I’d never know.

  The light changed, and Josh turned uptown. Ah, heading toward his car.

  I didn’t know what to say, but silence felt wrong. Was this anger or humiliation? If it was embarrassing just sitting beside him, what was it like that whenever you opened your mouth, you risked some stranger making you his personal entertainment?

  My phone buzzed with an incoming text. Shreya. “Manager groveling.”

  “Good,” I muttered. I texted, “H got waiter fired?”

  She texted back, “Manager looks pissed.”

  A moment later, a text from Harrison. “Come back.”

  Easier said than done. “Josh, the manager is on his knees in tears. Do you want to go back?”

  He shook his head, then pointed to me.

  “Not without you.”

  He turned aside, but I caught his expression: shame and frustration together.

  I texted Harrison, “No.”

  As I turned to Josh, I struggled to think of something comforting. “You can’t help what other people think.”

  Josh pulled out his phone and texted me, “Why can’t the jerks be tagged so we know in advance?”

  My phone buzzed again. Harrison: “Where are you?”

  Then Shreya: “Wait for us. We’re coming.”

  Josh’s phone buzzed, but he looked only at me.

  My arms ached, but how could I hug him when I knew too well which of us had been the jerky sixteen-year-old?

  “You’re only the catalyst.” I squeezed his hand. “You never asked for this, but you show us who people really are.”

  SIX

  I awoke on Harrison’s couch, my neck stiff but my hands fingering the “Ave Maria.”

  I groaned. “Oh late bride, you are a pain in the shoulders.”

  I heard a chuckle across the semi-darkness of the living room. Shreya.

  “What’s up?” I murmured, searching for a clock. It was a little before eight.

  “Going to church,” she whispered. “Keep sleeping.”

  I stretched. “I had enough of churches last night.”

  “I can’t get enough of them. Back in an hour.”

  The door clicked. I lay wit
h my eyes closed, playing the “Ave Maria” against my right arm and soothing myself by imagining notes under my ear, a vibration against my collarbone.

  Church. I’d figured she was Hindu. But then again, Shreya told us nothing about her life, not even where she lived.

  After last night’s debacle—debacles—we’d made a command decision to barricade ourselves at Harrison’s and drink ourselves silly. You know that old joke? “Two musicians walk past a bar, and—hey, it could happen!”

  Harrison sent us upstairs with his keys and his violin, following minutes later with two six-packs of Arrogant Bastard. He’d had the first bottle open before he reached the couch and two pizzas delivered before we polished off the first six-pack.

  My joints creaked as I hauled myself toward Harrison’s coffee maker, a device with more blinky-beepy bits than R2-D2. When it humored my best guesses by producing a brownish liquid, I cleaned up the pizza boxes and transferred a bunch of empties to the sink. That done, I turned to find the person responsible for many of them.

  “Morning.” Harrison had a scratchy just-awake voice, and he squinted as if pained. “Thanks for making coffee. Shreya left?”

  “Went to church.”

  “Really?” A grimace overtook his face. “Maybe God will tell her where we should seek asylum.”

  “Canada.” I gathered four mugs. “You want to test whether the stuff I made is actually coffee?”

  He settled on the stool alongside the island, forehead resting on his hands. “Right now the headache and exhaustion are numbing me.” His shoulders dropped. “I’m sorry, Joey. For a lot of things.”

  I tried not to laugh. “You’re hung over.”

  “I’m sorry about that, too.”

  I smirked. “What do you have for breakfast? Should I get some bagels?”

  “At least you’ve got a full-time job.” Harrison hadn’t left Harrisonville yet. “Keep the sweats until I see you again.” Then I got goosebumps as he met my eyes. “It’s surreal, waking up to find you in my kitchen, wearing my clothes.”

  That was the hangover talking, nothing more. Biting my lip, I walked back to the living room. “Do you mind if I get my email?” At the very least, I needed to send an invoice to our time-challenged clients. If we had to battle to the death over money, we might as well declare war before breakfast.

  “Go ahead.” Harrison pressed his hands over his eyes. “I’ll call my students. They’ll need another violin teacher after I flee the country.”

  I logged into the guest account. “What time do they start showing up?”

  “Nine-thirty is the earliest.”

  About to remind him we weren’t actually fleeing the country, I realized no, it was that he couldn’t very well teach with a semi-sleeping quartet lying around his apartment.

  I kept our invoice online as a Google doc, so while Harrison talked to somebody’s mother, I plugged in three hours at the contracted overtime rate (you’ve gotta love a total like that) and created an aesthetically pleasing paper shakedown. En route to emailing it to our client, though, I got hijacked: the quartet’s Gmail account had ten unread messages.

  Ten?

  The spam filter must have failed. When I checked the subject lines, though, they weren’t about drugs to enhance our “performance” but rather questions about booking performances, two requests to hear our demo, and three questions about availability on specific dates. One couple even wanted to meet.

  What the hell?

  On the seventh message I got a clue: “I saw you mentioned in the New York Times Fashion and Style section, and after I looked up your website—”

  The New York Times?

  I spun toward Harrison, huddled at the counter with a case of early-morning stares. “What have you done now? Why are we in the New York Times?”

  Wide-eyed, Harrison chose to stall. “What?”

  I turned my back and typed into the address line. Jerk. I bet he put us on the cover as the string quartet that will eventually do half-assed renditions of perfectly good pop songs.

  “We’ve got ten emails from people who saw us in the Times, and— Oh my God.”

  The Times website had loaded, and when I searched on “Boroughs String Quartet,” I found us. Right there. Us. In print.

  “Don’t do this to me. What does it say?” Harrison leaned over my shoulder. “Oh, shit.”

  Trying to ignore the warmth of his hands on my shoulders, I highlighted the important paragraphs.

  On Saturday evening, Ron Estes, son of Broadway actress Angelica Majeur, married Regina DeLay, daughter of City Council Member Sheila DeLay, actress in several off-Broadway productions, including the award-winning Honest And For True. Outdoing anyone’s standards for “fashionably late,” Regina arrived at 9:30pm for a seven-o’clock wedding.

  The unexpected stars of the evening were the Boroughs String Quartet who with unparalleled professionalism gave an impromptu concert until the bride graced everyone with her arrival.

  Although their lineup began with well-executed but stodgy quartets by the standard names of classical music, after the first hour they delighted the guests with by-request renditions of popular songs.

  Guests enjoyed plenty of laughter and several jokes at the expense of the violist. When the bride arrived, her guests were unanimous in regretting that it had to end. As Regina entered, the musicians resorted to the very-predictable Pachelbel’s Canon.

  Regina’s dress was designed by—

  Harrison kept whispering, “Oh my God—” and then a little later, “Oh my God,” putting his verbal acuity on a par with mine.

  “Apparently we’re professionals,” I murmured as I sent the article to the printer. “Who knew?”

  “Do you know what this means?” Harrison whispered, as if in a museum. “We can double our prices.”

  My head shot up. “Are you nuts?”

  “Maybe triple!” His fingers clenched on my shoulders. “You don’t understand how some people think. They can’t hire Joshua Bell to serenade their trip down the aisle, but they can and will book a string quartet because it appeared in the New York Times. We’re positioned for a massive upgrade in our clientele.”

  He began pacing as if he were ready to jump out of his skin.

  And me? I couldn’t have left the chair right now even if the apartment were on fire. “But our skill set hasn’t been upgraded, and our repertoire is being downgraded!”

  “They loved the pop stuff.”

  Of course they did. The music on high-rotation for three hundred years was stodgy, and Mozart, the original party animal, was moldy. But “Hotel California”? Only the best for our highest-paying clients.

  Harrison had a head of steam by now, his train of thought thundering along the rails of inevitability. “Okay, so you revise our website. Put ‘As Seen In The New York Times!’ on the front page and anywhere else you can. Link to it, pull a couple of quotes, especially at the top of the testimonials page.”

  I sighed. “I created the website. I think I know how to update it. I’ll mention it in our Craigslist ads too.”

  I glanced up to find Josh in the hall, looking at me in Harrison’s clothes at Harrison’s computer. I wrapped my arms around my waist and angled aside. He snapped to, then gave me an inquisitive look.

  “Last night’s wedding got a review in the Times.”

  Josh’s eyes widened.

  “They said we handled the chaos professionally.” Harrison looked ready to climb the ceilings. “I think I’ll have some coffee after all!”

  I for one knew how to capitalize on it: I copied the front end of the article along with the URL and attached it to our invoice in the email to last night’s bride. Let her argue with that. If she were as prompt coughing up a check as she was for her own wedding, we might see a green Christmas.

  Holding a mug, Josh watched over my shoulder while Harrison kept ruminating, and by the time I hit send, Harrison was at maximum intensity. “We’ve definitely got to record a CD of fusion mixes
!”

  The world disappeared in a high whine.

  No, not a CD. Anything but a CD. I’d rather perform naked than record a new CD. Naked and on fire.

  As Harrison seized the laptop and parked himself on the couch, I turned to Josh, who was studying me again. I looked away. “How are you doing?”

  His shoulders slumped. “I’m f-fine.”

  Shreya returned with a box of donuts. Harrison thanked her with, “What a professional thing to do!”

  She looked at Harrison as if he’d lost his mind, so while Josh investigated the donuts, Harrison told her about the article.

  I went to the kitchen to grab a chocolate glazed donut. If a CD was going to kill me, I might as well be fat and caffeinated.

  Like me, Shreya wore Harrison’s clothes. She said to Josh, “Hey, are you okay about what happened at the restaurant?”

  His flinch made my heart twinge, but he covered. “St-still stings. But he’s nnn-not the first idiot I’ve dealt with.”

  Shreya had gotten more of an answer to that question than I had because one of the previous idiots Josh dealt with was yours truly, in an act of breathtaking idiocy that will stand tall on a pedestal in the annals of idiotic things the world’s idiots have done.

  Shreya chuckled. “I’ll print you a business card saying, ‘Yes, I stutter. Give me a burger and no one gets fired.’”

  Josh pulled out his wallet and handed her a different business card.

  Shreya blinked. “Okay...that’s different.”

  Josh flushed. “I got pu-pu-pulled over once.”

  I stopped myself before saying, “Only once?”

  He bit his lip. “It didn’t work out so well, so I ma—” I could tell he blocked on the rest of the word because he blinked rapidly and twitched. “I made that card.”

  Shreya frowned. “Why would a stutter be suspicious behavior?”

  “You’ve seen the mmm-movies.” Josh nodded. “We’re all a bunch of sss-psychos and drrr-rug users.”

  I felt cold, but Shreya sounded breezy. “Silly me. I forgot about your psychotic drug-use.” But then she paused. “Hey, you want some unsolicited advice? Tell the idiots to fuck off.”

  Josh said, “How?”