"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Except the Music" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

He played and played and played until he'd exorcised her. Until he felt clean again. Until he felt calm.

Then he put the cloth back on the piano, and sat in the silence for a long time, wishing for something he
didn't completely understand.
****
She was at the next concert, of course. There were two weeks worth of concerts left until the
requiem--and he had a hunch he would see her at all of them.

He wasn't playing in the first set--a Mozart trio, a Bach cantata, and an obscure chamber piece by a
composer few of the musicians liked. Still, Max had come early, and he was wearing his tux.

During the Mozart, he peered out of the wings, and saw her in her customary seat, four rows back,
where the light of the stage played up the shadows on her face.
Otto Kennisen came up beside Max. Otto clutched his violin, his thick fingers strong despite his age. He
was over eighty now, although he looked like a man in his fifties. He loved the music, but he lacked the
stamina he'd had as a younger man. Now he only performed one piece per concert instead of all of them,
and even that one piece took something out of him.

Otto's career made Max's look as if it hadn't even gotten started. Otto had been one of the superstar
musicians of the 1950s and 60s, and had been in a state of semi-retirement since 1990. He loved the
Oregon Coast, and now he brought the musicians he wanted to meet here, rather than going to see them.

As applause rose at the end of the Mozart, Max turned to Otto and nodded toward the woman in the
fourth row. "Do you know her?"

"Which her?" Otto squinted.

"The woman with the long, honey-colored hair," Max said.

"The one you escorted out of here last night?" Otto's blue eyes twinkled. "You didn't bother to learn her
name?"

Max made himself grin. "It was an oversight."

"Now you want me to correct it," Otto said.

"I want someone to before I embarrass myself."

"Again." Otto's smile was puckish.

"As if you've never done anything like that," Max said.

"At your age, dear boy, I was married with five children." Otto stared into the audience.

And with mistresses all over the globe, Max wanted to add, but didn't. Otto's attraction to women had
been legendary. When he'd semi-retired, musicians the world over wondered how Otto would survive
with only one country's women to chose from.

"I at least learned their names," Otto said into Max's silence.