Page 47 of Solo

“No, you don’t.”

“Is this you not being difficult?” I tease.

“Okay,” she concedes with a giggle. “Maybe just a little.” She uses her thumb and index finger to indicate “a little.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.” I roll my eyes. “What I want to know is how you do that? How do you know exactly what the orchestration calls for? I swear to God, you seem to know every performance practice incorporated by every composer in every period. What keys they worked in. The tempos they liked to use, the instrumentation. You don’t miss a single detail,” I declare, the wine making me a wee bit dramatic. And loud. “It’s as if you’ve memorized every characteristic ever used.”

Her brows pull together as she seems to consider this. I’m guessing her brain is even foggier than mine is right now. And mine is pretty fucking fogged-in.

“Oh,” she says, finally grasping what I’m talking about. “You mean when you ask us to arrange something in the style of Mozart or Bach?”

“Yes, exactly,” I nod enthusiastically.

“Evan!” she suddenly shrieks with peals of laughter. “My God, could he be anymore clueless? I mean, he’s a kick-ass bassoon player but Jesus Christ—crack open a book once in a while!”

I snort and she points at me.

“Aha! You think so, too,” she accuses.

“I’m not really supposed to say…” I leave the sentence hanging, but it’s clear I agree with her assessment of poor, dim Evan who doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing my class this semester. Good thing he’s got another year to sort it out before he graduates.

We’re both laughing for no good reason now, other than the fact that we are well on our way to hammered. I reach for the wine bottle, put it to my lips, and take a long swig before passing it to her. She looks at me like I have three heads.

“Seriously? Did you not just nurse me back to health? Dude, you do not want my cooties all over your wine bottle.”

“Oh shit, you’re right.” I grab a half bottle of zinfandel sitting in front of us on the coffee table. I hand it to her and she pulls a swig. “There—your own personal bottle. Now, back to the subject at hand, Miss Brenner,” I say, trying to sound serious with limited success. “You always know the answer. How do you do that?”

“Ah, well,” she begins, lowering her voice and leaning in closer to me, as if she’s about to share one of the best-kept secrets of the ages. “That’s easy. I cheat.”

I frown. That makes no sense.

“You cheat? How the hell can you cheat? You have no idea what question I’m going to ask. Not unless you’re a mind reader. Wait, are you a mind reader?” I turn on her with the faux accusation. “That’s it, isn’t it?” I declare triumphantly.

She grins and giggles, shaking her head at me. “No, it’s cheating because I know all the answers.”

“Huh?” is the best I can muster in my increasingly inebriated state.

“I read all the books. Cover. To. Cover.”

“What? The textbooks?”

She nods.

“Yuh-huh. And other books on music history. Sometimes I read t-t-thesissis that other students have done. I’ve read both of yours, you know,” she says proudly.

“No fucking way!” I say with a half grin.

She purses her lips and raises her chin in an attempt to look scholarly and aloof.

“‘At the heart of post-World War II American society was the drive to get the men back into the workforce and the women back into the home. As a result, there is considerably less compositional output from the women of this period which roughly mirrors the Abstract Expressionist movement.’”

My jaw drops to the floor. “How the hell did you…?”

“Holy shit!” She points at me and giggles. “I wish I had a camera so you could see your face. Where’s my phone?” she mutters to herself and goes digging into the couch cushions. “Huh. Hmm,” she mutters when she comes up empty.

Okay. Something totally insane is going on here, and it has nothing to do with the drinking. I reach out a hand and put it on her wrist.

“Really, Katherine, you read the whole thing?”