Sight Reading Read Online Free PDF

instruments converging around her was rapturous—the merging of so many voices into something greater than themselves.
    â€œExcellent job tonight,” Mr. Elko said afterward. Remy was loosening her bow as slowly as possible, waiting for him to say just that. “Truly beautiful. Thank you for filling in.”
    â€œMy pleasure,” Remy told him, surprised at how suavely she said it, as if she were used to filling in, as if she were used to compliments.
    Mr. Elko nodded with approval. Remy placed her bow back into its slot, then reached up to free her ponytail from the hair elastic. Released, her curls seemed to her no longer unruly but proudly untamed, in a natural, perhaps even beautiful way.
    Mr. Elko’s eyes seemed to rest on her for a beat longer than necessary, and when he looked away Remy understood that he had finally, truly, seen her.

Chapter 2

    H e began counting down the days until Hazel and Jessie would arrive.
    Two nights before they were to fly in, he joined Yoni at a jazz club. Groups of friends sat around the horseshoe-shaped bar and at little tables off to the side, smoking and ordering drinks and nodding reverently at the performer—a blues singer who looked to be about eighty years old. Yoni and Nicholas sat at a table in the corner.
    The singer had begun the second set when Samantha showed up, and with her another girl. She always had a sidekick of sorts, probably a remnant of some initial pretense (just a couple of students hanging out with a favorite teacher . . .). There had been a different friend last week, when Nicholas joined Yoni at a café in Cambridge. It took Nicholas a moment to realize that tonight’s girl was one he knew. She looked different, her long brown curls hanging freely; in orchestra she had pulled them into a ponytail, a curly burst atop her head.
    â€œThis is Remy,” Yoni said when there was a moment of relative quiet.
    â€œYes, right, we’ve met.” Nicholas was pleased to have remembered. Remy, what kind of a name was that? Americans gave their children all manner of names. And yet “Remy” did seem to suit her. He told her, “Thank you again for filling in the other day.”
    Remy’s eyes lit up as she said something in return—but the blues singer launched into another song, and Nicholas couldn’t hear her. He immersed himself in the music instead while Samantha leaned back in her chair, slung a leg over Yoni’s lap, and managed to look supremely bored, smoking a series of cigarettes while Yoni ran his hand lightly up and down her shin. It was the damaged hand, missing the tip of the thumb—no fingernail at all—and the top two knuckles of the first finger. The skin of the thumb was a darker color than the rest. Nicholas marveled that it hadn’t affected Yoni’s agility on the trumpet. Or perhaps it had affected him. Maybe that was what had prevented him from achieving greater renown.
    Nicholas had finally asked him about it, at Club Passim the other night. “Army injury,” Yoni had said, looking away. “Well, off duty, actually. Wish I could say it was an act of heroism. But it was just a stupid accident.” He gave a little shrug, as if to downplay the episode—but Nicholas saw a flash of something else in his eyes. He decided not to probe.
    The odd thing was, ever since then, whenever Nicholas allowed himself to glimpse the damaged hand, a wave of something awful passed over him. It seemed a reminder, almost a recollection. Nicholas would find himself looking at his own hands, surprised to discover them intact. Only since asking Yoni about it had he felt this way.
    Yoni and Samantha were kissing again. These professor-student romances always struck Nicholas as cliché. At the Budapest conservatory where he had been composer-in-residence, it seemed half the instructors had flaunted a precocious student girlfriend. Tonight, though, something like envy swept