Somebody Else's Music Read Online Free PDF Page A

radiating confidence so complete it drew attention from half the people in the room. It was a big room, and
crowded, and noisy, and the woman in the yellow dress wasn’t speaking much above the level you’d use to talk to a good friend in a quiet corner over tea—but people were looking at her anyway, as if she were royalty or a movie star, somebody they felt they ought to know.
    Emma pinched George on the elbow and said, “George. Listen. Isn’t that Betsy Wetsy?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œBetsy Toliver. From Hollman.”
    â€œThere’s nobody like that in Hollman,” George said confidently. “I’d have noticed.”
    â€œI don’t mean from Hollman now,” Emma said. Sometimes George made her so frustrated, she wanted to break his neck. “From when we were in high school. Betsy Toliver. You know. The girl who was locked in the outhouse at the park the night Michael Houseman died.”
    George squinted, as if that could make him see better. He’d run to fat, just as Emma herself had, and for most of the time they had been on this tour he had been uncomfortable. Everything the Europeans made—chairs, sofas, beds, the aisles in theaters and fancy stores—was just so small, he couldn’t fit into it. Once, at a restaurant in Scotland, he’d had to have a chair brought especially from the manager’s office so that he could sit down at all.
    â€œYou know,” he said. “I think it is. I think it is Betsy Toliver.”
    She was standing at the side of the candy counter, attended by a deferential man with a clipboard, her head bent, listening. There was, really, no mistaking it. It had to be Betsy Toliver. It could be no one else. What Emma had thought was the one conclusive proof she was not—she was too tall—turned out to be a pair of two-and-half-inch-stacked high heels. The man with the clipboard was nodding, pointing to things on the paper in front of him. Betsy was pushing one long-fingered hand through the thick permed cloud of her hair, and as she did the large diamond on her fourth finger glinted in the uncertain illumination of the display lights.

    â€œYes, madam, everything is very much in order,” the man with the clipboard was saying. “The package will be delivered to Hollman, Pennsylvania, USA, no later than noon on July twenty-fourth. It’s all arranged. Once it reaches New York by international carrier, it will be carried inside the United States by the United Parcel Service.”
    Emma was standing so close, she could have touched Betsy on the cheek. Some part of her was signaling that she should do just that. Wasn’t there something odd about running into an old … acquaintance … thousands of miles from home, and not even making yourself known to her? If she went back and told Belinda and Nancy and Chris just how this had happened, they would think she was off her head. It didn’t make any sense to run into Betsy Wetsy in Fortnum & Mason’s and not even find out what she was doing with her life. Still, Emma made no move in Betsy’s direction, and George didn’t either, because he recognized exactly what she did: there was something about Betsy, something that put her totally beyond their reach, so that either one of them would have been ashamed to have her see them the way they looked now.
    The man with the clipboard held it out to Betsy. She took it, took the pen off the metal clasp, and signed. When she handed it back, the man had a candied violet to offer her, and she laughed.
    â€œThank you,” she said. “Thank you for everything. I’m going to go eat this on the sidewalk so I don’t get the urge to buy a pound and take them home. Have a good afternoon, Terence. I’m sorry I put you through so much trouble.”
    â€œIt was no trouble at all, madam. I hope very much we can be of service to you again.”
    â€œTwice a year, Christmas and her