"Oh yeah?" He held the banjo toward her.
"Not on that. Do you have a violin, umm, fiddle?"
"Strangely enough . . . " He stood up, leaned the banjo against the chair, and said, "Be right back." Now what have I done? Willow asked herself. She hadn't touched a violin in two years. He brought her an old violin, nothing special, but the strings and the bow were in good shape. She played a few notes.
"Been a while," she said. She played the first bars of Cripple Creek. Such an easy melody. It sounded horrible. She stopped. "Just a second." She took two deep breaths and let the feel come back to her. She played one long slow note, listening. Better. She played the note again. She played two notes. Her body began to wake up. It was surprising how you played the violin with your whole body. I mean, God, she'd been playing since she was three. She began again, more slowly. She had now forgotten Martin. She played it through. Then again, a little faster. Yes, she thought, and took it at a tempo close to the one she'd heard through the trees. Halfway through, she heard a few tentative notes from the banjo. She smiled, eased back, and let Martin lead. They played until they had managed a decent version and stopped. There was another burst of applause. A woman with short blonde hair and a heart shaped face was clapping by the corner of the house.
"Hi, Mom. This is my mother, Heidi, ah, Willow."
"How do you do," his mother said. "Very nice."
"Willow appeared out of the woods," Martin said.
"Ah," his mother said, "a wood nymph. This is the time of year.
Although, I must say, musical wood nymphs are rare."
"Well," Willow said, handing the violin and bow to Martin, "I'm off to gather mushrooms, back to my dwelling of twigs and pine cones." She smiled at Martin's mother, the pretty bitch, and walked into the woods without looking back, damned if she was going to go down their driveway. A few moments later, she heard Cripple Creek, as if in apology. Or was he just going back to work?
There was something familiar about Martin, an intangible set to his attitude, a stubbornness. She thought back over her friends but couldn't come up with the match. Memory is strange, she thought. It's all in there, but you lose the keys, the entry ways. It's like a city that keeps growing and growing. I mean, you have to go back and back to the old neighborhoods? Lennie Rosenbloom, Mr. Rosenbloom to her, encouraging but firm as she struggled through that Mozart sonata, his hurt smile directing her to feel the music—he was shorter than Martin and his hair was sandy colored. God, the light on his neck and chest. She was 13, so close to blushing all the time that she had to act like a zombie to keep herself under control. Played like one, too. God. No, it wasn't Mr. Rosenbloom. The road appeared beyond a clump of bushes. She pushed through and turned toward AhnRee's.