The view she got enabled her eyes to make that subtle but necessary shift and see me as I really am.
I thought, I'd have to tell Mother about this. Then I walked out fast. I ignored her calls—she even addressed me by the right name, though the accent was wrong—and I hopped into a taxi with my violin case under my arm. I told the cabbie to lose the taxi in which she was tailing me. He did, or seemed to.
As soon as I entered the penthouse, a house detective seized my arm. I pointed to the violin case under my arm. His piggish eyes roved over it as he munched upon a sandwich he held in his other hand. He was one of the wounded, always eating to stuff the ache and the hollowness of it.
"Listen, kid," he said, "aren't you sort of young to be playing in an orchestra?"
"I'm older than you think," I replied. "Besides, I'm not connected with this orchestra."
"Oh, a soloist, heh? A child prodigy, heh?"
He was being sarcastic as many of the wounded are. I could pass for twenty-five any day or night.
"You might call me that," I said truthfully.
"One of our hostess' cute little surprises, heh?" he growled, jerking a thumb at the tall middle-aged woman standing in the middle of a group of guests.
She happened at that moment to be looking at her husband. He had a beautiful young thing backed into a corner and was talking in a very intimate manner to her.