Page 55 of Crescendo

It was a little later than I’d anticipated when I got back to the apartment, and the music had stopped by the time I’d gotten back, enough that I would have suspected Ella wasn’t here if it weren’t for the lights on in the music room.

Quietly, I held the takeout bags close to my chest, cracking the door quietly, and I found Ella as I first did—she sat on the floor, legs folded, and in front of her, the clarinet case, lying open.

My heart jumped at the sight of it, Ella’s back to me and just the edges of the clarinet case visible, but I could see she’d… she’d put it together this time.

That still seemed to be the extent of it, though. Still trying to telekinetically play the thing.

I shut the door, walked back, carefully opened the front door and stepped out of the apartment, and I waited a second before I pushed back inside, making more noise this time.

“Ella?” I called, and from the sound in the music room, I didn’t scare her like a murderer breaking into the room this time.

“I’m in here, sorry,” she said.

I pushed open the music room door, stepping inside and holding up the bags of takeout with a small smile.

Looking up from the floor, she returned the smile, a hundred emotions there in her eyes—deeply and bitterly sad, grief about spilling out from her features, but at the same time, something so beautifully confident, powerful.

“Do you want to eat now, or in a second?” I said quietly, and she turned her attention back to the clarinet.

“I suppose I should eat now…”

I set the food down on the end table, sitting next to her, a hand on her back. “Take your time, darling,” I said quietly, and she relaxed, closing her eyes.

“It’s been a long time… since I even got this far.”

“You don’t have to play it now, if you’re not ready yet.”

“I want to.” She shook her head, opening her eyes.

“I have to. Ever since I talked to Dad and Papa about it yesterday, I… I can’t let it sit there anymore.

If I want to respect Callum’s memory, letting the clarinet he loved so much sit gathering dust in a box on a shelf is the worst possible way to do it. ”

I squeezed her shoulder. “Will it be easier if I play it first?” I said softly. “Just to break the barrier.”

She swallowed, pushing out a breath and closing her eyes, and after a long moment, she nodded, handing the clarinet to me. I took it gingerly, reverently, the same way she handed it to me, and I turned it over, looking at it from every angle.

Well—this one was just the one supplied in the music room. It was probably the second-cheapest one at the music store. It wasn’t exactly a treasured keepsake. But it was clearly representing a different clarinet in Ella’s mind, so I probably needed to treat it as if it were that other one.

“I’m not exactly a woodwind virtuoso,” I said lightly. “Always did focus more on the strings.”

“What was it you said Olivia told you? Doing the ugly things you can’t do well?”

“Ha. I guess so. I’ll be my very ugliest, only for you, darling.

” I lifted it to my lips, feeling the unfamiliar posture.

It wasn’t like I hadn’t played it before, but I always had focused more on the oboe as far as woodwinds went, and as I always did, I went too hard with the embouchure and airflow.

The clarinet honked, and I made a face, and it might have been what she needed—Ella scrunched up her face, and she broke out laughing, tears in the corners of her eyes springing up through a smile.

“Oh—that was beautiful.”

“Thank you, I’m very talented.” I closed my eyes, relaxing and settling into the posture with the instrument, and I tried again, playing lower and softer.

Ella’s soft steadying hand on my thigh next to her tightened at the sound, fingernails lightly digging into my pants and pressing against me, but I kept going without any indication I noticed.

I only paused when I could hear her breathing getting thinner, and I looked over at her, and she waved me off, a frustrated look in her eyes, a keep going, I’m fine.

I kissed her quickly on the cheek before I turned back to the clarinet, playing it longer, more expression in it, and it was a minute longer there before I rounded out a passage, and she put a hand on my wrist, lowering the clarinet away from my lips.

“That’s enough,” she said softly.

“Are you okay?” I said, and she strained a smile at me.

“I’m all right. I just think maybe… maybe I’m trying too much, too hard, too fast.” She hung her head. “I wouldn’t even be able to play well. I’m so hung up that even if I got to playing, it…”

“It’s not about playing it well, though, is it?”

She folded her hands in her lap, looking down. “Because I’m not a musician.”

I set the clarinet back in the case, pulling her into a gentle embrace. “Ella,” I said, softly. “You make music. You’re a musician. Even if you went back to medicine after this and never touched an instrument again, you’ve brought more music into this world. You’re a musician.”

She closed her eyes, softening into me. “Thank you,” she said, but her voice was small, thin, weak, and I don’t know if it got through to her. Don’t know if anything got through to her.

Guess I’d been trying for a while. Clara and Melinda had both told me from the get-go that she wasn’t a pet project to rehabilitate. Was it so bad to care? Was it so bad to see someone hurting and want to make it better?

The thoughts continued to haunt me all through a quiet dinner, Ella clearly exhausted from the emotional effort and not saying much, and even after we went to bed together, Ella falling asleep with her dark blonde hair fanned over the pillow and falling across her face—even with her right there in bed next to me, she felt like a thousand miles away, and all I could think was I only meant well, too.

I circled around and around on it, that song looping in my head a million times as my chest ached for her like I’d ripped my ribcage open to bare my beating heart, and it sank in slowly.

This was why we created art. Not as safe, casual, relaxed things—not as a factory-line process I could automate and streamline to do it without thinking—but as a way to scream out to the cosmos can anyone hear me when the emotions threatened to get so big, so volatile, it felt like they would tear you apart.

Something like falling in love with the most beautiful woman you’d ever known, and despite everything you did, watching her slip away.

I bent over in the bed, pressing a kiss to Ella’s temple, and I slid out of bed, standing up quietly, stealing across the room with my heart beating faster as I slipped out and shut the door behind me.

I waited until I was downstairs in the music room before I pulled out my phone, a little shaky, my head so full with music that it felt like it would explode.

For once, Natália was slow to answer. I hoped that didn’t mean what I was afraid of. It was halfway through the last ring that Natália picked up.

“Lydia,” she said, her voice small. “Are you calling to yell at me?”

“What—no. Of course not. Natália, you have never and will never do wrong in my eyes. I’m only angry at Melinda, but that’s not why I’m—”

“Please don’t be angry at her,” she said. “I’m the one who initiated everything! She’s really wonderful and she’s so good to me and I really care about—”

“Natália, it’s not—”

“It’s okay if you’re mad at me, but I don’t want to get in the middle of her friendships or make things worse for her when she’s so—”

“ Natália, ” I said, and she stopped. I gripped the phone tighter. “I know what to do. With the song.”

She paused, quiet for an eternity down the line, before finally—like she always did at the start of a call but had apparently been afraid to when she picked up this one—she switched to video.

I turned on my camera too, looking at where she was wearing loose clothing sitting on Melinda’s couch.

Ugh. God. They absolutely were having sex today.

That wasn’t what I was calling about, but I could still be a little mad.

“You mean the song for Brett Downing and the—”

“The scene where Hedson takes the throne. It’s—”

“Melinda already helped me. She talked to some people and got the director to help step in and talk down Brett and accept what we were working with. I was just nervous to tell you because…”

I swallowed, gripping the phone tighter. “Well, we’re going to send him something else,” I said. “Something he’ll like.”

She went wide-eyed. “What is it? Also, did you just wake up for this? It’s, like, one in the morning there.”

“Couldn’t sleep. Was thinking. About Ella.

About music. Forget that. The throne sequence—we take a completely different approach.

The scene is crying out for a march, a driving 2/4 rhythm.

But it’s not a powerful scene inspiring grandeur, it’s a sad scene.

Hedson is a child. He’s betraying his friends.

He’s betraying his principles. He’s making a decision that we the viewers know will break him.

His march to the throne isn’t a rise to power, it’s a walk to Death Row. ”

“Lydia—”

“It’s a post-rock goodbye ballad. Hell, put vocals on it. The dialog in that scene is just formalities. Cut out all but the biggest parts and we have someone sing over the scene, ducking out for the big lines, ducking back in for the grand sweeping visual.”

“Isn’t that going to stand out against the rest of the soundtrack?”

“Yes. Of course. It’s the most important scene in the movie. Not in terms of what happens visually, but in terms of what happens to the characters. That’s the money scene to remember.”

“Lydia, you’re—”

“Tell Brett. He’ll sign off every line of it. We’ll redo the entire soundtrack from the ground up to fit it if we need to. Post-rock grunge over top of the symphonic score. Imagine that title theme you wrote, except after the motif, it gives way to crashing drums and spaced-out guitars—”

“And the underground scenes adapt it into a shoegaze style while the capital keeps the classical tone—”

“Hi-hats as textural elements, snare brushes, cymbal rolls, to bring the grunge to the forefront—”

“ Lydia. ”

“What?” I hadn’t even realized I was still talking. I was just thinking out loud, everything tumbling out of me faster than I could think. Natália absolutely glowed.

“It’s good to see you again,” she said. “Your girlfriend helped inspire you, didn’t she?”

I dropped my gaze, looking down and then away.

If anything, the real raw, bleeding heart of my inspiration came from the whole journey this had been—meeting Ella, growing with her, falling for her, and then having to preemptively say goodbye to her.

It wasn’t a happy story. But maybe it was the story I needed. I’d keep telling myself that, at least.

“She did,” I said, finally. “She really, really did.”