Page 9 of Crescendo
We dug into our meals, all chattering to one another—Eliza and Hannah sticking more to the two of them, and Bansi talking as much as the rest of us combined.
We were finishing up when a girl approached the table shyly—younger, probably just graduated college and straight into this program, a short brunette with a nervous expression and an accent that was British but I couldn’t tell where from.
“Hi there,” she said. “I don’t mean to bother you, but—well—you’re Lydia Howard Fox, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been frequently informed that I am, yes,” I said, and the girl took a sharp breath.
“Oh—I’m a really big fan of yours. A really big fan. I love your soundtrack from The Other Woman. I listened to the whole thing basically on repeat while I was revising for my final exams.”
I beamed. “That’s an ominous soundtrack. I guess finals were rough.”
She laughed awkwardly. “Well, yes, maybe. It was a dark time. But—but I’m just a really big fan, and—could I—well, I don’t want to bother you, but would it be okay to ask for your autograph?”
I grinned, turning in my chair to face her. “I’ll do you one better,” I said. “How about an autograph from me and Ella? She’s my partner in music for the time being. Way more special than just a regular old autograph from little old me.”
Ella put her hands up, blushing hard. “You don’t need to—” she started, but the girl lit up.
“Would you really?”
“I’m… not worth signing anything,” Ella laughed awkwardly, but the girl gave her a starry-eyed look.
“If you’re working with Lydia Howard Fox, I’m sure you are. Why else would she work with you?”
“You think I know why Lydia does what she does?” she muttered, with that tone like she didn’t mean to say it, but the girl just laughed, and a second later, I got Ella to give the girl a signature with me, and she stopped for a selfie with me and the whole group at the table too, Eliza posturing in the background with her shoulders drawn back and a very calculated angle of her chin that I assume she thought made her look the poshest possible, and Hannah breaking character to pose with double peace signs.
Once the fan, who’d introduced herself as Rosie and gushed some more about how much she loved my work and how she was so excited to be in a program with me, had left us to our own devices, Ella gave me a helpless look.
“Really, you’re setting me up to embarrass myself,” she laughed.
“Then I guess you’ll have to practice,” I said with a wink. “I mean, what do you have to be afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she laughed, “just—”
“Aren’t you, though?” I said and she stopped, looking at me oddly.
“What?”
I didn’t say anything, just smiled lightly at her—scoping out her reaction, that growing curiosity as she studied me, maybe even… something anxious, hesitantly recognizing she was being seen, before someone else crashed our party.
“All right, all?” he said, a tall man sidling up to the table who matched a description I hadn’t even finished placing before Clara scoffed, confirming it.
“Bugger off, Dodge, I’ve got better things to do than talk to hangers-on.”
Dodge grinned at me. “You’re Lydia, then, eh? Chuffed to bits to be meeting you.”
“You’re the dodgy bloke Clara mentioned,” I said, and he laughed good-naturedly.
“Dodge, that’s right. I hear you’re the one to beat in this cohort,” he said.
“I’ve been hearing that a lot,” I said, nodding towards Eliza, but it was Bansi who answered.
“Of course! Do you know her work? She’s amazing.”
“Can’t say I really do,” Dodge said. “It’s not really my scene. Sure I watch films, go to the cinema, but I’m not like Clara listening to a movie soundtrack just for the sake of listening to it.”
Pigs flew and cats and dogs lived in harmony, because Hannah spoke spontaneously without any relation to anything Eliza had said. “You’re a rocker, huh?”
Dodge threw some—well, dodgy devil horns. “Rock on, yeah. You sound Scouse. You got that Beatles legacy?”
Hannah grinned. “Rock’s where Eliza and I started out. I want to do film scores, but, like… from a rock angle. Just gotta get my foot in the door.”
Eliza, for all her posturing like she was too classical and elegant for rock music, smiled slyly at me. “I’ll bet Lydia Howard Fox is too busy with dramatic orchestral scoring to deign with rock music.”
I scoffed. “You think I studied music theory and didn’t just get a photo of John Lennon to worship and call it a textbook?”
Dodge—from nowhere, seemingly—had a guitar case in his hands, thrusting it into my face. “I was about to bum around, play a little music for my mates, but now I’m curious if you know how to rock, too.”
I wasn’t a guitarist. But when I saw Ella’s eyes sparkling looking at me, it wasn’t like I was turning down the offer to show I could suck at an instrument too.
“Now, I didn’t say I could play guitar,” I laughed, but I took it from the case, shifting to hold it in my lap.
Staff didn’t seem to care—given how this place seemed to be the favorite haunt of Crescendo students, music probably broke out spontaneously here all the time.
“I know a couple chords and that’s about it, so I suppose now’s the big chance for everyone to see me humiliated after all, but—just for Hannah up north—anyway, here’s Wonderwall,” I laughed, fiddling the chords before I set about strumming, and the table broke out in laughter.
“That’s Manchester, you bloody Yank,” Hannah laughed.
“Ah, you all sound the same to me,” I said with a grin their way, getting eyerolls from both the Liverpudlians at the table, but apparently Hannah didn’t take jabs as personally as Eliza did, because she set her regional differences aside to sing the song along with me, until the whole table joined us.
And wasn’t it interesting that Ella kept her voice low and steady, deliberately ducking it under everybody else’s? The girl could sing—I could tell even just from the barely-there voice she used—but she kept it hidden under a quiet voice and tapped her foot to the beat instead.
I’d get through to her. One way or another. I was getting obsessive about finding out how this woman ticked, and how to get all the music that I knew was just under her surface.