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Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer,
Ein Messer in meiner Brust,
O weh! O weh!
- Gustav Mahler, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen , Movement III
“She’s nothing to go wrecking your life over, you know.”
When Francesca’s head tilted and her face came into the light, it was wearing a sad little expression - her lip on the verge of quivering like an animal left out in the rain - but that was how Francesca always was, Krista thought, a creature constantly advancing toward a mope, taught by some past dalliance that you were better off being given something out of pity than reaching for it of your own volition. So Francesca forever rolled over and displayed her belly to the sharp teeth of whatever personality dominated the room, hoping they’d split her open and toss over a consolation gift, and Krista took things whether they were offered or not. Not that either of them had the right idea, of course: Francesca was said to be too obliging, and it was common gossip, apparently, that Krista was spoiled and domineering, that she didn’t know her place. No matter, Krista thought, tipping the rest of the bottle into Francesca’s glass, giving the other girl a minor smirk. They had other advantages.
“I’m not wrecking my life,” Francesca insisted, sniffing as though she were cold. It was possible: Krista liked to keep the windows of the apartment open, even as November found Berlin damp and drained of color, demanding another layer beneath their jackets when eventually they were drawn into the night like poison - Krista to some pulsating dungeon on the arm of an artist she’d met the week before, Francesca to meet some girl from the Internet who would inevitably be too much for her - but even if they shared the place, Francesca would never go along behind her to close them. She would put a sweater on, or shiver in some corner of the room where Krista could see her, silently suffering like a martyr.
“She’s a cunt, Fran.”
“I know she’s a cunt.”
“And I know you cut a pathetic figure sometimes, but she’s much more pathetic than you are. Sharon hates her, for instance.”
“Sharon doesn’t hate her.”
“Then Sharon ought to hate her.”
Francesca aimed a small smile into her wine, draining the glass. “Maybe.”
“I wonder who Sharon’s fucking. Do you think they have an agreement?”
“You know they don’t.”
Krista was laid flat on the sheepskin rug, her own glass balanced on her chest. “Maybe I should seduce Sharon. She’s so…tightly wound.” She glanced over at Francesca in time to see the other girl wince. “Maestro’s all bluster, she’s probably a fucking snooze in bed. Predictable staccato, crescendo, roll over.”
“Stop.” Even from the couch, Francesca’s legs were long enough that her foot could make a solid smack against Krista’s shin. “You know you can only be this cruel because you’re her favorite.”
“I’m not,” Krista said, though she had to swallow down a smirk, hiding it with a more devilish grin, tongue cleaning each corner of her mouth. “She doesn’t have favorites, she has brief and fleeting occupations. The attention span of a rat. Another reason you should stop ruining yourself for her sake.”
After a while, Francesca got to her feet, and when she stood over Krista, it was difficult to say if she wanted to drop her glass on Krista’s face or not - or maybe Fran wanted to jump into the air and crush Krista’s head with her bare heels, crack her skull like a hollow fruit and take it to the Great One as an offering for the podium - but Krista only made a coy face in response, and then feigned sleep.
“You look like a corpse,” Francesca said.
“I’m giving you what you want.” Krista kept her eyes squeezed shut, but she smiled regardless. “You looked like you wanted to kill me.”
Krista had a vision of her own death on ayahuasca. She didn’t tell the others about this, as it seemed pointless, even indulgent, and none of them were chatty at the time - Lydia was always strangely private on those trips, focused solely on the tasks at hand, eating alone or with the shaman’s family, penitent before her recorder, and Francesca would become all spiritual and faux-mystical once the plane touched down, as though she had needed this in some dreary, colonizing way. The least favorite daughter of the Italian ambassador to France, oh, the great tragedy of Francesca: Krista was only interesting to her parents when she was a financial problem, so she crucially lacked sympathy for Francesca’s daddy issues. Anyway, Krista saw all of this for what it was. Important work, yes. More important than baton swinging, more important than their daily machinations and power plays and biting the ankles of the other mentees back in the former jewels of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And on the last trip, there was that complicated evening, but it didn’t matter, she had chosen not to let it matter, and it was less important than the vision she’d seen of herself on fire, reduced to ash, only for her remains to be swallowed by water.
“I gave birth to myself,” Francesca said once, a few days after they’d had their session. Even her tone was wide-eyed.
Krista tried not to make a face into her instant coffee, knees pulled up to her chest on the balcony. “How second wave,” she said, not caring if Fran took it as a joke.
“Le véritable voyage de découverte ne consiste pas à chercher de nouveaux paysages, mais à avoir de nouveaux yeux.” There was noise in the room as Francesca left the bed, items shifting as she looked for her clothing. Krista knew if she turned around that the other girl would be nude, because she slept in the nude, spent her evenings nude, and she tended to take her time getting dressed in the mornings: maybe Francesca’s only streak of boldness, this dislike of coverings once the sun went down.
“I caught something about eyes, I think.”
“Proust,” Francesca answered, tone clipped, but didn’t translate the sentence for her, something she was doing less of in those days. That used to be their game - saying something in a language the other wasn’t as gifted at, guessing at meaning, translating when they’d had a chance - but not anymore.
Pucallpa pulsed awake beneath them, and the Ucayali beyond was brown as her drink, and the boy in the room beside theirs was having an argument with his mother in a language she didn’t understand, but Krista would always recognize the sound of a child betrayed by a parent, the blistering red of it. Within the hour, Lydia would stomp in without knocking first, gesturing impatiently until they’d filed behind her like good girls, down to the car and into the world. Until then it was Krista and Francesca, quiet and tired, untethered to anything but each other for the time being.
“I’m not bringing her a fucking matcha.” Krista turned her phone notifications off, buried the slim object deeper into the pocket of her coat. Pulled her scarf higher to keep out the cold.
“But she asked for it,” Francesca said, all seriousness and righteous fury, which nearly caused Krista to laugh.
“We’re not her errand girls, Fran. We’re fellows in a distinguished program, we don’t do favors.”
Francesca was typing something on her phone now, and Krista could see the order screen for the cafe, Fran’s thumb tapping to the selections.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake—” Krista reached for her hand, trying to intervene, but Francesca had stepped away.
“Ne me dis pas quoi faire.” Francesca completed the order. “I will do it for her if you don’t.”
The car approached, slowing before them, and Krista opened the door, didn’t bother to let the other girl in first. “That’s not how you earn her respect, you know.”
“I don’t care.” Francesca’s eyes remained on the road, her jaw set. “That’s not what I need from her.”
“Francesca wants to accompany you to Budapest this time.”
Maestro looked up from the paper, only to attend to the forkful of salmon that had been waiting in her other hand for some time. “Did she tell you that?”
“More or less.” Krista watched the older woman for the telltale shift in her expression. “She’s been complaining about how I need to be there when the landlord comes for the heaters, so that means she wants to go in my place.”
“She’s never direct, is she?”
“She’s getting better.”
Lydia snorted, eyes returning to the article. “Your influence on her, I’m sure.”
“Well, I’m working on it. She does ask for things now.”
“But not this.”
“I can tell it’s what she wants.”
“And you’re telling me this because you want me to offer it to her.”
“No, not really.”
Maestro did put down her paper then, and another skewering of salmon, too, and all of her focused on Krista in that scorched, bony way. “Krista.”
“I’m not interested in splitting with her for the sake of fairness.” Krista pushed a single leaf of lettuce to the other side of her plate, its other contents untouched.
“Is this about fairness?”
“Well, if you thought she should go, you would have asked her to go.”
“That’s true.” Maestro took a swig of ice water, bared her teeth after swallowing. “I don’t need to know when Francesca is complaining, for the record. I’m sure it’s happening at regular intervals but it is of absolute zero interest to me, so don’t start giving me reports.”
“I’m not.” Krista cocked her head to one side. Smiled above her pristine lunch. “That is not at all my intention.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Making conversation.”
Maestro was watching her in a different way now, narrowed eyes scanning her, drifting with purpose. “Find another angle,” she said, and her gaze returned to the paper with a snap.
Later, in the car, Krista reading a series of text messages from a barista she’d slept with the night before, and Lydia’s cap pulled low, her chin lifting as she glanced over at the younger woman:
“Francesca knows you’re superior to her.”
“Mmhm.” Krista continued scrolling, pretending she wasn’t warm with the acknowledgement. She felt the woman’s eyes on her but didn’t look up - better to keep her screen open, to see if she was reading the messages, too.
“She will always be aware of that, and she will always hold it against you.” A pause. “She’s very good in her own right, of course. You don’t have her work ethic.”
Krista did look over now, to see Maestro smirking. “I know that.”
“You’re just better.”
“I know that, too.”
“You’re lucky there’s no reward for humility in this field.”
“You wouldn’t win it either.”
And Maestro closed her eyes with the grin still on her lips, tilting her head back for a nap. “I don’t waste time on anything thankless, no.”
“Francesca says you’re seeing someone, Krista.”
Krista glanced at Fran before returning her attention to Sharon. Sharon was swirling her wine glass in the cement cavern of her kitchen, pan simmering quietly in the background; behind her, Lydia’s gaze had paused on the cutlery in her hand, becoming briefly unfocused before she began counting them out.
“In a way.” Krista allowed her mouth to pull into something coy. “Not with any seriousness, actually. And not with any sense of loyalty."
“Oh.” Sharon gave Francesca a playful swat. “You’re too eager to gossip, Fran.”
Fran returned Sharon’s smile, a rare moment of conspiracy, but Lydia’s expression was more strained, lacking anything genuine until she began setting the table and her lips shifted to a frown.
A mirror of that moment, some time later, with certain players absent from the same scenery:
“I would only ask you for discretion.”
There was wine on the counter but it remained untouched, uncorked, no glasses produced to accompany it. Sharon had invited Krista to sit beside her but Krista remained standing, staring down at the other woman.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Sharon’s lip twitched upward on one side: it was not a smile, but something else. “Yes, you do.”
“Whatever it looks like—”
“Discretion,” Sharon repeated. “That is all.”
“I don’t…” She couldn’t think of anything else to say. Sharon was looking up at her, watching her. It appeared she had all the time in the world. Krista cleared her throat. “Do you have something you want me to sign?”
Sharon shook her head, hand waving dismissively. “No, no. Nothing like that. I am asking you personally, this is a personal matter.”
“I don’t know what she’s told you.”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Then why—”
“I am very aware of what I can and cannot control, Krista. You are very self-aware, too, it is one of your strengths. Lydia is not as conscious of herself as we are, is she?”
Krista said nothing. She could hear a clock in another room, and the soft sounds of Petra sleeping on the monitor beside them. A baby’s snores.
“We didn’t have this conversation.” Sharon’s hand found Krista’s, gave it a gentle squeeze. “We’ll keep it to ourselves, yes?”
She nodded. Ran her tongue over her teeth. “Fine.”
“Thank you, Krista.”
She silenced the call. He never called for any good reasons. If it was decent, he’d text, or send her mother after her instead; a call from Father meant Krista was in some sort of trouble, nothing of consequence, just enough to take it out on her.
“I hate being a cliche,” she said, turning the phone over and placing it nearer to the table’s corner. “But my father’s a bastard.”
“Mine, too.” Lydia had ordered whisky, which Krista sometimes suspected that she didn’t really care for but drank for reasons of visibility. She took a generous sip, swallowed too quickly to have genuinely enjoyed it, and then looked back at Krista. “I think terrible men make stronger daughters, though.”
“I don’t think you’ve ever said what your father did.”
“Your typical businessman.”
“What was he in?”
“Ah,” and Lydia’s eyes scanned the dining room, the other patrons politely quiet to match the cost of entry. “Industrial, Hungarian.”
“Industrial Hungarian?” Krista did not let her smile betray her. “That sounds like a very good kind of techno.”
“That’s too much Berghain for you.”
“Well, that’s the type of people I let fuck me these days, so unfortunately it’s never too much.”
It settled at the table, then. Krista let the weight shift between them, the air sudden and heavy and Lydia studying her through it, like a narrow pane of glass.
“I’ve told you that you’re not in this program to waste your own time.”
“I know.” Krista paused as the waiters removed their soups, replaced them with the next course. “Did your mother work?”
“No.”
“And you were an only child?”
“Yes.”
“Were you a happy child?”
“Is this an interview? I get paid for those, you know.”
“I could pay you. My bastard father does have a lot of money.”
“I already receive your father’s money when he contributes to the program as a tax write-off.” She gestured at the table without looking up. “Let’s say he paid for this meal, actually.”
“My sizeable dowry.”
Maestro made a dismissive noise in her throat, spearing a brussels sprout. “Did Gardner confirm for tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.”
Eyes flicked up to meet Krista’s, steeled. “You haven’t checked?”
“I’m not your assistant.”
Lydia exhaled audibly through her nostrils, frozen over her dinner. “Do you know what the other fellowship candidates would have done to sit here?”
Krista set her jaw, pushed her tongue against her cheek. “I’m sure I can guess. But you wouldn’t want people to start guessing.”
“A mentee should have respect for their mentor.”
“Lenny didn’t make you answer his phone. He had a secretary for that.”
“And why don’t I have a secretary, Krista?”
“You could if you wanted, my father has three.”
“There’s a key difference between myself and your father.”
“Well, more than one, if we’re counting. Or at least I would hope so.”
There was a cold sound as Maestro’s fork dropped to the edge of her plate, where it would stay, untouched, until the next course. “Francesca would have checked the email.”
“She would do a lot more than check emails, Maestro.” Krista took a sip of water. “Bring Francesca next time. She just loves London. ”
Later, at Maestro’s suite:
“You’re lying.”
Lydia’s hand had paused on the edge of the frame, preventing the inner door from fully closing. “About what?”
“Your family.”
The Maestro did not deny the accusation, but her eyes did briefly narrow, a flicker of acknowledgement, and then she smiled in a way that bordered on cruelty. “What gives you that idea, Krista?”
“I can tell.”
“Are you going back to your room now?”
“Why, are you inviting me in?” She chewed her tongue, lowered her voice to match Maestro’s tone. “A nightcap, perhaps?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“I want to go to sleep,” Krista said, and removed each of Maestro’s fingers before shutting the door.
She’d noticed it a long time ago, actually: the way Maestro lectured and monologued instead of conversed, as though the other person had already signed a silent contract to be her witness, her audience, to only add to the subject Maestro had picked out, often to be corrected. She did it to Francesca, and Fran sat there like the happiest fool, nodding and agreeing, making way with each rare contribution so that Maestro had a clearer path forward. So did the other mentees, when they were around. Hanging on her every word, or hanging themselves from every word, nooses tight under silly grins of absolute adoration.
Sharon didn’t get this treatment, Maestro even deferred to Sharon at times, though not in front of groups. Krista didn’t receive it either. It was obvious, the way Lydia’s sentences shortened in Krista’s presence, matched her length, and it became a dialogue, speeding around the corners.
She hadn’t known what it meant at first, or she had, and she’d chosen not to internalize it, and for a while it was flattering, but now it felt like every time Krista had convinced herself that she needed to withdraw and put a distance between herself and Maestro, the conversations would pull her back in because they were fast and short and full of edges that tugged like a chain.
What did she want from this, really? Was it enough to know she’d ascended to this strange position with Maestro? Was it enough to know she had that imitation of control?
She’d started to get migraines. The German doctors prescribed pills. When her mother called, she recommended reiki, which Krista only snorted at and left alone. The pills were fine, but they didn’t interact well with the other substances Krista liked in her body, and now it was hard to do much of anything without throwing up.
Francesca swore in rare Italian when she came across her in the early morning, stepping between Krista’s legs to kneel and give her forehead a tap with her fingers, staring directly into her eyes.
“You didn’t used to be like this,” she said, pulling Krista upright. “You used to tolerate your ketamine.”
Krista swallowed the urge to vomit again, aware it was still in her hair, drying. “Something about the headache medicine.”
“So stop taking it.”
“Then I’ll get headaches, Fran.”
“I mean the ket, Krista.”
Krista smiled, allowed herself to be tugged upward, forced her legs to still enough to remain on her own feet, Francesca shouldering her right side. “Ours is a stressful position. Fun is healthy for us.”
“Nothing about this is healthy.”
“Healthier than staying home to shake your stick and neglect your needs.” She dropped her head onto Fran’s neck. “I got fucked in a bathroom last night. Smaller than ours. No idea who. Don’t remember, but they were very fast. Thrust, thrust, thrust. Done. I said, where is the stamina? I don’t remember the rest of it.”
Francesca grunted, advancing the two of them like a loping corpse in the direction of Krista’s room, exhaling sharply when she dropped the other girl into her unmade bed with little grace. “I’m not going to take care of you,” Fran said, standing over her, looming. “If you keep this up, I’ll just leave you on the floor. You can drown in your own sick.”
“I wouldn’t blame you, Fran. You’ve got to conserve your energy to take care of the Great One.”
“Fuck off.”
“You’re like a vestal virgin, saving yourself for a little stone idol. Except the stone idol thinks you’re a joke.”
Francesca dropped to a crouch then, and her hand fastened around Krista’s throat, her breath heavy against Krista’s neck. “You think you’re so fucking smart,” she hissed. “It’s all gone to your fucking head.”
“She’s not going to fuck you, Francesca.”
Francesca’s fingers tightened. “Stop.”
“If you need to get out your frustrations, I don’t mind.” She wheezed as the pressure increased. “But I’m not as fun to fuck when I’m dead, you know.”
“You’re so selfish,” Francesca said, but she did kiss her, and her grip released on Krista’s throat as her hand moved elsewhere.
Krista could taste Francesca’s saliva in her mouth.
“I can be your go-between,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “I could go over to her apartment right now and kiss her and it’d be like the two of you were kissing. I’ll be like a little container.” She smiled to herself. “It wouldn’t work the other way around.”
“Bitch.”
“Pute,” Krista rolled over, whispered the word into Francesca’s bare neck. “Pute, pute. Cunt.”
Francesca dragged her into the shower, combed the vomit from Krista’s hair.
Francesca kept purging their record collection. Krista would find her vinyls in Francesca’s closet, neatly piled, marked with colored stickers that Krista could not discern.
“Why is my Kurtág in your room?”
Fran’s gaze broke from the stage below, the sound of mid-rehearsal. “Why are you in my closet?”
“Because it contains my property, Fran.”
“I’m sorting.”
“For what?”
“She asked me to.”
Krista glanced down at the back of Maestro’s head. Watched Sharon’s face, the way she looked up at Maestro and yet was not looking up to her, represented no such submission. It was always fascinating with Sharon: the minuscule shifts that indicated a kind of examination, how unreadable she could become, especially around her wife. The only time Krista could clearly tell Sharon’s feelings was when music was involved, the way she reacted to a performance or a certain sound. It was why pleasing her with your quality was so satisfying - on the occasions Krista was allowed before the orchestra, she liked to look down and see Sharon nodding approval at the end of a movement, liked to have earned it that way.
It must be why Lydia had been drawn to her, she thought. Well, it must have been one reason among others.
“Maestro asked you to do something.”
“Yes, Krista.”
She knew when she met Fran’s eye that she’d have a whiff of the triumphant in her expression, she knew Fran would be pink and pleased with herself, and in truth, Krista was not jealous so much as she was relieved, strangely, surprisingly, because it meant in some way that the intensity might be lessened just a bit, but she allowed herself to appear perturbed, for Fran’s sake. To give the other girl that treasured satisfaction she was never allowed.
“You’re a shit lay,” Krista whispered. Fran groaned, pushed her off.
“Shut up.”
“You eat cunt like you hate it.”
“Because I do hate you. I hate you and your cunt.”
“So stop doing it, Fran. I didn’t invite you into my room. I was sleeping when you arrived.
“I won’t.”
“You said that last time.”
“God,” Francesca hissed, covered Krista’s face with the pillow, and through the mute of the pillow itself, Krista could hear Francesca muttering, “I hate you, I hate you,” and Krista allowed herself not to panic as the breath was drained from her and the pressure of the pillow over her airways made her chest constrict until she knew she was on the edge of passing out, and a single knock of her fist to Fran’s head allowed for the pillow to be removed.
“Fuck you,” she said, once she had the capacity.
“You‘re ungrateful,” Fran said. “You don’t deserve any of it.”
“Yes, I do. I’m better than you.”
She knew when she said it that Francesca would likely go over the edge again, drop the pillow back into place, finish what she’d started, but Fran remained still beside her, so still it seemed she was holding her breath. Krista provoked her no further that night.
She was starting to lose track of the evenings. There were gaps now. She went out, remembered the train or the slick black of the road, but then it was nothing, and she would open her eyes on the floor of her bedroom or the sitting room or the foyer, covered in whatever her body had ejected, or she’d be wrapped around Fran like the girl was a raft, naked and filthy, leaves in Krista’s hair that Fran would frown at in the morning as she combed them out with her fingers, shoved her toward the water. If anything was clear it was rehearsal, or the paneled rooms of the back offices, the long aisles extending down the hall’s belly to the stage, the sounds that were made there. But even these she was beginning to doubt - how could you lose one place and not the other?
Sometimes she remembered the pulse of music against her body, and other bodies, and sometimes it was a dream, she thought, because she would see the green sky over the Ucayali, and Lydia and Fran beside her as they were that night, all of them naked, painted with the patterns that the shaman said were sacred, and Krista had always rolled her eyes at this before because she’d thought it was too cliche of them, white interlopers seeking something precious in the Other, but that night she had believed it, sought it, felt it through the others’ flesh like each prayer that came down on them through a voice that had fingers, and she’d thought she was dying, which she saw not as dying but only moving forward into another room, an apartment not unlike Maestro’s, cement walls and a metronome in the cupboard and so many chairs to sit in and wait.
But most of her nights were only blackness now, and she woke up sore and bruised and afraid, and she could feel it slipping from her - the thread of reality that mattered - and she wondered when it would be too far to grab again.
Of course she told Fran none of this. Instead, she would let the other girl find her in disarray, let Fran shake her head and kneel down to feel her breath beneath her nostrils, say she won’t keep cleaning up after her even as she cleaned up after her, sponged her in the bath, washed debris and vomit and someone’s semen from her hair.
“You’re so selfish,” Fran said, wrapping Krista's head in a towel. Held it down over her mouth and nose, blocked Krista’s breath until Krista tapped her on the leg, hard and fast until she was released.
She didn’t know how she had gotten to Maestro’s apartment - not the one she shared with Sharon and the daughter, but the old one, the one she kept for work, she said, though any mentee knew when she was sleeping there, in the doghouse or slave to the composition that went nowhere - and when she knocked, a strange woman had come out to the hallway from the apartment on the other side of the landing. “Geist, Geist, Ungeist,” the woman hissed, chanting it with her hands raised, and there was a smell coming from the open door, but Krista shook her head until the woman went back inside.
Maestro opened the door.
“What?” she barked, looking down at Krista as though she didn’t recognize her, and then her eyes widened, perhaps with realization.
Krista slumped against the doorframe, felt it holding her up with gratefulness. “Here I am.”
“Here you are what?”
“Groomed, apparently, in the right direction.”
Lydia was silent. She released a noisy breath through her nostrils, which flared.
“This is what you want, after all,” Krista said, and threw up onto the landing, and then onto Lydia’s bare feet, and Lydia dragged her forward by the collar of her jacket, soaked with rain and alcohol and other things, and Krista lost her balance, fell forward to the floor. Winced when her hands caught her and her wrists snapped to attention.
And then she collapsed with a moan. Pressed her temple to the cold wood. Allowed the world to darken.
“Jesus Christ,” came Maestro’s voice above her.
Morning in the apartment’s kitchen. Krista’s hair drying in a towel, an oversized robe pushed back up from her wrists. Lydia’s back was to her as she turned on the electric kettle, dug through a drawer for teabags.
“You want someone to admire you, but you don’t want them to need you. I think that’s it.”
Lydia said nothing, her arms folded. The kettle began to boil behind her.
“Fran would do anything you asked. She’d splay herself out like a roast pig. But that’s why you don’t really want her.”
“How do you take your tea?”
“With milk.” Krista rubbed at her ear, finding something stuck in the crease. An unknown substance, dried to her skin. She pulled it off, flicked it away. “You probably won’t want to fuck me anymore either, now that I’m here. It’s not fun for you like that, is it?”
A mug came down hard on the counter. Maestro looked over at her, the whites of her eyes flashing. “You’re very talkative this morning, Krista.”
She tried to neutralize her face, to look like she didn’t care, like how it used to be. “Thank you for letting me use your shower.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Do you see me as your equal?”
Maestro’s nostrils flared. “No.”
“Did you ever?”
“No, Krista.”
“Will you throw me out now?”
“I’m making you tea.”
“Of the program, I mean. Or is this not crossing a line yet?” Krista pulled her knees to her chest on the wooden chair. If her robe fell open, it was of no consequence to her. “Is it true you fucked Georgia Clance? The fellow from four years ago. She tells people that you did. She tells everyone that. I don’t think they believe her, her reputation is terrible.”
“Georgia’s at ECM, I think.”
“Yes.” Krista paused. “She wasn’t good enough, was she? Not a strong enough conductor.”
Maestro handed her the tea, though there was no milk in it. “Let it steep,” she said.
“Fran’s been better lately, hasn’t she?”
Lydia finally took the seat across from her, sliding a bare saucer like an offering. “Noticeably so.”
“I have a theory, but it’s a secret.” Krista leaned forward, smirking through the ache of her jaw. “I’ve been letting her get halfway to killing me. We have a bit of hate sex, and then she tries to strangle me or smother me. I don’t enjoy it, it’s not like either of us gets off on it. But she seems to require it, for whatever reason. And it does make her calmer and less needy in the rest of her life, doesn’t it?”
Krista watched Maestro for a reaction, because Sharon was right, as always - Lydia was no good at controlling herself in ways that required self-awareness, and what spilled across her features as Krista spoke covered a range of emotions, chiefly disgust - and Krista felt some sense of achievement.
“Do you often go out for the night and become an unacceptable mess?” Lydia reached from her seat to the refrigerator, removed the milk. “Or are you trying it on?”
“No, this is nothing new. I think it’s every night now, but I can’t remember. I’ve been blacking out.”
Lydia slid the milk toward her, too. “Does Francesca know you’re here?
“No.”
“Does anyone else know you’re here?”
When Krista poured the milk, the liquid revealed it was clotted with congealed chunks. She gagged, and the sour stench filled her nostrils. She could feel her stomach churning awake and the bile rising in her throat, but she swallowed, turning her head.
“Oh,” Maestro said, smiling placidly as she took the bottle from her. “It’s spoiled. I’m sorry.”
Krista stared at her ruined tea, the white clots rising to the surface through the mottled brown. “Do you remember when we slept on the raft in the river?”
Lydia hummed her recognition into her mug, blowing away steam. “Yes.”
“I dream about that a lot.”
“I don’t remember it well enough.”
She didn’t know why it was this particular line from Maestro that made her so furious, but she could feel it inside her, something cracking, snapping like a string pulled too tight, and she pushed the mug onto the floor, relished the face Lydia made when it smashed and the tea bloomed out, splattered the cupboards and tiles, white clots like snow. “You’re such a liar,” Krista said.
Lydia stared at the shattered mug, and then at Krista. “What do you want?”
“I want what I’ve earned.”
“And what would you have me do? Oust Sebastian? Kick him onto the street? Just to shove you into his place so everyone can make their assumptions?”
“It’s overdue.”
“You’re used to getting everything you want,” Maestro said, and now she was angry, that was clear, and she got to her feet, shoved the chair into the table so that everything shook with the impact. “You’ve never worked for anything in your life. You’re spoiled.”
Krista stood, too, her bare feet spread over the ruined tea. “You’re a fraud.”
And this did give Lydia pause, and she was silent for a moment, examining Krista with wild eyes, breath coming hard, and Krista thought this was a moment when Lydia’s hands might wrap around her neck the way Fran’s did, or this was when she would kiss her finally, but instead Lydia groaned like an animal and dropped to her knees, covering the mess with a dishcloth.
“You’re a fraud,” Krista repeated herself. It wasn’t the response she had wanted - no, she had to have more, she knew she could get more out of her. “You’re pathetic. You’re like a shriveled old man, leering over little girls.” Lydia’s head was still bowed, fists pushing the cloth harder into the tile, so Krista kept going. “And you’re not even who you say you are. You’re made-up. Lying.” A hand reached out and circled around Krista’s bare ankle.
Lydia’s gaze tilted up to Krista. “Only someone as conceited as you would be so sure of her false conclusions.”
“You’re not like us, you’ll never be like us,” Krista said, and she meant people like herself and Fran, and everyone else in that world, she meant wealthy people, she meant people of privilege, but she meant good people, clean people, worthy people, people who had gone to the right schools and the right places and knew the right people, and Lydia knew who Krista meant in that moment, she must have, because as she stood she dragged her hand up Krista’s leg until it opened her robe, and when her hand had reached Krista’s breast, it let go, it drew back, and it smacked Krista’s face.
She fell backward, the wall catching her, but Maestro had reached out and grabbed her by the wrist, the robe falling down Krista’s shoulders, none of her covered, all of her exposed.
“No one will believe you,” Maestro said. She meant the bruise that would inevitably form on Krista’s face, but she meant the rest of it, too.
“I never said I was going to tell anyone.” And she didn’t know why she felt compelled to reach out and hold Lydia’s cheek in her hand, a gentle gesture that wasn’t natural to Krista or to Lydia, she assumed, nor did she know why she burst into tears, cried in a shoulder-shaking manner like a child, but it was terrifying, suddenly, the idea that Maestro would cast her out, that she wouldn’t love her anymore, that she wouldn’t desire her anymore, because Krista had always been aware of that part, had relished it once: the way Maestro had first looked at her when she’d auditioned, openly hungry, hiding none of it, incapable of hiding it, maybe, and she would hate Maestro for being so weak when Maestro was supposed to be impenetrable, godlike, something greater than human faults, and then she would hate herself for making Maestro like this, because it was Krista, perhaps, that was weakening Maestro, ruining Maestro, and guilt came with this, and shame, and eventually she didn’t feel so foolish because the attention had worn off and Maestro had become only Lydia sometimes, and Lydia could be pitiful in her own way, prickly and ornery and prone to stupid ticks, whiny needs, and sometimes she was wrong in her monologues, especially when she was waiting for a meal, and she had tells, too, that Krista observed, moments when it was clear she was not in her element, especially in dense groups of aristocrats, her discomfort rising to the surface and causing her to sometimes overstep, bluff, pick a fight with Sharon in the corner of a room before going off to talk about something she could convince everyone she knew, but it was one time in particular above all the others, the night they had come down from the ayahuasca, the three of them on the raft that was tethered to the river, their clothes removed, their skin painted with shapes like cells, a labyrinth, edging toward perfect imitations but not enough, and Fran had fallen asleep first, her head in Krista’s lap, and when Krista had addressed Maestro, she’d called her “Lydia,” but Lydia had shaken her head, and said, “My name isn’t Lydia. My name is Linda,” and the sky had pulsed green above them, and the water brown with life below them, Fran’s hand skimming the waves, and all of the green of the forest had been alive, too, Krista had felt it with a certainty.
“I’m sorry,” Lydia said now, or it was Linda who said it, pulled Krista into her front and held her below her chin with a fierce grip. Krista continued to sob, the robe falling all the way off, but she didn’t care. Lydia held her tight, her arms wrapped all the way around her, tight as a vice.
“Where were you?” Francesca had opened the door when Krista was trying to let herself in. Did Fran look concerned? Perhaps, but perhaps not for Krista’s sake.
“Good morning.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“Dead by any hand other than yours?” Krista winked. “Never. We have a routine now.
“Don’t be a cunt.”
“Were you worried about me?”
Francesca lowered herself to their couch, wrapped her arms around herself. Her sweater was unkempt, the windows were still open where Krista had left them like that the day before. “Yes.”
“Or were you worried about who I was with?”
The look Francesca gave her was unquestionably an accusation. “What does that mean?”
“It’s not a fucking competition, Fran.”
And like that, Francesca was on her feet again, eyes wide. “Did she invite you there?”
“No.” Krista tried to smile at the other girl. “I just showed up. She let me in.”
Francesca screamed. She screamed like an animal with its foot in a trap, she turned to the wall and screamed again, drove her fists into the couch like she was trying to free them from her wrists. Krista would have rolled her eyes a month ago but now she wrapped Francesca in her arms, pulling her back, wrestling her toward the ground. Francesca turned and her fists found Krista’s sternum instead but Krista tightened her grip until Francesca could not move at all, and they laid there like that, panting, frozen.
“It shouldn’t be you,” Francesca whispered, but the hush in her tone was from exhaustion, not secrecy, because this was something both of them knew Fran would say.
“I’m better,” Krista whispered back. “That’s all. You can’t take it personally, Fran. You can’t change it.”
“I love her. I love her, I would do anything for her.”
“She knows that.” She ran her hand over Francesca’s hair, smoothing it down. Kissed her forehead like she would a child. “It’s just not what she wants, Fran. That’s the sort of thing that repulses her.” She sighed into Francesca’s cheek. “She isn’t worth fighting over. She isn’t.”
Francesca’s face was buried in Krista’s neck. And then she wailed again, and shoved her away, scrambled to her feet. “You smell like her,” she hissed, and disappeared into her room, the door slamming behind her. She did not emerge for another day.
Why didn’t the river come back for her? Why didn’t any of them?
*
Oh, she was selfish, she had never met anyone as selfish as Krista. Not even at the boarding school where Francesca had been tied up and left in the corner, and the girls had taken turns kneeling next to her and licking her temples, flicking her in the eye. One of them urinated on her, giggled as she gagged and blew air from her cheeks to keep the piss from running into her mouth. No, Krista was worse than all of them. A little party girl from New York who was easily bored and never satiated, coasting along on good looks and red hair and talent, oh, fucking talent, and if it wasn’t the pills it was some terrible person being dragged back to the flat to fuck, some ugly man or shaved-head girl who smelled like death, their shoes up on Fran’s couch, their grins from the other room when Fran walked through, as if they knew something about her, but they knew nothing, no one knew anything about Fran, it was better this way.
She knew what they said at the program. It was the same thing they’d always said. She was too pliant, yes, and she was too forgiving, and she was a pushover and she didn’t have any opinions of her own, and she was always crawling around after Maestro but Maestro didn’t care for her, really, Fran irritated Maestro like she irritated everyone else.
Well, what did any of them know?
“She’s unstable. I know how she presents herself here, but when we’re home, I know she hasn’t been sleeping, and she’s abusing drugs, there’s memory loss, she’s not bathing unless I force her to bathe. I can see that she’s behaving dangerously. Taking risks.” She sniffed into a tissue, dabbed at her eyes. It was not too hard to make herself cry. She did get emotional about Krista, yes, but hate looked a great deal like sorrow if you pushed yourself enough. “There are strangers in and out of the flat, they are taking drugs with her. I know she’s having unsafe sex with them. I can…I can hear it. Sometimes she does it on the floor of the living room when she knows I’m coming home. I…I ‘m sorry, but I don’t feel safe.”
Maestro was watching her from the other side of the desk, comfortable in her seat, shoulders squared - she had such lovely, square shoulders - and she was turning a pen over between her fingers, eyes narrowed.
“I’ll admit to being surprised, Francesca.”
“She’s not herself anymore.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Maestro paused, then leaned forward, placed the pen beside another one on the desk. “You know, you could have come to me about this sooner if it was affecting you this much. The program finishes next month. I can see if she wants to go home early, but—”
“Oh, she won’t want to. She’ll have to be made to, she has no sense of judgment right now.”
“Of course.” Maestro’s eyes flicked from her laptop back to Francesca. “We need to do what’s best for Krista.”
“That’s all I want. What’s best for her.”
“I’ll see what we can do.”
“Thank you, Lydia.” She crumpled the tissue, tucking it into her pocket. “I knew something was wrong with her when she told me that you’d been hitting her.” She allowed her laugh to sound choked. “I said, how can you say that? How can you make up such lies? But she isn’t in her right mind. I’m afraid she’s going to start telling lies to the others, that’s all. She’ll ruin her own reputation that way, and yours, and if she was in a healthier state, I know she wouldn’t want to betray you like that. She’s always said your fondness for her was special.”
There was no reaction on Maestro’s face, but she did stand, and gesture for Fran to come closer, and she held her briefly, squeezing her shoulders before she ended the hug.
“We’ll do what’s best for Krista,” she said, and Fran nodded.
“Oh,” Fran looked at her watch. “You usually have your matcha around this time. I can get it for you if you like.”
Maestro’s face rearranged into a pleasant smile, and to Fran it appeared brighter than the sun. “Thank you, Francesca. You’re very good."