Free Gryphon: New and Selected Stories by Charles Baxter Page A

worried.”
    “People won’t notice you. By the way, have you paid attention to the fact that when I kiss you on the stomach, you get goose bumps?”
    “Yes. I think you’re taking this pretty lightly. I mean, it’s almost unprofessional.”
    “That’s because I’m an amateur. A one hundred percent amateur. Always and totally. Even at this. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have my moments. Mmmmmm. That’s better.”
    “I thought it would maybe help. But listen. I’m still worried.”
    “Uhhhh. Oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Oh, I get it.”
    “What?”
    “I get it. You aren’t worried about yourself. You’re worried about me.”
    Forty people attended her recital, which was sponsored by the city university’s music school, in which Karen was a sometime student. Somehow we made our way through the program, but when we came to the Chanler settings, I suddenly wanted Karen to sing them perfectly. I wanted an angel to descend and to take away the Gypsy’s curse. But she sang as she always had—off pitch—and when she came to “Ann Poverty,” I found myself in that odd region between rage and pity.
Stranger, here lies
   Ann Poverty;
Such was her name
   And such was she.
May Jesu pity
   Poverty.
    But I was losing my capacity for pity.
    In the green room, her forty friends came back to congratulate her. I met them. They were all very nice. She smiled and laughed: there would be a party in an hour. Would I go? I declined. When we were alone, I said I was going back to my place.
    “Why?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you come to my party? You’re my lover after all. That is the word.”
    “Yes. But I don’t want to go with you.”
    “Why?”
    “Because of tonight’s concert, that’s why.”
    “What about it?”
    “It wasn’t very good, was it? I mean, it just wasn’t.”
    “I thought it was all right. A few slips. It was pretty much what I was capable of. All those people said they liked it.”
    “Those people don’t matter!” I said, my eyes watering with anger. “Only the music matters. Only the music is betrayed; they aren’t. They don’t know about pitch, most of them. I mean, Jesus, they aren’t genuine musicians, so how would they know? Do you really think what we did tonight was good? It wasn’t! It was a travesty! We ruined those songs! How can you stand to do that?”
    “I don’t ruin them. I sing them adequately. I project feeling. People get pleasure from them. That’s enough.”
    “It’s awful,” I said, feeling the ecstatic liftoff into rage. “You’re so close to being good, but you aren’t good. Who cares what those ignoramuses think? They don’t know what notes you’re supposed to hit. It’s that goddamn slippery pitch of yours. You’re killing those songs. You just drop them like watermelons on the stage! It makes me sick! I couldn’t have gone on for another day listening to you and your warbling! I’d die first.”
    She looked at me and nodded, her mouth set in a half moue, half smile of nonsurprise. There may have been tears in her eyes, but I didn’t see them. She looked at me as if she were listening hard to a long-distance call. “You’re tired of me,” she said.
    “I’m not tired of you. I’m tired of hearing you sing! Your voice makes my flesh crawl! Do you know why? Can you tell me why you make me sick? Why do you make me sick? Never mind. I’m just glad this is over.”
    “You don’t look glad. You look angry.”
    “And you look smug. Listen, why don’t you go off to your party? Maybe there’ll be a talent scout there. Or roses flung riotously at you. But don’t give a recital like this again, please, okay? It’s a public disgrace. It offends music. It offends me. ”
    I turned my back on her and walked out to my car.
    After the failure of Harmony of the World , Hindemith went on a strenuous tour that included Scandinavia. In Oslo, he was rehearsing the Philharmonic when he blinked his bright blue eyes twice, turned to the