Free Home from the Vinyl Cafe by Stuart Mclean

made a tape and sent it to him. But he didn’t respond. She waited for a month and never heard a word. She thought, The tape was horrible. She decided he was laughing so hard, he couldn’t make it to the telephone. Her friends said, “Phone him back.” And one night after a big spaghetti dinner, when they had drunk two bottles of Mateus, her boyfriend, Owen, dragged her to the telephone and dialed Avi Stovman’s number. He handed her the phone and held her to the wall to make her talk to the great violinist.
    When Stovman answered, he said, “I’ve been going to the post office every day. Where is your tape?”
    It had been lost in the mail.
    He said, “There is nothing I can do. I only take seven students. My class is already full.”
    Annie decided he had listened to the tape and it was dreadful and he was just being polite. But her friends didn’t let her quit. They said, “Go to New York and phone him when you get there. Play for him.”
    In April, Owen forced her into a car, and they set off for New York City. They drove until after midnight, following Highway 9 along the valley of the Hudson River. The next morning when they stopped for breakfast in Hastings-on-Hudson, Pete Seeger walked by them on their way to the cafe. Owen said, “It’s an omen.” They were in Manhattan just after noon. The idea was Annie would make a casual phone call and then go and play for Avi Stovman.
    She called him from outside a bookstore on the corner of Fifty-second and Seventh.
    He said, “Where are you? You sound like you’re around the corner.”
    Annie said, “I am around the corner.” She was standing on one foot and then the other, not looking at Owen, who was watching from inside the bookstore.
    Stovman said, “Come on over. I’m leaving tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. But you can come tonight and play for me.”
    “That’s okay,” Annie replied. “I don’t think it’s a very good time.” Then she said goodbye and hung up. Her music career was over. She didn’t have what it took. She broke up with Owen on the way home at a gas station in Pough-keepsie.

    Three months later, Annie told the whole story to the viola player in the Montreal String Quartet. It turned out that this woman knew Stovman’s assistant. They had studied together.
    “You’re crazy,” the woman said. “I’m going to phone Ruth. You are going to play for Stovman when he comes to Montreal.”

    Stovman remembered the girl who hadn’t sent the tape and hadn’t come to play. He was interested enough to see if she would show up on her third chance. He said, “All right. When I’m in Montreal, if she wants, she can come and she can play and I will listen.”
    Annie went to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and knocked on his door nervously. He was playing with the Montreal Symphony that night. It was four in the afternoon, and he was sitting in his room watching
M*A*S*H
on television.
    Annie warmed up in the bathroom. She thought shesounded okay. But when she came out to play for him, a strange thing happened. She put her bow on the strings, and she couldn’t hear anything.
    She stopped, and Stovman looked at her and said, “What’s wrong? Keep playing.” So she started again, but she still couldn’t hear the music. When she finished, she didn’t have a clue what she had done. It could have been the same random notes she played for the queen.
    Stovman said, “Is that a favorite piece?”
    Annie just stared at him, horrified at what had happened. In the middle of this long silence, Annie realized Stovman was looking for a nice way to get rid of her. She said, “Maybe it’s not a good idea that I come to New York.” She was trying to help him out.
    “What?” he snapped. “Do you think you won’t learn anything? You think you have nothing to learn? Of course you have to come to New York. I’m just trying to think how we’re going to get you started.”
    And that was that.

    To help pay for the lessons in New York, Annie got a