Cut and Run Read Online Free Page A

and if any of their fellow diners recognized the two world-famous musicians, they left them alone. Juliana was drinking decaffeinated café au lait, hoping it would counteract the wine and food and jet lag so she could go home and run through the Beethoven concerto she would be performing in two days.
    â€œAnd after the concert?” Shuji asked. “Then what?”
    â€œI go to Vermont for a week or so on a well-deserved vacation, and then I come back and spend the next few months working and recording. I don’t have another concert until spring. I’m cutting back some this year. You know all that, Shuji, so what are you trying to get at?”
    â€œDon’t go to Vermont,” he said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYou heard me. Don’t go.”
    â€œShuji, I need rest. Dammit, I deserve a break!”
    â€œYou need work.”
    â€œI work all the time. I’ve been on the road for four months—”
    â€œThe real excitement of being a pianist is in the practice room, not on the concert stage. Juliana, you’ve been operating at a killing pace the past few years. I know that. And you know I support your cutting back from a hundred concerts a year. But I don’t support your going to Vermont, at least not right away. You need to experience the excitement of the practice room again, and as soon as possible.”
    â€œJesus Christ, Shuji, I’m only going to be gone a week!”
    Shuji took a deep drag on his cigarette, held the smoke a moment, then exhaled. Juliana coughed and drank some of her café au lait, but he paid no attention. As usual, he was absorbed totally in his own thoughts. If we were married, she thought, we’d last two weeks.
    â€œA pianist doesn’t look forward to a vacation where there is no piano,” he said.
    You shit, she thought, but held back. She owned a small, antique Cape Cod house overlooking the Batten Kill River in southwestern Vermont; during the winter, she liked to keep a fire going in the center chimney fireplace. She would sit in front of the flames with an old quilt spread on her lap and read books, not thinking about music. It was true she didn’t have a piano in Vermont. She didn’t even have a stereo. What she had was silence.
    â€œShuji,” she said carefully, controlling her impatience. “I am not you. I need this time out, and I’m going to take it.”
    â€œIt would be a mistake.”
    â€œWhy all of a sudden would going to Vermont be a mistake? It’s not as if I’ve never done it before.”
    â€œI was in Copenhagen, Juliana.”
    â€œShit.”
    â€œYes.”
    Copenhagen hadn’t been one of her more memorable performances. In fact, it had been distinctly forgettable. But Shuji didn’t comprehend things like bad nights, and Juliana knew better than to make excuses. “It was an inferior performance,” she admitted, “but skipping Vermont isn’t going to change that—and what the hell are you sneaking into my concerts for? Haven’t you got anything better to do?”
    â€œI was in Paris also.”
    â€œWell, then, you know Copenhagen was an aberration.” She had received a standing ovation and rave notices in Paris—and had earned them.
    But Shuji was shaking his head solemnly as he crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. “I’m not interested in what went on on the surface, I’m interested in what’s going on beneath the surface.” He always talked like that; it drove her nuts. “I heard something in Copenhagen and in Paris—on a ‘bad’ night and on a ‘good’ night, if you insist. It was an uneasiness, I believe, a hint of unpredictability. No one else would notice, of course, but soon they will, if you let it get away from you. Be aware of it. Control it. Find out what it is, Juliana, and use it to your advantage. The only place you can do that is in the practice room.”
    What