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warm
steam against her nose for a moment before taking a sip, then
rested the cup against her cheek. “Wow, thanks! You’re right,
that’s perfect. How did you know?”
    “Robin found me at one of
the sheet music booths and told me where you were. Here, take those
off.” Mel took Lana’s free hand and peeled off her glove. Lana,
still in her coat, flushed warmly at the first time their hands
met. Mel’s fingers were gentle and guiding on hers, steering her
bare hand around the cup she held in her gloved one. Intense heat
from the cider caressed her palm. “Isn’t that just what your
fingers need after being out there? Even in gloves it’s hard not to
feel like there’s ice inside your body after being out there.”
    “This is just about my favorite way to eat
apples,” said Lana, unable to take her eyes away from Mel’s
hospitable smile, and reveling in their impromptu hand-holding.
    Mel squeezed Lana’s hand against the cup and
then relinquished it to fish a business card holder out of her
convention bag. “Hey, I have to go to a seminar, but call me after
the afternoon rehearsal and I’ll join up with you all for dinner.”
She pressed her card into Lana’s waiting hand.
    “Thanks again for the apple cider,” Lana
said through smiles and fluttering eyelashes.
    Dinner was another group affair, even larger
this time, and Mel spent most of it entertaining all the students
present with unusual stories from the lives of composers. “Of
course, none of that’s quite as awful as Jean-Baptiste Lully, who
accidentally killed himself with his own baton.”
    “You’re shitting me,” said
Tyler. “ Dammit !”
He smacked his face.
    Mel rolled her eyes and looked at him with
stern affection. “Tyler, I don’t care if you curse, as long as you
practice. You can swear every other word for all I care but you
better nail that Saint-Saëns.”
    “You got it, Ms. Feinberg!”
    “What happened with the baton?” asked
Blanca. “Was it on purpose?”
    “Nope!” said Mel. “Back then, batons were
these big heavy—” She mimed banging a pole on the ground. “He hit
himself in the foot and died of gangrene.”
    Robin’s eyes grew wide. “That’s so sad!”
    “So nowadays, if my baton goes flying across
the room and lands in the violas, I just think, hey, it’s not as
bad as it could be.”
    Mel’s amazing with
kids , Lana observed. She wondered how Nick
would take to her. Toying with her straw, she knew she was getting
ahead of herself, but it was a safer train of thought than some of
the others she could have followed in front of all these people.
Mel looked like a dapper butch goddess in her crisp blazer, and the
hot-cider-hand-holding incident made Lana want more warm
touches.
    She got her wish later on. The students had
the night off before their big concert, and several of them had
aggregated, with the moms, in one of the hotel rooms to watch a
movie. The young musicians were enraptured by the turbulent love
life of composer Franz Liszt; most of them had seen the movie at
least once if not more, and they kept a running commentary on their
favorite parts—which meant that Mel and Lana weren’t disturbing
anyone by chatting quietly.
    “My neck aches a little from being out in
that mess out there,” said Lana. The window shade was drawn back on
one side, revealing a hazy pink glow past which faint snowflakes
flitted. Safe on the other side of the thick glass, they seemed
misleadingly gentle.
    “C’mere. I’ll see what I can do.” Mel’s
fingertips and thumb sent happy ribbons of promise down Lana’s
body.
    “Thanks! Oh, yeah, that really does help.”
Lana felt such relief at being able to enjoy moments like this,
finally, after decades of silence and stifling herself. She wasn’t
that religious, but a powerful gratitude rocked her soul and called
for silent prayer. “I loved that song you were playing earlier this
morning in the rehearsal room.”
    “Oh, thanks!” said Mel. “It’s just