Virtuosity Read Online Free

weak, because that was how I’d acted today. Maybe not responding at all wouldbe better. An egomaniac like that—he’d probably be more annoyed by silence than anything else.
    Unless he saw silence as more weakness.
    I laced my fingers behind my head and bounced against the back of the chair. I needed to write something simple, something profound but totally void of emotion.
    I started again.
Jeremy,
You are an ass.
Carmen
P.S. Good luck to you too.
    Much better. Before I could talk myself out of it, I pressed send, a thrill running up my spine. Had I really just done that? It was so un-Carmen.
    I didn’t even glance at my bed. It would take a combination of hypnosis and a fistful of sedatives to make my brain submit to sleep right now. Instead, I tiptoed across the hall to my practice studio. Tiptoeing wasn’t necessary. From the top of the stairs I could hear Clark snoring—his usual choking, guttural grunt-fest—which meant Diana’s earplugs were in place.
    My violin case lay waiting on the floor in the center of the room, propped against the maple music stand. With just the moonlight from the window to see by, I crouched, unzipped the cover, and began the ritual preparation: unlatching the Velcro neck strap, attaching the shoulder rest, twisting the screw at the base of the bow to tighten the horsehair.
    Just enough light shone in the window for the violin to glow. The amber wood formed graceful arcs and points, its grain darkened by centuries of being touched and played. It was still hard to believe it was mine.
    They had bought it for me. The Glenns. This was what my father was good for. Money. For the first twelve years of my life I had been the irritating detail Thomas and Dorothy Glenn hoped would disappear if they just ignored me long enough. I was the unfortunate by product of a fling between their playboy son and some opera singer, of all things, a woman just Catholic enough to refuse an abortion, or too much of a gold digger. According to Diana, anyway.
    But then I turned sixteen and everything started happening quickly, too quickly for me to dissect and make sense of. I won the Grammy for best classical album and a week later my face appeared on the cover of Time magazine with the words “Virtuosity in America” underneath it. Right after the Time article, Vanity Fair did an interviewand photo shoot, and that was when Dorothy Glenn called to congratulate me.
    Diana had thrust the phone into my hands and shrugged as if to say good luck . I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t seen or talked to her since I was five, and the birthday notes—cards featuring mountain landscapes and bouquets of freesia and other stuff little girls don’t care about—had stopped at age nine. Was she trying to pretend we were close?
    I didn’t even recognize her voice. “We are so proud of you,” she said.
    I didn’t say what I was thinking, which was that I wasn’t really hers to be proud of.
    After a fascinating discussion of the weather, she saved us both from any more pretending and moved on to the reason for her call. “Your grandfather and I have been discussing an investment and I wanted to consult you.” The stiffness in her voice had relaxed into something closer to smugness.
    “With me? I’m probably the wrong person to ask about investing.”
    “No, dear. You are definitely the right person.” She paused for what sounded like dramatic effect, but it was lost on me. I had no clue where she was going. “We’ve been thinking about purchasing the Gibson Stradivarius. Have you heard of it? It’s coming up for auction at Christie’s next month.”
    A Stradivarius. The Gibson Stradivarius. Yes, I’d heard of it—it was one of the best violins in the world. At auction, the cheapest Strads were going for at least half a million dollars. The Gibson would go for a lot more because of its tone. It was one of the sweetest sounding violins ever crafted. In comparison, the perfectly respectable twelve thousand