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orchestra did not play well. The horns were out of sync. The baritone's voice was small.
    The fifth movement, he said.
    And the fourth and part of the third.
    I didn't hear anything wrong, he said.
    I did. Probably it was something only a musician would heat, things sort of collapsed. The tempi went haywire. Our conductor is very old and deaf in one ear, though he denies it up and down. But in the final movements he loses energy and then he loses his concentration. And last month he lost his wife. The requiem was for her. Did you notice, he had tears in his eyes the whole way through? I think he was pleased with the performance, on the whole. He said he was, and I suppose he wouldn't lie. He almost never does. Are you a musician?
    Amateur, he said. Jazz trombone. Weekends I sit in with a band at a bar around the corner from my office.
    Where's that? she asked.
    Sixth Avenue, downtown. I work for a foundation.
    Foundation? she said, as if she had never heard the word. What does a foundation do?
    Gives money away, he said.
    To anybody?
    Irrespective of size, sex, race, or national origin.
    Oh, she said, and fell silent. He could hear her breathing and wondered if he had somehow insulted her. Then she said brightly, Tell me when you're playing and where and I'll come by and listen a little and return your coat, Sydney.
    Wasn't it bliss, that night and the nights following? Sydney played like a dream. Close your eyes and he might have been Jack Teagarden. He sang a solo of "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Rockin' Chair" and Karla clapped and clapped. He persuaded the band to attempt a blues version of the first movement of Brahms One, the sextet, and the crowd loved it. Karla, too. Sydney walked her home and spent the night. They made love at once and talked until dawn, mostly about music and what separated the great from the good. Was there something in the German language that inspired musical composition? Later, he lay in her narrow bed and listened to her practice; ferociously, he thought.
    He went to all her performances and many of her rehearsals, sitting in the front row where he could see her face as she played. She always wore black, and it gave him a kind of oily satisfaction knowing that she wore nothing under-the trousers and black sweater. A month later they were married in a private ceremony, family only, with a reception at the New York Yacht Club—his father's idea, and not the success they had hoped for. The families did not get on, Sydney's father and Karla's mother separating after the first dance, Fred to the bar and Magda to the billiard room, where she challenged an aging member to a game of two-ball. Sydney and Karla departed the club in a shower of rice but no cheers. In the car Karla informed him that the quarrel had to do with politics, a mistake all around, but your father started it, she said, and wouldn't let go.
    Magda gave as good as she got, Sydney said.
    Not quite, Karla replied bitterly.
    Sydney continued with his work at the Foundation, still the youngest man in the room with no retirements in sight. His father remarked that he was putting on weight; looking a little portly in your three-button suit, he said. Meanwhile, Karla had reached a plateau with her music. She compared herself to an athlete whose muscles were in the wrong places and no amount of exercise or training would improve them. If she were a miler she would clock in at four minutes, fifty seconds; that was the best she would ever do, owing to the muscles that were in the wrong places. She had always thought that desire was nine-tenths of the struggle. Desire could carry you over mountains. She knew that she would never be a soloist and it broke her heart; she had wanted it so badly, and still did. This, however, she kept to herself. When the baby arrived she took a year off, practicing her music on weekends. At least, she thought—at least she had a marriage that worked, with a husband who loved her.

    Rain beaded the windows of