Read Improvisation for Free Online

It’s just not the kind of place I expected you to pick.”
    Tina heard the slight emphasis on you . What the hell was that about? “I’m staying at the Davenport for a few days, so it’s the only bar I know.”
    There was a long pause. Tina glanced at her phone to make sure she hadn’t been disconnected. “We’re meeting in a bar in your hotel?” Jan finally asked. Tina could sense some kind of emotion behind the words, but she couldn’t read it clearly. Horror? Disgust? What exactly had Brooke and Andy said about her?
    “You’ll be perfectly safe,” she said, her words clipped. “I promise not to ravish you in the lobby or lure you to my room.”
    “That’s not what I—”
    “Besides, I’ve invited my cousin to join us. He’ll make sure you’re safe from me.”
    “No, it’s just…Brooke told me you were staying for a few months, so I didn’t expect you to be living in a hotel. That sounds very expensive.”
    “It’s only temporary, until I find an apartment or something,” Tina said. Or something. Like ditching the whole stupid plan and getting the hell out of Spokane.
    “You mean you came here without arranging for a place to live ?”
    Tina could hear Jan’s disbelief even over the phone. She was certain Jan was the type to have every aspect of her life planned, down to the minutest detail. “I like to be spontaneous,” she said. By spontaneous, she meant foolish and poor. Paying rent on her Seattle apartment and racking up bills in a fancy hotel. She made decent money at her job, but she could only afford to live in one city at a time. But she wasn’t about to admit any of that to Jan.
    “Well, I’m sure something will come up,” Jan said, sounding about as convinced as Tina was.
    “Something always does. Say, I think I hear room service at the door,” Tina lied. She needed to get off the phone. Now.
    “Okay. See you tomorrow.”
    Tina ended the call and dropped onto the bed. That went well. And now she had to call Peter and invite him for drinks. Suddenly, a shower and meal didn’t seem strong enough to erase the stress of the day. Instead, she opened her fiddle case and took out her instrument. She ran a hand over the carved maple, shaped into the barest outline of a violin and painted flame red. She untangled the mess of cords and plugged her headphones into the violin so she could play as loudly as she wanted and no one else could hear. Volume on high.
    She started with a simple Scottish tune about bluebonnets, her mom’s favorite lullaby. She played it again, over and over, adding embellishments and trills and double stops. Blending in bits of other songs, changing keys. Improvising until the song was her own, until she was back in control, until she had played out all her feelings except hunger. Only then did she stop playing and order dinner.
     
    *
     
    Jan hung up and perched on a kitchen stool. Tina had managed to catch her at the worst possible moment. She had been moving her dad’s belongings into her master suite—with its dormer windows and cozy reading nook and high ceilings—and her own things into the small spare bedroom upstairs. He’d need the extra space and the en suite bathroom while he recovered. She didn’t care about the size of the room and she wanted her father to be comfortable, but it was yet another unsettling change in a long series of them.
    She had raced to get the phone, expecting a call from the doctor, and managed to bang her shin on the coffee table hard enough to make her want to kill someone. Anyone. She had struggled to control her breathing and her temper while she half listened to Tina, and the mention of a hotel bar had caught her off guard, her thoughts unprotected. Most of the fantasies she had concocted about Tina during Brooke’s botched wedding weekend had started exactly that way. Except she was the one who called Tina and invited her for a drink in her hotel’s bar. What happened after that—whether in the hall, on the