Read Two-Part Inventions for Free Online

they went around the corner to a diner for sandwiches with Gary and Fred. As often happened after an emergency, relief brought on a mood of adolescent hilarity—her twin brothers, when together, acted like adolescents anyhow, Phil always thought.
    By the time he got to his studio it was midafternoon. There were half a dozen messages on the machine, all needing to be
answered right away: offers of new work, the violinist from the chamber group bugging him for details about the concert schedule . . . Usually he loved the busyness, the sense of being overextended, not knowing what to do first. A manic energy propelled him, and he always got everything done. But today he was truly exhausted, what with the lack of sleep and the tense hours in the hospital.
    When Kosinski telephoned, hoarse and impatient, Phil realized that in the flurry of returning his other calls, he’d forgotten to undo his switch, to remove the Korean’s few bars from Kosinski’s performance. When could he expect the final version? Kosinski wanted to know. Remember, he’d promised to messenger it over to the hotel around noon? Sure, sure, Phil reassured him. It’s all done. I was just about to call for the messenger. It’ll be right there. A half-hour at the most.
    It was a pity to cut corners like that, but it couldn’t be helped. He’d done such a good job, there wasn’t a chance in the world anyone would notice. He mustn’t do it again, he told himself. It was tempting, but far too risky.
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    Three weeks after Phil made his suggestion at dinner, Suzanne said she was ready. They drove into the city together. She was unusually quiet as he got her set up, and he wondered if she’d taken anything besides her antidepressants. Probably not. In the early days, when she was performing in public, she never wanted anything, not even the Valium he urged on her. She said she didn’t know how it might affect her; who knows, it might make things worse, not better.
    She wanted to play the first ballade before he began recording,
just to warm up, but Phil said why not just record everything? If the first take turned out to be the best and they hadn’t preserved it, they’d be sorry. That was what he told everyone, and on occasion it was indeed the first take they ended up using. She could warm up with a simple Mozart sonata, or something from the English Suites, to get the feel of the instrument. All right, she said. Again, he’d been prepared to persuade, but it wasn’t necessary. She was agreeable, cooperative, businesslike. He’d never seen her so composed before playing, except at home. This idea of his might just turn out to be a stroke of genius.
    The first ballade went beautifully: She was in fine form, in full possession of her gifts. He wished there were an audience to hear her. What would those reviewers think now? Afterward, as they put on earphones and listened together, they agreed on a couple of places where repeats were needed, a chord held a tad too long, a wrong note, a phrase just slightly rushed. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that would have marred a performance, but CDs had to be perfect. Superhumanly perfect—that was the tradition that had evolved. Misleadingly, as listeners ought to know but didn’t.
    She didn’t object to the repeats, nor did she mind starting in the middle. She was wonderfully accommodating. He was impressed by how easy she was to work with, easier than most of the performers who came to the studio. Very soon he was sure he had enough to put together a perfect whole for each of the first two ballades.
    But by the third she was starting to flag. Her energy level had sunk. She was playing too fast, as if she were trying to get it over with. She knew it, too. She stopped abruptly and
looked at him behind the glass, where he sat at the controls. He switched everything off and came out to join her.
    â€œTime for a break,