Maya did not pull her hand away. The Russian conductor’s grip was surprisingly warm, thick-skinned and dry, holding her bruised wrist with the delicate care of an old watchmaker inspecting a balance spring.
Morozov turned her hand over, his thumb pressing firmly into the inflamed muscle below her elbow. Maya flinched, her breath catching in her throat, but she did not cry out.
"Flexor carpi ulnaris," Morozov muttered, his voice surprisingly quiet, devoid of its earlier theatrical thunder. "It is inflamed. You played the chordal climax from the shoulder because the forearm was locking up. Am I correct?"
Maya lifted her head. Her face was pale, glistening with perspiration, but her gaze met his without an ounce of apology. "Yes, Maestro."
"A dangerous gamble," Morozov said, his bushy eyebrows knitting together. "If the tendon had snapped, you would never play scales again, let alone Rachmaninoff. You would be a cripple before you reached thirty."
"I was already a cripple without the music, Maestro," Maya replied evenly. "A broken arm heals in six weeks. Seven years on the street doesn't heal at all."
Morozov stared down at her for a long, heavy moment. Then, slowly, the corners of his thick gray mustache twitched upward. A low, rumbling chuckle started deep in his chest, shaking his massive belly before erupting into a full-throated roar of laughter that echoed off the cedar rafters.
"Arthur!" the maestro bellowed, turning his head toward the patriarch without releasing Maya's hand. "Arthur, you old bandit! Where did you find this demon?"
Arthur Ellison stepped forward from the shadows, leaning on his cane, a faint, triumphant smile gracing his weathered lips. "I didn't find her, Valery. She walked through my gate on bare feet because my idiot grandson couldn't keep his mouth shut."
Trent flinched as if he had been slapped, but neither the conductor nor his grandfather paid him the slightest attention.
Morozov turned back to Maya, his expression turning deadly serious once more. He released her wrist and tapped his index finger against the edge of the Bechstein's music rack.
"Your left-hand phrasing in the development," Morozov said crisply. "You took the second counter-melody in measure one hundred and eighty too loud. It obscured the woodwind dialogue. You were fighting the instrument because it is an upright and the dampers do not clear as fast as a grand. On the stage of the Academy of Music, you will have my Hamburg Steinway. It has a hair-trigger action. If you hit it with that much weight, you will deafen the front three rows. You must trust the hall. The hall has ears."
Maya’s heart leaped into her throat, but she kept her face perfectly composed. "And the cadenza, Maestro?"
Morozov snorted softly. "The cadenza was an act of war. Rachmaninoff would have hated your tempo in the poco piu mosso—he was an aristocrat who liked everything tidy and dignified. But Hambro... old Hambro would have wept into his beard. You played it like someone who had a knife at her throat. In fifty years of conducting, I have heard seventy pianists play the ossia. Sixty-five of them sounded like conservatory students trying to impress their mothers. Three sounded like machines. One sounded like an artist."
He leaned in close, his pale blue eyes piercing directly into hers.
"You are the second artist, Miss Vance."
The words hung in the air, heavy and absolute as a decree from an emperor.
Trent stepped forward from the threshold, his voice trembling with an unstable mixture of relief and panic. "Then... Maestro Morozov, you're accepting her? You're agreeing to let her perform at the centenary gala?"
Morozov turned his head slowly, fixing Trent with a look of profound disgust. "Accepting her? Boy, if I had an oboist who played with half of this woman's courage, I would fire the rest of the section and double his salary. She is not an applicant begging for a job. She is the soloist for the centenary opening. Now get out of my sight and call the orchestra’s general manager."
Trent swallowed hard, his face burning red, but he nodded quickly and retreated into the corridor, pulling his smartphone from his pocket with shaking hands.
Arthur Ellison watched his grandson leave, then turned his gaze upon Maya. The old man took a slow, deep breath, his gray eyes shining with an emotion he had not shown in decades.
"The contract will be signed this afternoon, Miss Vance," Arthur said gently. "The standard soloist fee for the centenary opening is eighty-five thousand dollars. In addition, the Ellison Foundation is establishing an unrestricted annuity in your name to ensure that you never have to think about rent or bread for the rest of your life."
Maya looked at the keyboard. She did not jump for joy. She did not weep.
Eighty-five thousand dollars was an abstract concept to someone who had measured wealth in dry socks, unopened cans of soup, and empty subway benches where transit police did not use nightsticks.
"I don't need an annuity, Mr. Ellison," Maya said quietly.
Arthur paused, his cane resting firmly on the floor. "Everyone needs security, child."
"No," Maya said, lifting her eyes to meet the patriarch's. "I need an instrument. I need a room where the rain doesn't come through the ceiling. And I need six hours of orchestra rehearsals before next Friday."
Morozov threw his head back and let out another booming laugh. "Listen to her! She hasn't signed the paper and she is already demanding rehearsal time! Spoken like a true monster of the keyboard!"
The maestro slapped his heavy thigh, then turned toward his wet overcoat on the armchair.
"Listen to me carefully, Maya Vance," Morozov said as he shoved his arms into the sleeves. "Tomorrow morning at nine o'clock, an orchestra car will pick you up. You will be brought to the stage door of the Academy of Music on Locust Street. You will meet the concertmaster, you will meet the timpanist, and you will sit down with my associate conductor to review tempos for the second and third movements. You have seven days before the first full tutti rehearsal."
He picked up his conductor’s score from the side table and tucked it under his arm.
"Tonight, you will not touch this piano," Morozov ordered, leveling a thick finger at her. "You will eat red meat. You will drink two glasses of red wine. You will let this woman—Mrs. Gable—pack your right arm in ice for thirty minutes, and then in hot paraffin wax. If I see one drop of inflammation in that wrist tomorrow morning, I will make you play Hanon exercises until you cry like a schoolgirl. Do we understand each other?"
"Yes, Maestro," Maya said softly.
"Good." Morozov turned toward the door, stopping only to tip an imaginary hat to Arthur Ellison. "A pleasure doing business with you, Arthur. For once in your miserable life, you have done something useful with your money."
The old Russian swept out into the hallway, his heavy boots thudding down the stairs and out into the rain.
Arthur remained by the sideboard. He looked at Maya—at her calm posture, her bare feet tucked neatly under the bench, the quiet, unshakable dignity radiating from her small frame.
"You have won the maestro, Miss Vance," Arthur said quietly. "But the city outside is a very different beast. The press has caught wind of this. By tomorrow morning, every newspaper from Philadelphia to Tokyo will know your name. They will not write about Rachmaninoff. They will write about the homeless girl who humiliated my grandson."
Maya ran her fingertips across the smooth mahogany fallboard of the Bechstein.
"Let them write whatever they want, Mr. Ellison," she said. "The ink on a newspaper dries in an hour. But when the piano speaks... the stone remembers."