g beside me.

Now, I'm not much of a theatre person. I never attend plays, and the
last time I was on stage I was in the third grade. By the time we
reached the wings, I knew my face had already turned the color of a
ripe tomato and I was sweating. I should have let one of the bustling
ladies turn pages for her. How I could face an audience, I had no
idea. I concentrated on keeping my daughter's weight off her sprained
ankle.

As we sat down, I had a brief moment to look out and feel terrified.
The auditorium was dark, so I could only see the first few rows. And I
could sense the breathing masses beyond the lights, hovering
expectantly in the shadows, ready to slash me to ribbons. A hot wind
was blowing in over the bobbing heads in the front; their forked
tongues wagged angrily as they coiled slowly. I could almost see the
sand whipping across the dunes. They were pretty damp dunes, though,
since it was a rainy night. I could feel the intense humidity in the
breeze. The conductor gave a nod, with a broad smile in our direction,
and the orchestra struck up with the soft introduction.

I panicked at first, shooting my eyes across the page of music, trying
to remember what I was supposed to be doing. Where was the first page
turn? I couldn't even remember how to read the little black dots. The
page took on the look of an obscure foreign document splayed out across
the music stand, filled with incomprehensible ink blots. It was a
Rorschach test for the incurably insane. The whole scene was backed by
the restless, peering faces of the audience. I closed my eyes briefly,
trying to calm myself. I snapped them open immediately, however. If I
had my eyes closed, I would miss Jenny's signal. If that happened, I
knew all would be lost for certain. I'd be laughed off the stage, and
she would be ruined before she had even begun.

Only an eccentric maniac like Rossi the Terrible would have picked
"Harold in Italy" for the finale of a Christmas concert. It's not
seasonal in the least--what was wrong with something seasonal that
didn't require a viola solo? But I guess, the orchestra was ready,
Jenny was ready--maybe under his mop of stringy and vaguely European
hair he thought it would be an exquisitely quirky touch to perform it
for Christmas instead of waiting until spring.

The first few page turns passed without incident, and my heart-rate
steadily decreased toward normal. She nodded knowingly at just