Pinball Read Free Page A

and coats and asked him to sit down on the low, oversized bed-couch, made up with a multicolored spread and flanked on one side by a table with a radio on it and on the other by a TV set. The room was comfortable, although sparsely furnished, and the few pieces were, he knew, fine antiques, complemented by several excellent copies of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and, on a separate table, a large collection of antique perfume bottles.
    The kitchen and the bathroom were both at one end of the room, seeming to steal space from each other, and he watched as Andrea moved about the tidily arranged apartment to fix him a drink. She was dressed simply but expensively in a silk blouse and a voluminous skirt of fine wool.
    The day before, when he had seen her for the first time at Kreutzer’s, he had managed to take in her youth, her formidable presence—expressive eyes, wide mouth, soft wavy hair, shapely rib cage, long legs. He had been aware instantly that she awakened in him a need, not for her exactly—not yet anyway—but perhaps for someone who looked like her. Perhaps, like a chord sounded from his past, she had simply awakened a longing for the feeling of wanting a woman.
    “I didn’t believe you would actually, show up,” she said, giving him his drink and perching on the table next to the couch. “Last night at Kreutzer’s, handing you that note, I felt like a Band-Aid.”
    “A Band-Aid?” he asked, uncertain.
    “An aid to the music band, a groupie!” she said and laughed.
    She slid lightly onto the couch, her drink in hand, and leaned back against the table, facing him, her legs stretched in front of her so that her shoes were only inches away from his thigh. “At Juilliard, where I study drama and music, lots of students are into your stuff. They say you’re a pro.”
    “A pro, with no new record in years, and all his old ones in the Memory Lane department.”
    “Not all!” she said. “Last month Etude Classics presented the Juilliard library with a gift of all its finest recordings, including every single one of yours.”
    “It’s good of Etude to keep my masterpieces in print—and to get rid of them as gifts.”
    Andrea got up and went over to some shelves filled with books and records on one side of the room. Slowly, one at a time, she pulled out all eight of Domostroy’s records and stacked them on the record player. Then she started the machine, announcing in a confidential disc jockey drawl, “Tonight’s program, ladies and gentlemen, will be devoted to the complete works of Patrick Domostroy, the distinguished American composer, the National Music Award winner.” As she sat down on the couch again, she brushed against him, and he caught the scent of her hair.
    The music came to them from two large speakers placed on wall brackets at opposite ends of the room. As always, when he listened to his records, he was surprised by his own music, by the sounds he had once been able to hear only with his inward ear. Once again he was uncertain of his reaction; he could never decide whether he liked his music or not. Rather, he identified with it, knew each note, each phrase; he recalled how long—and where—he had worked on it. He even remembered his reactions to each piece when he first heard it in a concert hall, then on the radio, then occasionally on TV; and he remembered as well the anguish of waiting for each record to come out, the not-to-be-uttered expectation of success, and then the further anguish of waiting for the reviews.
    “Don’t you feel good about being a composer?” she asked, looking at him intently.
    “I don’t compose anymore,” he answered.
    “Are you ever going to give another big concert?”
    “No more big concerts,” he said firmly.
    “Why not?”
    “I lost my following,” he said.
    “But—why? They used to love you.”
    “They—the critics, the audience—changed, and I didn’t. Or maybe it was the other way around.”
    “You’re still a recording star,”