After the encounter at the patch panel, Adelle makes a point of hanging around after the lighting rehearsal to check out the magic (and maybe light) first hand. A bunch of guys (and gals) hanging around endlessly in the theater, most with jackets and backpacks occupying the adjacent seat, and most with feet up on the seat backs in front of them. This is against house rules, of course. Under the Johnson administration, rules are meant to be bent. Adelle thinks, 'this is not going to help Johnson's career.' She's funny that way: forward, adult thinking mixed with schoolgirl manipulativeness. Long-haired dudes are fooling with the sound system. There's a nasty hum over the speaker system. But just now, having appeared down at the edge of the pit, is Cal taking the key from Johnson. Right behind him are a gaggle of women with musical instruments. One of them, the flute player, is her friend. She's tipped her off about this Cal and his gifts in one of those girl's talk rambles down creek side. Perhaps he's befriendable. Maybe he's got something. He looks very cool. He's got a charming way of looking at a point on the ground about ten feet ahead of himself. How does he not trip over gaps in the pavement? Perhaps the answers can be arrived at. A good Catholic girl has to be cagey.
The rehearsal is tedious, however. Adelle ducks out without another chat with Calbraith. The music, from what she's heard is pompous, Beethovenian, and lacking a certain sense of direction. What does she know? She struggles with the same piece endlessly, making either minute or non-detectable progress. Her teacher, a woman she visits weekly, is bored with her and her never ending "Für Elise." At least Cal Hunter has made it past that. He can actually play a piece all the way through! Or so it seems to her.
So in the next week, when Adelle passes Cal in that odd mechanical equipment space, once locked up tight but now a favorite shortcut to backstage, she lowers her eyelids and says, "hi, Cal."
And that's really all it takes to start a fire in Cal's mind. Now the image of Adelle and her sweater covered alabaster cleavage settles in for fantasy fuel. For about a week, these encounters gradually escalate. They seem to happen in the same place (the passageway to backstage) and at the same time (just past the last bell of the day). A subtle palimpsest of desire is woven skillfully without any direct cue. The only technique is that of restraint. The only skill demanded is that of punctuality. The only response to the timetable is that of observation and casual repetition. Once established, the pattern is adhered to. They walk past each other. She says her line, he says his.
"Hi, Cal."
"Hey, Adelle."
By the third straight day, it's a joke. Cal starts to pad his part with improvisation.
"Hey, sweet Adeline." (Giggles.)
"Adelle. You're looking swell." (More giggles.)
"Fancy meeting you here."
After a week, with the excuse for the pattern ending (the show is closing), Cal comes up with a plan to extend the run. Since his imagination is running wild, the solution to the problem is a natural one. On his late night feverish strolls around the old blocks of his suburban neighborhood, his fingers work behind his back as he imagines Beethoven's once did. Soon he has put his pencil to manuscript paper. He hopes his gesture will not be misinterpreted, and that it will be appreciated.
"Adelle, we've got to stop meeting like this."
"We must. 'Skin' closes tonight."
"Yes. In any case, knowing that you play, I wrote you a little something."
"Really!"
He hands over the score. It's two pages torn from a spiral bound manuscript book. She takes it and looks at it. She's beaming. This might just work.
"Wow. Nobody's ever written a piece for me before."
"It's not much, but it's something."
"I can't wait to try it."
Now, he knows she has the next move. He knows that it's important not to appear too eager. He knows a certain amount of time must pass before they can speak again. Does he have to mark a calendar, like in "The Great Gatsby?" (Or was it "Beautiful and Damned?")
In the meanwhile, he's been running into Linda in even tighter spaces. The Litmans are beyond him socially. They treat Linda like an autonomous adult. They inhabit a world of impeccable manners. Where his own parents would blow a gasket about hanging out alone in a closed room with a person of opposite sex, the Litman's response to catching their daughter thus compromised is to invite the young man to dinner. Dinner is an unforgettable encounter with gourmet food and alcohol.
"You'll love this Burgundy!"
"I'm sure I will."
After the first sip, he thinks he's going to have to leave the table to throw up.
"How is it?"
"Interesting."
"We pick this up in France. It's impossible to get here."
"I confess, I'm not much of a drinker."
Truth. He's never had a drop of alcohol in his life. His Mother's endless refrain is, "once you start down that road, there's no turning back." At the moment, he feels safe. He also feels that his Mother is somehow wrong. The thick, bitter liquid is undrinkable.
"That's OK. We've got...soda. I think. Do we? Well, water at least."
Linda's laughing, her head back.
Ineptitude at social events only enhances his charm in her mind, and she jumps at the chance to duck into the crawl space above the auditorium to make out with Cal. Making out is pure, exploratory pleasure. She finds his zipper. His erection leads her on, bold and eager to know this art. The crawl space features a very narrow catwalk. A cat could do it, but there's not much room for humans side by side. When her lips find his hardness, he pushes her away.
"I'm afraid of falling off the walk. It won't do to drop in on the seats below."
"Right. We keep having trouble with spaces."
The truth is that like Burgundy, the blow job is all too much. He knows that in another moment, he'll be ejaculating all over the two of them. He's not ready for that sort of humiliation, embarrassment and tricky clean up. He much prefers to get his fingers in her pants. They're driving each other to unrelieved sexual insanity.
It does not even occur to him that being "in love" with someone else is a contradiction. It does not take a Gatsby calendar to get a response from Adelle.
"It's too hard for me! You've got to come over and play it for me. After school."
"Today?"
"Um. I have my piano lesson today, as it turns out. Let's do it tomorrow."
Driving his funky Chevy home, it was as though the wheels did not touch the road. Even after a furious walk of the familiar streets, the once sad mailbox calling out to congratulate, the steam of breath on the midnight air, the sweat running inside sweat shirt as per design, there is still no sleep to be had. He'll sit down opposite sweet Adeline on the morrow. He'll play his little bagatelle and she'll hold out her lilly white hand for him to take. Ah, how perfectly nineteenth century romantic!
And that is more or less how it went "on the morrow." Except that, as an additional amazement, there was a very long talk and more (way more) hand holding than imagined. In fact, the whole thing was interrupted only by her Father's call to dinner. He was not invited. (Imagine that! Such a Father as would call the family to supper in such a formal manner! How remote from his own nest, and yet only across a street from the High School!)
The amazement would soon be doubled. After this one blissful afternoon, Adelle cut Cal off in one of those dizzying teenage volte-face actions. He blew all her fuses: she had no where else to hide but in ditching the whole thing. Cal, of course, could not get this to make any sense whatsoever. The pain of it, while ridiculous after such a short buildup, was adolescent real and unable to be denied or set aside. There was an embarrassing scene on the steps to the auditorium with much weeping and stamping of feet on sidewalk. This entire public display of emotion got him the response of another, insincere hug of pity from Adelle, but all of that too was communicated and registered and added to the tally.
Meanwhile, Linda expanded her range to include his own neighborhood. She was as much the wanderer as he, and she thought nothing of showing up for lemonade and grilled cheese at his basement door. She'd tap on the glass with her latchkey. Alone for an hour before his parents got home from work, they'd be side by side on his bed making out. This time, he did come all over the two of them. She loved it. She had to learn when to stop. His mother put a stop to all of this by having a meltdown at the top of the stairs.
"Hey you two! I know what you're up to down there! I wasn't born yesterday, you know. I think it's time you sent that young woman home to her own family! Don't you think they miss her already!"
The distraction and 'sturm und drang' of the "wife/whore" explorations lent a certain useful angst to the music making at the Magic and Light concert. The whole production was entertaining for the modest crowd that turned out. As a career launcher, it led to no great opportunities. It cannot be said that it had anything to do with acceptance by the Boston Conservatory. It was simply a good thing to have done. These scenes are frozen in time now. They lasted only a few months all total, but they set the stage for many dramas and explorations to follow.
