The Tenor Section

The altos went still, and Nadia stood. So did Elliot, a half step out from the gap between their rows and ours, his folder closed under one arm. The library auditorium had its usual smell of hot dust and carpet. Someone in the back coughed and then didn’t.

They faced each other the way they always did for this one. Not the audience. Each other.

The opening was quiet, her line first, then his answer, the rest of us humming under them so thin it barely counted. I knew the bass part without looking. I watched her instead. She breathed in and he breathed in right after, matching her on purpose. Eleven years of that and I still felt it in my ribs.

Her voice went up into the phrase we never named, the one the director just called the long one. Elliot didn’t chase it. He held under her and let her come back down. When she did, his mouth moved on the word and she smiled at him without breaking the line. A small smile. The one she used when she was sure of a person.

Warm, I thought, and then I stopped lying to myself about what the warm was. Not envy. I’d tried that for a year and it didn’t fit. What I wanted was the three of us standing in that same breath. I wanted to be close enough to feel it the way he was feeling it.

The last note sat in the room until the director’s hands came down. Applause started before I was ready. Nadia looked at Elliot, he looked at her, and then they both turned back into the choir like nothing had happened. My folder shook in my hand. I closed it.

Afterward the three of us walked the two blocks to the diner in our concert black, coats open because the night had gone soft. The neon pie sign buzzed. Inside, the counter was empty except for a man reading a paper. We took the corner booth we always took.

“Pecan,” Elliot said to the waitress, already, the way he said it every spring concert.

“Apple,” Nadia said.

“Cherry,” I said, and when she looked at me I added, “I know. I’m consistent. It’s a virtue.”

Elliot snorted. “You said cherry in December.”

“December doesn’t count. December is survival.”

Nadia kicked my shoe under the table, light, the old signal that she was on my side of the joke even when she wasn’t. Coffee came in thick mugs. We drank it black and didn’t talk about the concert for a minute, which was also old. The talking started when the plates did.

“You rushed the entrance,” she told Elliot.

“I did not.”

“You did. I heard you decide to.”

“I heard you take too much air and I covered for you.”

“You covered beautifully,” she said, and meant it, and he went pink above his collar the way he always did when praise landed clean.

I watched that and didn’t look away. He caught me looking and raised his eyebrows, asking if I was going to pile on. I shook my head. “She was right and you were right. That’s the whole duet.”

“Helpful,” he said.

“I’m a public servant. Helpful is the job.”

We ate. The cherry was too sweet and I ate it anyway. Nadia stole a bite of Elliot’s pecan with her fork and he let her, then took a bite of her apple without asking, which was the rule. I pushed my plate toward the middle so they could ruin that too.

Elliot set his fork down. He turned the mug once, a full circle, which meant he had something he didn’t want to say.

“There’s a hall,” he said. “Down south. They want a tuner on staff. Housing for a year, then we’d see.” He looked at the pie. “I haven’t said yes.”

The booth went quiet in a way the diner wasn’t. Nadia had her cup halfway up. She put it down without drinking. Her face didn’t change much. That was the tell. When she was thinking hard she went still, the way she did before she cut a live report.

“How far south,” she said.

“Far. You’d need a plane.”

“And you haven’t said yes.”

“I haven’t said anything. They want an answer by the end of the month.”

I watched her hands. One of them was on the table, flat, the ring catching the fluorescent light. She didn’t reach for him. She didn’t reach for me. She nodded once, the producer nod, the one that meant she’d heard and she wasn’t going to react on air.

“That’s a good job,” she said.

“It might be.”

“You should think about it.”

“I am.”

We finished the pie. The jokes came back, thinner. Elliot paid for his and tried to pay for ours and I won that fight the usual way, by already having the card out. Outside, we stood under the sign until a bus went by. He hugged her the way he always did, brief, both arms, her cheek against his shoulder. He hugged me the same. Then he walked toward the lot where he’d left his car, folder under his arm, and didn’t look back.

At home I hung the black jacket on the chair and didn’t sit. Nadia filled the kettle and didn’t turn it on. The kitchen light made her look tired in a way the stage lights hadn’t.

“You’ve been quiet since the pie,” I said.

“So have you.”

“I’ve been quiet for a year. I should stop.”

She turned. The kettle stayed cold. “All right.”

I had practiced this in the car and in the shower and none of the versions survived her looking at me. “When you and Elliot sing that duet, I don’t want him gone. I don’t want it to be only me up there with you. I want—” I stopped, because want was the whole sentence and I was scared of it. “I’ve been thinking about him. With us. Not instead of us. I don’t know how to say it without making it sound like I don’t love you, and I do. I love you. I’ve loved you the whole time I’ve been thinking it.”

She didn’t answer. The refrigerator clicked on. A car passed on the street and its headlights slid across the wall and left. She stood with her hands on the counter and looked at the floor between us, and I let her, because rushing her had never once worked.

When she spoke her voice was careful. “Is this a fantasy you’re telling me, or a question?”

“A question. A bad one. I’ve had the fantasy. The question is whether you want me to stop having it.”

She was quiet again, longer. Then she shook her head, not at me, at the floor. “I don’t want a night where I pick one of you and the other waits in the kitchen. That’s not what I’ve been thinking.” She looked up. Her eyes were bright and steady. “I want both of you. Not a secret on the side. Both. If he wants it. If you want it with me, not around me.”

I had to sit down. The chair was the one with my jacket on it, so I sat on the jacket. “That’s not what I thought you were going to say.”

“What did you think?”

“That you’d be kind and tell me no.”

“I’ve wanted it longer than a year,” she said. “I didn’t say it because he’s our friend, and because I didn’t know if you were jealous or something else. Tonight I watched your face during the duet. You weren’t jealous.”

“No.”

“Neither of us sleeps if we pretend we didn’t say this.”

“We might not sleep anyway.”

She came over and put her hand on my hair, brief. “Not tonight. Not while he’s deciding whether to leave. We ask him when we’re sure we’re asking, and we let him say no.”

“All right.”

We went to bed and lay on our backs and didn’t touch much. Once she turned and put her forehead against my shoulder and stayed there. I listened to her breathe and thought about Elliot in his car, driving home with a job offer in his mouth he hadn’t swallowed. At some point the sky went gray. I don’t think either of us slept more than pieces.

A week later he came for dinner, same black shoes, a shirt that wasn’t concert black. I’d made the chicken he liked and Nadia had made the salad she always made when she was nervous, too much lemon, which he noticed and ate anyway. We talked about the choir’s summer break and a leaking valve at the plant and his neighbor’s dog. Nobody mentioned the hall until the plates were cleared and the pie was out, store pecan, coffee in the good mugs.

He cut a slice and didn’t start it. “I told them I need another week.”

Nadia nodded. Her hand was on the table, not quite between us, then it was: flat, open, in the middle where both of us could see it.

“Elliot,” she said. “We want to ask you something.”

He looked at me. Not at her. At me. Checking, the way he checked a pitch before he touched a string.

I nodded. I took her other hand, the one still in her lap, and I kissed her.

It wasn’t a performance for him and it wasn’t a question either. Her mouth met mine and stayed. I put my hand in her hair. She put hers on my wrist, then higher, on the side of my face, warm from the mug she’d been holding. I kissed her again, slower, and she kissed back, and for a second the kitchen was only that.

When I lifted my head she didn’t look at me. She turned toward Elliot.

He hadn’t looked away.