The Pitch on the Velvet

Sara climbed the worn marble stairs of the Conservatory with noughties pop blasting in her earbuds, holding a paper bag from the corner bakery against her chest. The grease from the warm cheese bread was already soaking through the kraft paper.

She had sworn three things for that semester: to be on time for the chamber assignments, to stop pretending she didn't care about the first stand, and not to run into Matías Calle before she'd finished her coffee.

The corkboard in the main hallway always smelled of old dust and rusty pushpins. Generally, the first day of the semester hosted three letterheaded sheets with a meticulous grid where Maestro Ezequiel Pineda distributed sonatas, trios, and quintets with the coldness of an insurance actuary.

Today there were no three sheets.

There was only a single yellowish poster board, pinned with a crooked thumbtack.

Sara stopped dead in her tracks. She pulled out her earbuds, still playing, and let them dangle over the collar of her shirt. She took two slow steps, dodging a first-year cellist who dragged his wheeled case like an airport suitcase.

The poster board was a handwritten score, traced in Pineda's hysterical and violet handwriting. There were no group names, no audition dates, no Brahms sonatas. Just a four-four time signature, a bar line without a fixed key signature, and two charcoal pencil annotations at the bottom of the paper:

Stand 1: S. Ospina. Stand 2: M. Calle.

Together. In the same measure.

"Tell me it's not true," said a voice behind her.

Sara didn't need to turn around. The smell of neutral soap and the tall shadow silhouetted against the wall spared her the trouble. And besides, there was the clothing: Matías was wearing the olive green corduroy shirt with suede elbow patches. Her shirt. The one she had lent him one rainy afternoon in sophomore year with the stupid promise that she would return it the next day.

"It's true," Sara replied, pointing at the paper with the bag of bread. "Pineda has lost his mind. Officially."

"Pineda is seventy-two years old, Sara. He lost his mind in ninety-four."

Matías stretched out his hand, ripped a piece of cheese bread straight out of the bag she was holding, and shoved it into his mouth without asking permission. Sara narrowed her eyes.

"Hey. That was my lunch."

"It has too much anise," he muttered, chewing with exasperating calm. "The lady at the cafeteria hates you, I've told you a thousand times."

"She doesn't hate me, she's traditional. And give the shirt back."

"It's not yours. It's already past the statute of limitations through usucaption. Four years in my closet make it private property."

Sara sighed and looked at the score again. The handwritten notes were dense, almost aggressive, studded with double stops that seemed designed to make two bows collide in the air if they weren't synchronized to the millimeter.

"We are not going to play together, Matías. It doesn't make sense. You play as if you were collecting a debt and I..."

"You what? Are you going to say you play with 'lyric sensitivity'?" Matías let out a dry laugh, leaning a shoulder against the corkboard. "You play as if you were afraid of breaking the strings. That's why you always fall short in the allegro."

She opened her mouth to remind him that his last performance of Sibelius had sounded like a chainsaw trying to tune in A minor, but Classroom 4's door opened with a sharp squeak of ungreased hinges.

Maestro Ezequiel Pineda poked his bald head out, surrounded by a crown of messy white hair. He had a steaming cup of tea in his left hand and glasses perched almost on the tip of his nose.

"Less cafeteria chatter," the old man growled, looking at them over his frames. "Inside. Both of you. You've already wasted ten minutes of tuning."

Classroom 4 retained the same dense air as always, an unmistakable blend of copal varnish, aged spruce, and the bittersweet trace of pulverized rosin floating in the orange rays of light that the louvered shutters cast onto the waxed parquet. It was almost five in the afternoon. The light at that hour in the conservatory had the bad habit of making everything seem much more dramatic than it really was.

The ceiling fan spun with a monotonous, rusted hum, marking a heavy pulse that competed with the mechanical tick of a Mälzel metronome forgotten on top of an upright piano.

Sara pulled her violin from the velvet-lined case with the automatic routine of someone who has done it ten thousand times. The navy blue velvet was worn at the edges and stained with white rosin dust. With the pad of her thumb, she pressed the ebony peg of the E string; the wood yielded a millimeter with a dry, taut creak, adjusting to the exact tension.

Beside her, less than a meter away, Matías tightened the hair of his bow with two sharp turns of the silver screw.

It was ridiculous how close they were. For six years, the conservatory's unwritten protocol had kept them at opposite stands: she sitting on the left in the first violin row, he on the right; or she leading a quartet while he directed the baroque ensemble. Always with their backs turned, always watching who walked out on stage first, who received the most applause at end-of-term showcases, who got the recommendation for the summer festival.

"I don't know what Ezequiel is trying to do with this," Sara murmured under her breath, passing her callus-hardened fingertip over the winding of the A string. "We are not a duo. We have never been a duo."

Matías rested the violin on his collarbone without looking at her, but he didn't raise his bow.

"Six years of staring at each other's necks isn't an artistic duel, Sara; it's a bad habit that keeps us mediocre."

The phrase dropped into the classroom air like a slammed door.

Sara stood motionless, her bow suspended two centimeters from the strings. She wanted to snap back something quick, something biting that would return the blow with her usual elegance, but her mouth went dry. The five o'clock light hit Matías in profile, illuminating the motes of dust floating between them and the taut line of his jaw. He wasn't smiling.

"Are you going to play or are you going to keep measuring your egos?" Ezequiel cut in from the back of the room.

The old man hadn't sat in his leather armchair. He was standing next to the grand piano, hands crossed behind his back.

"Maestro," Sara began, lowering the instrument, "with all due respect, the chamber program requires degree repertoires to be individual or with stable ensembles. Matías and I have graduation projects completely dif—"

"The chamber program requires whatever I say it requires," Pineda stated without raising his voice. His tone was flat, dry, immune to diplomatic complaints.

He walked toward them dragging his old loafers across the parquet. He slipped his hand into the inner pocket of his wool waistcoat and pulled out a long envelope, folded in half, with golden edges and an embossed seal that didn't belong to any local institution.

"For six years I've watched you fight over crumbs," the old man said, looking at them alternately. "The first solo in the orchestra. The government scholarship. The spring recital. Provincial nonsense to inflate the vanity of two kids who think they're virtuosos because everyone else is deaf."

Sara felt a sudden heat rise up her neck. Matías, beside her, squeezed the bow stick so hard his knuckles turned white.

"This isn't a semester exercise," Ezequiel continued.

With a deliberate, almost lazy movement, the maestro slid the document onto the black wood lid of the grand piano, making an invisible layer of dust crackle.

The official letterhead, printed in Gothic typography and crimson relief, shone under the strip of setting sun: Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien.

"The refinement position for the soloist chair closes in three weeks," Pineda said, taking a step back and crossing his arms. "There is no video audition. There is no shortlist of preselected candidates. They are coming to evaluate the execution of this manuscript right here, in this room."

Sara looked down at the paper. Below the embossed seal was a single boarding pass stapled to the acceptance form.

Just one.

"There is one plane ticket and one open slot," the old man concluded, turning off the metronome with a flick of his index finger. "For whoever plays the best execution. Either you play together to learn how to destroy each other with class, or you sign your resignation right now."

Silence.

The fan made another rusty revolution over their heads.

"I told you that cheese bread was a bad omen," Matías whispered.

Sara didn't laugh.