A Four-Handed Hold

Pineda didn't even wait for them to close their mouths. He grabbed his cracked leather briefcase, pointed at the door with the tip of a wooden ruler, and sent them out to the hallway with a wave that admitted no appeal: the cello ensemble needed Room 4 and the two of them had exactly three weeks not to wreck each other's lives.

"Wood keeps the sweat of whoever touches it; fooling a jury is easy, but old spruce doesn't know how to fake a tremble," the maestro let out before turning on his heel and leaving them stranded in the dimness of the corridor.

Room 3 smelled of confinement, of copal varnish softened by the four o'clock mugginess, and of the sticky humidity rolling down from the hill. The ceiling fan, a white piece of junk with three warped blades, spun with a weary hum that threw an absurd counter-rhythm into any attempt at concentration.

Matías tossed his case onto the only chair that didn't wobble, took off his watch, and rolled up the cuffs of his olive-green corduroy shirt. The suede elbow patches brushed against the Formica of the table with a harsh scratch.

That shirt was Sara's.

She had lent it to him one rainy afternoon in their second year, and ever since then Matías washed it with a fabric softener that smelled of cheap lavender just to pretend he someday planned to give it back.

Sara promised herself not to ask for the shirt back, not to look at his collarbones, and not to admit that the fan had the tempo of a dragged-out cumbia.

"Let's start from measure twelve," Sara said, opening the score on the metal music stand.

"No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"I'm not playing measure twelve if we don't tune first."

"Then tune, genius. You've been staring at the ceiling for five minutes."

Matías rested the violin under his jaw with that irritating sluggishness he reserved for moments when he knew he had the advantage. He plucked the A string. Pling. Then the D. The sound fell heavy, dull, half a step below what the heat of the room demanded.

"I'm not tuning the D," he said, without lowering the instrument.

Sara clenched her teeth.

"Why?"

"Until you admit your opening phrasing lacks pulse."

"My phrasing has the exact pulse the manuscript asks for, Matías."

"Your phrasing sounds like a WhatsApp chat sent at three in the morning after two beers. It stumbles, rushes, and doesn't know where to land."

"Are you done?"

"Did you bring water?"

"No."

"You're going to dehydrate."

"I'd rather die dry than give you the satisfaction."

Matías let out a half-smile, one of those that didn't even last a second but stayed etched in the left corner of his mouth. He left the bow on the Formica table and crossed his arms, leaning his back against the peeling wall.

Sara's phone buzzed on the wood of the upright piano, sliding an inch.

The screen lit up:

Cami: Are you guys dead yet or do I still have time to go testify at the DA's office?

Sara locked the screen with her thumb before Matías could stretch his neck. The sweat glued two strands of hair to her forehead and the bow rosin had left a whitish smudge on her right thumb. The heat in Room 3 wasn't a temperature; it was a solid mass that crushed the shoulders and forced slow breathing so as not to swallow hot dust.

"Play it again," he asked, with his voice a bit lower, losing for an instant that air of smugness.

"I don't have to prove anything to you."

"Sara, if we come in off-beat at measure sixteen, Pineda isn't even going to let us pack our instruments for Vienna. Play it."

She raised the violin. She rested her chin on the warm chinrest, closed her eyes to ignore the grotesque swaying of the fan, and dragged the bow across the strings. The first notes came out clean, long, but as she reached for the resolution toward the F sharp she felt the stiffness in her forearm tendons, that tiny hesitation that always appeared when she played with an audience.

Or when he was less than two meters away.

Matías didn't mock her.

He took two steps forward, shortening the meter and a half of worn tile separating them. Before she could lower the instrument or invent an excuse about the humidity in the air, he stretched out his arms and took the violin from her hands with a dry but careful movement.

"Your carpus is broken inward," he murmured.

His fingers, rough and hardened by the calluses of the silver winding, wrapped around Sara's left wrist to correct the angle. The contact was direct, without the mediation of wood or strings: warm skin against warm skin.

Sara's breath caught halfway down her throat.

"If you don't relax here, the vibrato dies on you before reaching the bridge," he said, his eyes fixed on her forearm, without letting go.

To avoid looking him in the face, Sara lowered her gaze to the stand where Matías's copy of the manuscript rested. She expected to find the typical wild marks of a 2B pencil: fingerings crossed out with fury, accent signs underlined three times, technical corrections with an exclamation mark.

There was none of that.

In the margins of the manuscript paper, squeezed right next to the hardest measures, there were only brief phrases written in a slanted, nervous handwriting:

Wait for me to inhale.

Enter half a beat after I move my shoulder.

Don't look at the bow; breathe when she lowers her chin.

Sara slowly raised her gaze.

Matías still hadn't let go of her wrist.