"Yes, it's true. I'm not actually a mandated reporter. But I am concerned. And I can't ignore that concern."

"What's a mandated reporter?" Dorothy asked.

Earl ignored her. "That she's losing interest in music. That's your concern."

I leaned toward him. "That she's experiencing some kind of extreme stress."

A door opened abruptly, and Hallie came in, wearing a hoodie and pajama bottoms, her hair wet and combed back. She looked like an innocent girl. Not the dark, sullen creature who always stomped up the stairs.

"I can't study," she said. "It's too loud."

Dorothy cast her eyes to the far wall.

Hallie froze when she saw me.

"What are you doing here?"

"Just checking in. I told you I might."

"No, you didn't."

"I wanted to update your parents . . . Mr. and Mrs. Edwards . . . on your progress."

"Bulls.h.i.t."

"Hey, young lady," Earl said.

"She's lying. She's telling you that I did something wrong."

"Did you do something wrong?" he asked.

"No. But teachers don't ever come around with good news."

I said, "Hallie, this is really between the three of us, so if you could just go back to your room. We'll keep our voices down. It's nothing important."

She gave me a hard look. "Whatever she's telling you is something she's made up in her own mind."

She slammed the door, and we listened to her familiar stomp going away.

The Edwardses were looking at me.

"Well, look, I'm not objective. I just want Hallie to continue on this path," I said.

"You let us worry about her path," Earl said.

Dorothy was looking away from him.

"Thanks for stopping by," he said.

He walked me to the door. Dorothy didn't move.

When we got there, he put a hand on my shoulder, and the tightness moved through my stomach again.

"Do you have children, Miss Swain?"

"No. Just my students."

"There aren't many people like you left in the world."

I laughed. "You mean crazy musicians? There are. Way too many."

"I meant people who care," he said. The sudden shift in his tone confused me until I realized that because I was leaving, he no longer saw me as a threat. His defenses were down, and his true nature was emerging. He had been scared. That was where the demeanor came from. The unwillingness to reveal anything of himself.

Sometimes I forgot how much men had to hide.

"I do appreciate your interest in my daughter."

Dorothy spoke up then, moving in our direction. The attention had been off her for long enough.

"We get the point, Earl."

Earl said to me, "What's your first name, again?"

"Pearl."

"Earl with a P."

He laughed at his own joke.

This was the final straw for Dorothy. She was standing right next to her husband now, her dark eyes bearing down on me.

"Good night, Miss Swain."

I didn't know what was going on in this house. But whatever it was, a deal had been struck. There was a common agreement. Something so solid and oppressive that even Hallie was unwilling to betray it. There was no question of that. The only question left was how much of it was my business.

FRANKLIN DUCKS OUT early this Wednesday night, shortly after our best-lyricist discussion. He has a gig with his new friend Jenny. He tells me he's not really in her band, he's just sitting in tonight, playing for an adult birthday party in Bel Air, at the home of a movie director. He a.s.sures me that this is good for the Trailer Park Rogues, as he can make some connections. I say, "Yeah, I know all about the connections you're trying to make." The memory of Jenny is clear in my mind. She is young and still looks good in a tank top. Her vocal style is a trick. It's vibrato taken to an unholy level. It's a warble. It's a step away from yodeling. But Franklin is falling for it. And maybe I'm the fool for not realizing that I was being set up.

Franklin just shakes his head at me and says, "Pearl, you know, a musical marriage is even harder than the real kind."

I say, "What would you know about either one?"

But he only chuckles and goes out. Ernest follows him, with his own battered Gibson in a beat-up case, saying he's going to try to hook up with this married woman he's pursuing, whose husband is a s.h.i.thead lawyer who works all the time, leaving her lonely and vulnerable. "Is she pretty?" I ask him. "For a woman her age, she's a fox," he says proudly, as if he's figured something out. Older women have some hidden value, and he alone has discovered it, like a guy who has discovered a new planet. I don't ask how old she is. I'm sure that she's several years younger than I am and that it never occurred to Ernest that I might be offended. Because it never occurred to Ernest that I'm capable of having an affair.

I say to his back, "It's his money that's keeping her attractive. Pilates! Botox! It's expensive to look young when you're old!"

But the door slams halfway through my retort.

I wonder if I'm capable of having an affair.

And then I am left alone with Patrick, who is leaning against the far wall, without an instrument, smiling at me.

"What?" I say.

He shakes his head. His long hair is pulled back into a ponytail.

"Who is it you're really talking to?" he asks.

"Oh, leave me alone," I say, grabbing my violin. "Paul Simon is a fraud. He writes poems and then he hires other cultures to arrange the music, but he takes all the credit."

Patrick shrugs. "But he writes the poems."

"That's not hard. It's only half the equation."

Patrick shrugs again.

"So write me one," he says.

"What?"

"Write me a poem if they're so easy."

Actually, he says "sho easy."

I glare at him.

I say, "You're not walking me to my car."

He shrugs again. "Why would I do that?"

"Because all the men in this place volunteer to do that when they want something."

"I don't want anything from you," he says.

"Good," I say.

I make it all the way to the door with my violin b.u.mping against my rib cage. Then I hear him say, "I just want you to know who I am."

I turn on him, already agitated. "Oh, really? Who are you?"

He shrugs again.

I say, "You want me to know who you are? Tell me what instrument you play."

The smile dissolves from his face, even though no other muscle in his body moves.

"I told you before," he says.

"Tell me again."

He looks hard at me. His eyes are the color of rain, and the definition of piercing. His face is all angles. His chin juts out toward me. He is tall and thin and lean, but he is not young.

"I play all of them," he says.

"You play all instruments?"

My hands are shaking and the rest of my body will soon follow. I can't stand being this close to him, though there is an entire store and several musical instruments separating us.

I feel as though we are neck and neck.

Photo finish. But with no finish.

"Okay, fine," I say, knowing that there are such people in the world who literally play all instruments. They are few and far between. They have perfect pitch. They can pick up anything devised to make music and elicit beautiful sounds. They don't fight with their instruments or worry about them or stand in awe of them. They create partnerships first, and then they master them. For them, the mystery is more than half solved, and maybe it's why they put the instrument down. Maybe it accounts for their lack of concern. Maybe it's why Patrick has nothing to worry about.

"What was your first instrument?" I ask him. "What did you learn on?"

He barely moves. He says, "I didn't learn on any of them."

"What? You were born knowing?"

He nods.

"I was born knowing," he says.

"You're full of s.h.i.t," I tell him.

He laughs. "Well, sure. I'm full of s.h.i.t. I'm human."

"You can't even remember the first time-"

"My first instrument was probably this," he says. He puts the ends of his fingers into his ears. Takes them out. Puts them in again.

I stare at him.

"The roar," he explains. "When you plug your ears. What is the roar? The sound of your blood? The engine of your brain? This is what led me to music. Instruments are everywhere. Why do you people worry yourselves with details?"

"That's just noise."

"I think it's in the ear of the beholder-what is noise and what isn't."

"I think that's a cop-out."

Patrick smiles. "Now you're talking like Franklin. You only like him because he doesn't approve of you. And if he doesn't approve, you can never get close."

"That's just not true."

"Truth. Another subjective discussion."

"Good night, Patrick."