Gryphon: New and Selected Stories by Charles Baxter

the Maple Street angle, and sometimes I couldn’t. When I failed, Cascadilla would call me in, scowl at my copy, and mutter, “All the Juilliard graduates in town will love this.” Nevertheless, the Maple Street angle was a spiritual exercise in humility, and I did my best to find it week after week.
    When I first learned that the orchestra was scheduled to play Paul Hindemith’s Harmony of the World symphony, I didn’t think of Hindemith,but of Maple Street, that mythically harmonious place where I actually grew up.
    Working on the paper left me some time for other activities. Unfortunately, there was nothing I knew how to do except play the piano and write reviews.
    Certain musicians are very practical. Trumpet players (who love valves) tend to be good mechanics, and I have met a few composers who fly airplanes and can restore automobiles. Most performing violinists and pianists, however, are drained by the demands of their instruments and seldom learn how to do anything besides play. In daily life they are helpless and stricken. In midlife the smart ones force themselves to find hobbies. But the less fortunate come home to solitary apartments without pictures or other decorations, warm up their dinners in silence, read whatever books happen to be on the dinner table, and then go to bed.
    I am speaking of myself here, of course. As time passed, and the vacuum of my life made it harder to breathe, I required more work. I fancied that I was a tree, putting out additional leaves. I let it be known that I would play as an accompanist for voice students and other recitalists, if their schedules didn’t interfere with my commitments for the paper.
    One day I received a call at my desk. A quietly controlled female voice asked, “Is this Peter Jenkins?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well,” she said, as if she’d forgotten what she meant to tell me, “this is Karen Jensen. That’s almost like Jenkins, isn’t it?” I waited. “I’m a singer,” she said, after a moment. “A soprano. I’ve just lost my accompanist and I’m planning on giving a recital in three months. They said you were available. Are you? And what do you charge?”
    I told her.
    “Isn’t that kind of steep? That’s kind of steep. Well, I suppose … I can use somebody else until just before, and then I can use you. They say you’re good. And I’ve read your reviews. I really admire the way you write!”
    I thanked her.
    “You get so much information into your reviews! Sometimes, when I read you, I imagine what you look like. Sometimes a person can make amental picture. I just wish the paper would publish a photo or something of you.”
    “They want to,” I said, “but I asked them not to.”
    “Even your voice sounds like your writing!” she said excitedly. “I can see you in front of me now. Can you play Fauré and Schubert? I mean, is there any composer or style you don’t like and won’t play?”
    “No,” I said. “I play anything.”
    “That’s wonderful !” she said, as if I had confessed to a remarkable tolerance. “Some accompanists are so picky. ‘I won’t do this, I won’t do that.’ Well, one I know is like that. Anyhow, could we meet soon? Do you sight-read? Can we meet at the music school downtown? In a practice room? When are you free?”
    I set up an appointment.
    She was almost beautiful. Her deep eyes were accented by depressed bowls in quarter-moon shadows under them. Though she was only in her late twenties, she seemed slightly scorched by anxiety. She couldn’t keep still. Her hands fluttered as they fixed her hair; she scratched nervously at her cheeks, and her eyes jumped every few seconds. Soon, however, she calmed down and began to look me in the eye, evaluating me. Then I turned away.
    She wanted to test me out and had brought along her recital numbers, mostly standard fare: a Handel aria, Mozart, Schubert, and Fauré. The last set of songs, Nine Epitaphs , by an American composer I had never heard of,