The Rehearsal

fear at the thought of actually saying it.
    The saxophone teacher is thinking about Patsy. She is thinking about Patsy in the smoky afterward bar, still with her concert program tucked in her fist, ordering glasses of wine which they will later refill, in a secret giddy way, from a screw-top bottle in Patsy’s handbag. She sees them both folding themselves into a corner, unwrapping scarves and coats and talking about the crowd and the arrangement and the soloist, and then Patsy saying, “What did you imagine?” and already half-laughing in her eagerness.
    “I imagined the music was pouring out of the saxophone like water,” the saxophone teacher said, “pouring over the lip of the bell and pooling on the floor at his feet, and the water level was getting higher and higher and the tide was churning stronger and stronger and in the end he had to finish the piece just to save his life. And then we clapped and he started a new piece and I imagined that the sax was sucking his breath out of him, instead of him blowing the air in, and that the mouthpiece was pushing and pushing to get further and further in, that the sax was trying desperately to suffocate him, and he had to keep playing to save his life.”
    Patsy laughed and clapped and they touched glasses and drank, and the saxophone teacher said, “What did you imagine?”
    “I imagined that noise had the power to seriously hurt you, even kill you,” Patsy said, “depending on the quality of the musicianship. The more elegant the playing, the more total the death. The Town Hall would be like the arena where you were sent if you had done something truly terrible. You’d be marched into the auditorium, strapped down and buckled on to the red velvet seats so tight you couldn’t move. The soloist would be the executioner, playing faster and faster and watching you over the footlights with wet greedy eyes.”
    The saxophone teacher laughed and clapped and they touched glasses again and drank, and Patsy said, “That concert changed me forever.”
    Saturday
    On Saturday nights Bridget works at the local video store. She sits glumly on a high vinyl stool and watches the lonely people drift from shelf to shelf, keeping one eye on the black-and-white security television that dimly shows the curtained nook where the adult tapes are shelved. The clock says half-past nine. Bridget watches the inching revolutions of the minute hand and listens for the padded thump of a late tape through the dewy drop-slot.
    “Hello, Bridget,” somebody says.
    Bridget shoves her chewing gum to the side of her mouth and turns her tired head to see Mr. Saladin standing by the door, crisp in beige trousers and a woollen coat. He smiles at her in a boyish way.
    “Hi, Mr. Saladin,” says Bridget, brightening and slithering forward off her stool. “I’ve never seen you here before.”
    “My nephews live in the area,” says Mr. Saladin. “Two blocks over.”
    “Oh,” says Bridget with genuine surprise, because she has never thought of Mr. Saladin as the type of man to have nephews. She regards him a little shyly.
    “How is it that you’re allowed to work here? You’re not eighteen,” Mr. Saladin says, folding his gloved hands across his chest. “You must not be allowed to watch half the movies here.”
    “I’m not watching them,” says Bridget, “I’m only selling them.”
    Mr. Saladin chuckles. “And I suppose after I’ve gone you’re going to look up my record for porno,” he says.
    “Probably,” says Bridget, with a rush of gratitude at being granted ownership of the joke. “And I’ll find out how old you really are.”
    “Now you’ve gone too far,” Mr. Saladin says, feigning gravity. “That is privileged information. Don’t you dare.”
    Bridget giggles and then stifles the sound quickly, covering her mouth with her hand. Behind her, the row of mounted television screens flashes its sequence of silent silver car-wrecks and swift untimely deaths.
    “Working on a Saturday night,” Mr. Saladin says, shaking his head. “What happened to drinking and taking drugs and smoking and playing loud music? I must be out of touch.”
    Again Bridget’s hand flies to her mouth to smother her laughter. Mr. Saladin smiles, his gaze sliding upward for a second as he is distracted by an image darting by.
    The clock moves forward.
    Until this precise moment in her life Bridget has understood flirting only as a self-promotional conversational tool, wielded with the