“You’ve got to be your own favorite!” He shrugged, still smiling wolfishly. “It’s what keeps you interested. But if we’re talking real composers, there’s no way I could pick just one. In terms of inspiration, I’ve got Coleridge-Taylor, Florence B. Price, Joseph Boulogne, so many others. If you mean who I admire most on a technical level, that’s complicated—everybody’s got that little something you can pick out and marvel at. And for who I like to, you know, listen to—that depends on my mood.”

“Okay, let’s put it the way you did with your lunch order. If you could only pick one piece of music to listen to for the rest of your life . . . ?”

“Cruelest question in the world,” he said, blithely biting into his sandwich. “Evil question.”

“Cop-out,” I coughed.

He laughed. Still didn’t answer.

I tapped my lips. “Schoenberg?”

“Heady stuff,” he answered, chewing. “But you’ve gotta love any composer so forward-thinking that his music manages to start a riot.”

“Cage?”

He walked next to me in confused silence for almost a block, and I was beginning to thrill with victory when he turned to me with a grin and I realized he was imitating Cage’s “4'33",” in which the pianist sits in silence for the length of the piece’s title.

“Eh?” He put his arms out.

I didn’t want to laugh. “It’s the eh that really sold it.”

“You should always explain your jokes. It makes them extra funny.”

“I like to end my jokes with ‘get it?’ In case, you know, people don’t get it.”

“That’s just good manners.” He took another bite, smiled around it.

“So, where are you from, exactly?” I asked as he chewed. “I thought I’d heard an accent.”

“Exactly? 5320 Falmouth Road, Bethesda, Maryland. Upstairs, first bedroom on the right.” He peered up at the leafy ironwork on the building we were passing. “Not sure about an accent . . .”

I glanced at him. He stared ahead. I took the hint.

Finishing his sandwich, he crumpled up the paper, tossed it at a corner trash can. Missed. As he veered to retrieve it, I kept walking so he couldn’t see my smirk.

He jogged to catch up. “So what about inspiration?”

“You want me to tell you a place where you can be inspired?”

“I want to know where you, Ruby Chertok”—he stroked his chin as we waited for the next light, then laughed, breaking pose—“I was going to use your middle name but I don’t know it.”

“Anna,” I answered. Don’t mention my mom.

“Where you, Ruby Anna Chertok, find your inspiration.”

“I’m more of a mundane person than an inspiration person.”

“Doubtful,” he said, and before I could figure that out: “Your dad said you study piano.”