He’d suggested we walk to the museum through the park, which I’d seized on as an excuse not to bother with heels. I listened now, dubious, then heard the chuk-chuk of a squirrel, followed by angry scrabbling as it ran farther up the tree.

Oscar started off again. “What instrument would that be?”

“The tree? The squirrel?” I glanced behind us. “A trumpet. But really small so he can hold it.”

“Not what I meant.” Oscar grinned.

I fake-whispered, “I got that.”

“I’m . . . writing this piece.” He looked uncharacteristically sheepish. “A symphony. I think it’ll be about coming here, experiencing this, whatever happens.”

Oscar gazed out at the afternoon light bathing Central Park in orange, like this—walking to the Met—was the first movement of his autobiographical symphony.

I stared with him. “So you’re taking that whole ‘what is your piece about’ thing pretty literally, then.”

“Extremely, yeah. I’m playing with that idea of Richard Strauss’s, that you can capture experience through sound, each faucet drip, each clink of a fork . . .”

“You’re putting forks in your symphony?”

“Maybe!” Now he laughed. “If forks become important, they’ll go in there. Maybe I’ll be eating and somebody chokes at the next table—”

“You’re hoping for this.”

“Or I taste the most incredible dessert of my life, or I start falling in love . . .”

“What does a fork sound like?”

“Violins,” he said, like it was obvious. “Plucked—plink, plink, plinkplinkplink.”

I could hear it. Oh my God, he was a terrible singer, but still.

“Depends how fast you’re eating. And then the murmur of the restaurant underneath, a steady pulse, that city sound . . . woodwinds.”

“You know the ‘city sound’?” I grinned. “You’ve been here less than a week.”

“I got it right away. It’s different from DC, even.” Oscar’s eyes met mine drowsily. “Maybe it takes an outsider to hear it.”

It didn’t. I knew it by heart. I listened with him all the way to Fifth Avenue.

This music didn’t bother me. It was my autobiography too.

11.

in the cavernous calm of the Met’s Great Hall, closed to all tonight except elite donors and their guests, everyone’s well-shod footsteps echoed in a different key. I heard bits of chatter fragmenting, bouncing directionless.

“Extremely intuitive therapist, probably psychic . . .”

“Seven figures. Could have been low eight if they’d timed it better.”

“Obviously water’s the next big commodity.”

“Off the hook. All day. I need a dog as an excuse to leave . . .”

I glanced at Oscar—his eyes were cast upward, staring at the marble multi-domed ceiling, but judging by his perplexed smile, he was eavesdropping too. His eyes dropped to mine and lit up, a shared joke. What were we doing here? I bit the corner of my lip to keep from laughing.