Attracted by her unusual skill and determination, Gerald Poulin, first bassoonist in the San Francisco Symphony, has taken on the eclectic 19-year-old Herminda Matta as a student. Living in the same city, they come from different worlds, and Herminda finds an unlikely mentor in Gerald as he prepares her to play Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring with him in the season’s final performance. But music is not the only arena where the lives of this odd couple intersect. While she comes of age, Gerald begins to grapple with his inability to commit to his long-time partner and the likely loss of a close friend to AIDS. Set in San Francisco, 1987, these timeless characters capture not only the essence of this particular place and time, but the heart of what it means to grow together.

Excerpts from Chapter 1

She looked as though she had attempted to dress appropriately for an audition: white blouse, black slacks and one of those tapestry vests that were still popular in the cheap stores of the Mission District. Herminda Matta could have been anywhere from 15 to 20 years old and small, no more than five feet tall, perhaps 100 pounds. There was a line of sweat on her upper lip, as there was on most visitors who were afraid to park on the steep incline and instead hiked up Hill Street to his flat. Beyond her, on the sidewalk, Gerald saw her bassoon case strapped with bungee cords to a luggage tote.

Gerald didn’t know what registered on his face—incredulity? distaste? John said he wore a perpetual look of scorn on his face, even when resting, and Gerald felt bad about this—he didn’t intend to look that way.

But this girl was looking him up and down, too. “That’s Er, like er-ror,” she said, extending her hand, “and Minda, like mean. Herminda.” She rolled her r’s.

Gerald almost laughed out loud.

The voice was cheerful enough, but her face was hard, testy. Not a beautiful face by any accounting—long and brown and thin. Her chin was almost pointed, with a little scar on the end, and one side of her face was the slightest bit heavier than the other. Long black hair fell over her shoulders, cut in a shag style with two hideous wings of bangs swirling off her forehead.

It was her eyes, however, that kept him from laughing—huge and dark in the angular face. An intelligence in those eyes.

“Herminda,” Gerald repeated, and shook her thin hand, looking past her again to the luggage cart. “Gerald Poulin.”

. . . Herminda was no prodigy. At 20, she was too old, for one thing. And prodigies did not make their debut on the bassoon. Gerald knew he made her angry with his unmaskable impatience, but she played better when she was angry. She was in awe of technical competence; the exercise she had chosen for her audition was full of notes. Herminda had a soloist mentality, often pushing the sound to the point of strain, as if she must make herself heard, although the bassoon was rarely heard unless the rest of the orchestra was pianissimo. The horn had many ranges, but primarily it was a background instrument, watchful, not a solo instrument. And although there were bassoon solos written by most of the major composers, they were relatively few. He tried to explain this to her.

When you played enough solos, Gerald thought, you didn’t crave them so much. What you began to desire was the perfection of the whole piece, and so you depended on everyone. The dependence was tiresome; there was a lot of back-biting, and Gerald had done his share. For instance, Sheila Ziesing’s father, the first oboist—such a greasy, homophobic man with those gray polyester suits and thick, smug lips—but when they were coming to Section K, Howard would give him a little nod and suddenly they were playing together. Basically, Gerald disliked Howard, but Howard was a good musician, and they had this intimacy, as he had with the rest of the orchestra. It was like a giant family. You didn’t choose them; you were stuck with them; you depended on them to play well until they left, or retired, or were fired. And they depended on you.

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