The Phoenix

And Larry Gaster never saw Athena Petridis again.

After the helicopter crash, little by little, Larry resumed his career, picking up where he’d left off. In the last decade he’d produced four blockbuster hits and remarried. Twice. Life was good. Until this.

Winding down the window, he picked up his iPad and hurled it out of the car, over the edge of the precipice that dropped down to the valley.

Then, like a small child, Larry Gaster began to cry.

London, England

Peter Hambrecht closed his eyes and lost himself in the music, his baton moving through the air with a grace and fluidity that set him apart from all the other great conductors. Hambrecht was the maestro, the undisputed best in the world. Every musician in London’s Royal Albert Hall felt privileged to be there that night. Because to be swept up in Peter Hambrecht’s genius, even for a moment, was to play to one’s full potential. To shine like a star.

‘Thank you, Maestro!’

‘Wonderful performance, Maestro!’

After the concert, Peter shook hands and signed autographs with his usual good grace. Then he put on his thick cashmere overcoat and walked the few short blocks back to his flat on Queensgate.

The next morning, he saw the picture, the same day it was published. An old friend emailed a copy.

‘I thought you’d want to see this,’ the friend wrote.

That struck Peter as odd. Who in their right mind would ‘want’ to see a picture of a drowned child? But of course, his friend was not referring to the child, only to the emblem burned into his flesh, as if he were an animal or a piece of meat. Peter winced, imagining the pain the poor little boy must have suffered.

Later, the friend telephoned. ?

?Do you think Athena …?’

‘No.’

‘But Peter …’

‘Athena is dead.’

Peter Hambrecht had known Athena Demitris, as she was then, since they were children, and had loved her all his life. She was his best friend, his confidante, the sister he’d never had. In the tiny village of Organi where they grew up, blonde, blue-eyed Athena had been adored by everyone. Dark, shy, effeminate Peter, on the other hand, with his German father and his strange accent and the little piccolo he carried with him everywhere, was an outcast, a favorite target of the local bullies.

‘Hey, Sauerkraut!’ they would taunt him. ‘Why don’t you wear a tutu, so you can dance to that gay classical music you’re always playing? You want us to make you a tutu?’

‘He can borrow my sister’s.’

‘I don’t think he wants a tutu. I think he wants us to jam that flute up his ass. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Sauerkraut?’

Peter never rose to their jibes. But Athena always did, roaring to his defense time after time like a lioness, taking on his tormentors, alive with righteous fury on his behalf.

‘How can you let them talk to you like that? You have to fight back!’

‘Why?’ Peter would ask.

‘They’re calling you gay!’

‘I am gay,’ he shrugged.

‘No,’ Athena insisted, with tears in her eyes. ‘You aren’t gay, Peter. You love me.’

‘I do love you,’ he assured her.

‘More than anything?’

‘More than anything. Just not like that.’