Kathryn Nicolai

and rhythms, and circled back and veered away again.

I looked up at the stage and watched the piano player and the horn player.

They were watching each other,

sometimes nodding in agreement, as if to say, yes, good idea, more of that.

Every now and then, one of them would crack a sudden smile and laugh.

And I realized that someone in the band,

had somehow just told a musical joke.

They were speaking a language that was foreign to me, and I couldn't translate it or say what the joke was.

But what I could hear was beautiful nonetheless.

I watched a little boy, a few rows in front of me.

He was watching the bass player as she thumped up and down the neck of her instrument with confident, strong fingers.

As the horn blew and the melody turned in spirals in the air,

She spun her bass on its end pin and caught it again in time to pluck out the next bit of rhythm.

The little boy clapped his hands and swung his legs in time with the music.

I thought of a moment when I'd felt something similar, a different kind of concert a few years before.

It was in an old roomy theater with creaking wooden seats and an expansive ceiling.

full of symmetrical painted murals framed in moldings that were already a hundred years old.

A friend had pulled a few strings for me, knowing that this particular concert was a moment I'd dreamed of.

She'd gotten me a seat dead center in the very front row.

And when the man had walked on stage and sat down with his cello, I could have nearly reached out and touched him.