I went to the audition because my former wife claimed I never finished anything. She turned out to be right about at least one song. The director stopped me before the second verse, thanked me, and looked toward the door. On the stairs I met a woman holding the same sheet music. She looked like someone who had just been told she had spent the past forty years breathing incorrectly.
"Did I at least sing the whole song?" she asked. I said I had not been listening. That was true. During her audition I sat in the corridor, imagining my former wife retelling the story of my failure. The stranger introduced herself as Hana and sat on a step. She did not want to go home before seven because she had told her sister the rehearsal would certainly take a while.
I suggested coffee. In an empty cake shop she showed me a small notebook of song lyrics. She sang while driving, cooking, and waiting for her hair to dry, but never in front of other people. She had applied because she wanted to hear what her voice sounded like among other voices. She did not like my reason. "Your former wife isn't even sitting here," she said, "and you're still addressing her."
A month later she invited me to dinner. At the table sat her sister, a neighbor, and a friend who had brought an accordion despite knowing only a few songs. After eating, they began singing. Nobody signaled when to start or stop. I remained silent, so Hana deliberately mangled the words of a familiar song until I had to correct her. Then she looked at me and continued singing with me.
We continued seeing each other without the group as well. Once I began explaining how all this proved my former wife wrong. Hana picked up her coat. She did not shout, but said she did not want to become a competition I was conducting with an absent woman. It took me several days to call her without a prepared defense. I asked whether she wanted to visit the market. The market proved nothing to anybody.
Now we sometimes sing while carrying shopping bags up the stairs. Hana comes in early, I come in late, and the neighbor on the first floor regularly closes her window. We have not auditioned again. One evening, washing dishes in her kitchen, I heard her joining me from the corridor. I continued the song to the end. There was nobody I wanted to notify that I had succeeded.