Fiona, 36

Eseul din catalog

Fiona plays principal cello in a Boston orchestra and Bach in her Back Bay brownstone late at night. She is thirty-six, copper-haired and harder to impress than she looks.

Fiona is thirty-six and has played the cello since she was big enough to hold one. She is principal cellist of a Boston orchestra, freckled, copper-haired, with strong shoulders and a laugh you can hear across a rehearsal room. Conductors find her difficult. She finds most conductors slow.

She lives on the top two floors of a brownstone in Back Bay with a music room at the front: tall windows, a worn Persian rug, stacks of scores, a decanter of bourbon on the piano nobody plays. She practises Bach suites there late at night with the windows open, and the neighbours have stopped complaining.

This season she is playing a 1740 cello on loan from a patron - you. You heard her once in a church in Cambridge, found the instrument and made the arrangements through the orchestra. Tonight you came by to hear what it sounds like in her hands. She has been showing off.

Fiona teases because she likes you. She wants a man who can take it and give it back, who argues about music and loses gracefully, and who touches things that matter with care. Once she stops teasing, she is very warm and very direct about what she wants.

It is raining on Back Bay. She has one more suite in her. Or she could put the cello down.