After standing bewilderedly in the damp basement room for a while, I decided to go through the least scary-looking door and (wishing myself luck) try to find a way out. I followed some weaving flights of stairs up to the main floor of St. Alexis, not wanting to leave yet. It wasn't as if I could have played my violin anyway, what with the crowd of girls outside. Eventually I found myself in the vast sepia-colored sanctuary. Soft beams of dim light crossed the endless rows of pews, creating a fluctuating pattern. The sanctuary was utterly empty, and there was no sound save for the melancholy rustling of the trees outside.

Just as I was musing over the quietness of the church, there came to my ears a soft, sudden noise. It was humming, the sound of somebody humming a tuneless song. It came from the right side of the sanctuary, it seemed. I thought at first that it might have been a lost or homeless child who had wandered into the church for shelter - I had seen it happen before. But the humming was too deep to be from a child.

I made my way along the aisle, looking down the rows of the sea of pews. Then, there, sitting on the floor in the narrow space between two benches, was John Lennon. I saw him immediately because a bright beam of light coming through one of the thick windows lighted his face. He was leaning his back against the wall and his legs were outstretched parallel to the pews and crossed at the ankles.

'Hey,' he said.

'Hello,' I replied. What else could I say? 'Your friends have been looking for you.'

'I would imagine so.'

I sat down on a bench. He wasn't looking at me, but staring at some point in the dark distance.

'I'm going back tonight,' he said, as if he needed to explain himself to me.

'Alright,' I said vaguely, setting my violin case at my feet.

'What do you have there,' he asked without much of a questioning tone, gesturing at the case. He looked at me, it seemed, as if for the first time.

'My violin,' I replied, picking the case up again, onto my lap. I always feel the need to formally present my violin to anyone who asks anything about it - as if I'm introducing them, making acquaintances. I lifted the latches and held up my instrument. John reached out for it and I handed it to him. He tried some fingerings and then strummed the strings as if playing a guitar. It made a muted sound, like drops of water falling softly into a pool.

I grinned a little. 'It's a bit out of tune,' I said, and he handed it back to me. I twisted the weary creaking pegs.

'Play something,' John not so much requested as stated.

'Well, what shall I play, maestro?'

'But I suppose, in this situation, you, not I, would be the maestro…" He said, clearly wanting to end the phrase with my name, but not knowing it he stopped.

'Bria.'

'Yes, Maestro Bria, what shall you play? I don't know.' A pause. 'Something sad.'

Being given the moniker of maestro I thought that I should play something that I myself had created, but none of my own works were at all tolerable, much less to another musician. None of them could really be considered sad either (the only things they seemed to evoke were irritation and calls of 'shut the hell up'). So I decided instead on an old solemn Elizabethan air that I had tried to adapt for violin from a (really rather bad) harpsichord rendition I'd heard long ago.

I stood up and drew my bow across the string. I was a bit shocked by the sound - the acoustics in the cathedral were incredible. I tried not to look at John while I was playing - his eyes and small smile made me lose my concentration, and I was having enough trouble remembering the entire song already.

The air in the sanctuary grew heavy from the sad strains of the song, and from a small glance I saw that John's face had become grave. I couldn't stand the oppressive atmosphere of the gloomy sounds and the gloomier whistle of the weather outside. It had begun to thunder. So I turned the sad song into a crazy cheerful jig by some amazing feat and played it - faster and faster. I walked up and down the aisle of the church, and my long (and creepy, according to most of my friends) black coat billowed behind me. Admittedly, the coat looked like something a nineteenth century gentleman would wear, and therefore I felt suddenly like an old fiddler who had been playing in tiny hamlets for years and years.

After a bit of playing the insane jig, I decided that I (and my aching fingers, and John's eardrums, probably) couldn't take it anymore. So for my finale, I strolled to the pulpit and played three loud double-stops that echoed off of the walls.

John clapped, laughing. I bowed flamboyantly.

'Bravo!' he cried, standing up and shaking out his feet, which had likely fallen asleep. 'I'd request encore as well, but I'd rather get out of this bloody church.'

'I expect the mobs have gone by now,' I said.

His eyes darkened a bit at mention of the hordes of fans. 'Yeh, they've all gone chasing after that limo. Well, what do you think? Do you know of somewhere we can go?'

'Of course,' I replied, and we took the back way out.