Prick of the Spindle: Fiction: Sommer: Playing from Memory

Playing from Memory
By Bob Sommer

I shouldn’t be here, lingering over the piano in the dining room, paging through the Inventions in my starched white shirt and club tie, with my shoes shined and jacket buttoned. I should be gone. The car keys jangle from my fingers like a dustpan full of glass shards while I flip through the music and hum the No. 8 invention.

Quirky Glenn Gould, you might say. People, some people, roll their eyes when you say you like his Goldberg or his Inventions. Like last winter, when I went to the concert and Ellie didn’t go – said she had a headache; her head was throbbing all day at school, she said – so I went alone and during the intermission this couple in the lobby were talking about whose Goldberg was best (they were raving about some new young Chinese player), and I said Glenn, I liked Glenn’s best. (I’d been standing nearby, watching the crowd, looking around to see who I knew. Couldn’t help hearing them. Almost like they were staging their chatter, like they were waiting for me to speak up.)

—Ahh, Gould! the man said with a nod that was supposed to mean something, a shared something, a presumption, the kind of nod you make when you think you already know what everyone else thinks. No doubters in sight, as if we were in a church lobby or at a Rotary meeting: no atheists or liberals from here to the horizon.

—But who can roar through the fifth variation like Glenn? I asked. He comes at you like a tsunami, I said. The notes rush over you. They engulf you. Sounds you only hear in the speed, when you’re submerged, when you’re swirling in the torrents. Sounds that surround you. Sounds that aren’t written on the page. Like echoes from inside the music. You see what I mean?

The man nodded, his brow arched, his lips in a tight smile, his eyes darting over to his wife and back to me, agreeable enough, sturdily imperturbable, looking as if I’d just announced for no reason at all that I was a vegan or a Scientologist.

(I’d been thinking a lot about the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. That’s how the music sometimes feels. It seemed like the perfect metaphor.)

Then the woman said, —Oh, but there’s the humming! And she turned to her husband. ―All that humming, she said. How can you listen to it?

I was going to say … but just then a girl came by selling chocolates, and the man smiled and the woman did too. They wanted chocolates.

But why not? I was going to say. Why not hum? And why not play whatever tempo you want?

That came later. I read about it. No one can say for sure what’s the right tempo for Bach. People get testy about it, too. But what does that matter now, centuries later? Take the No. 6 invention in E major. Czerny tears through at 144 beats-per-minute, while Schiff plays an easy-going 112. But Glenn – he just picks away. 92 BPM. Playfully. Toying with it. Glenn Gould hunched over a toy piano. His fingers dangle on the keys. Lionel plays Bach.

So now I’m unbuttoning my jacket and pulling the bench out and settling at the piano. Feels strange to sit here in a suit. Maybe I’d wear this suit for a recital. Ellie likes me in this suit, the charcoal gray pin stripe. I noticed in the hallway mirror how it smoothes the bulge over my belt, how it blends with the salty gray at my temples.

The house is empty. She’s already at school, probably grading papers for her first-period class, and Noele stays with her mother all day. Don’t get many chances like this – and she’s heard the No. 8 a few times too many. I can play now without agitating her, without water abruptly hissing into the kitchen sink, or a cabinet door banging, or a pot clanking.

I slide the lid back from the keys and prop the music on the stand, and then, with a quick breath for the eighth rest, I pop the first measure open and sing along in whispered beats: pah-PAH-pah-PAH-pah…. Then I land the F in the second measure firmly with my fourth finger and begin the wondrous descent, like a sun shower full of crystal rain drops, into the counterpoint, where I deftly maneuver the delightful harmony of eighth notes that expand the melody. I relish it, celebrate it; I own it; it’s mine. Errorless, perfect.

Morning light washes the room, sharp, direct, with the sun just over the rooftop across the street – an unfamiliar light. It never brightens the music stand when I play. I never play at this hour.

Music fills the house, which was so still and quiet. No harsh noises to tarnish it, or suppress it. I weave through the minor variation – oh, the countless hours I poured into this section: one, two measures at a time, over and over, slowly, over and over, so slowly, learning it, little by little, gaining speed, and confidence – and now I’m submersed in the tsunami’s waves, riding its tide back to the satisfying major key that lifts the tune, and resolves it.

And now, in the empty house, I settle my hands on my lap as the echoes fade and silence returns, and I imagine the moment before the applause, the stillness of the audience, its wonder, the prelude to applause, a transcendent, a spiritual moment.

I gently close the keyboard lid and grasp the car keys in my fist to avoid jangling them, almost as if the noise would betray me, as if I was an intruder, as if I didn’t belong here, as if it wasn’t my house. The garage door rumbles over the last remnants of music. Out in the driveway, I start the car, breathless now. Had to dash across the vacant garage after I hit the switch and duck under the descending door. Ellie has both garage door openers.

The parking lot’s near full at the Early Bird Café. The other shops in the strip won’t open for hours – a nail salon, a Greek take-out place, a travel agency, the Italian restaurant on the corner that Ellie likes. We haven’t been there in a while. The dry-cleaners is open, but two stern signs warn non-customers away from its parking slots. I used to take my clothes there, but I stopped. I never liked those signs. I land out near the bank ATM. It’ll be busy inside. Might have to wait for a table.

I straighten my jacket and draw a half-rest breath before I pass under the café’s green awning and through its stained oak doors. Fine so far. Flutters, a little stage-fright. Then the sickening smell of a hundred breakfasts hits at once – fried, grilled, boiled, baked. Dishes clatter, flatware clangs. Servers step briskly through the narrows between tables. I sit for a moment on a bench with a hedgerow of ferns behind me. Others wait, too; they talk on cell phones and read newspapers. Through the din of chatter and laughter, I recognize the bright opening notes of the No. 3 sinfonia in the clinking of glasses. I rise and look around. A girl busses a table, scooping dishes into a gray bin, wiping the table, resetting it. She works quickly; she transforms it, as if it had never been used. I imagine the people who’ve come and gone at that table this morning. I think of the mounds of Christmas trees where I recycle ours every year: I always stand there and imagine the living rooms in which they stood. The bus girl is gone. The hostess seats a pair of women in dark suits.

Then, from behind the fern plants, at the table on the other side, I recognize Sherry, sitting sideways to me. She’s thin, slight, with sharp features, all creases and angles, leaning forward on her elbows, chin high, eyebrows arched: listening mode, open face. I know the drill. Read the same self-improvement book she did, some of it. Her copy, in fact. She gave it to me as I left her office after my review last year. Said, ―Read this, Keith. Everyone I know has read it. But I only read a couple of chapters – all the bubble charts and aphorisms. Seemed like it twisted life into something unreal, unnatural, like trees espaliered to grow flat against a wall, bound with thin, cutting wires to train their limbs, stray branches clipped, their nature denied. I don’t recognize the others at her table. Might be a job interview. That’s it. She’s looking. No doubt. And right here in public, too.

Now I step back, out of her sightline, and scope the room to see who else I might know, and there, at a booth by the window, I see Bruce. Bruce Monson. Ellie never liked him. He called her a gal one time. That was it. But whatever. He’s your biggest account. What’re you going to do? Table hasn’t ordered yet either. Only three of them – an extra seat. I should hurry. I smile and step past the hostess. —Just saw some friends, I say, and she smiles back. She hears that a dozen times every morning.

Sherry probably sees me pass her table, but I stay focused, eyes on the prize, like in the book.

Now laughter erupts at Bruce’s table. The waitress has her pad out. They all have their jackets off and wear bright ties. Bruce glances up as I squeeze around the server, a quick look, vacant, and then he looks away like I’m just another customer stepping past. No recognition. One of those looks, I’m guessing, where you don’t really see what you’re looking at, like the roadside passing by while you drive, but when I stop at the table and the others turn my way, he looks back again, and his face seems to stretch, as if the skin was pulled from behind, drawing his thick lips into a smile, and he says, —Why, Keith, that’s you, ain’t it? Where you been these days? His smile widens. His face shines from a fresh scrubbing and close shave. He has dark, thick eyebrows, and he brushes his hair straight back from a widow’s peak low on his brow. He wears suspenders and glittering cufflinks.

I flick my head with a grin, like I just recognized him too, like I just happened by. You can hear golf junkets and fishing trips in his Oklahoma drawl. There’s warmth in it, real warmth; he’s not faking it; that’s what he is – that voice, the fishing trips, the golf games. Ellie never got that, his warmth. I let myself flow into his current now. Just let myself go. I’m rolling into it, letting it carry me. I hear some Okie in my voice now.

I hear myself, my own voice, saying, —Plannin’ my work and workin’ my plan! and I add a laugh, and I glance at the other faces at the table, and now I remember how Bruce’s accent ebbs and flows. Big time Okie when the camera’s pointed at him.

The server is still waiting, stiffly now – she has other tables. The two men with Bruce hold their menus up like hymnals.

(Which I almost wince when I say, as if it wasn’t chance at all, me passing by.)

He glances at the others and pauses. —Well, no sense eating alone. Why not join us, if you like?

He finally gave up. Just couldn’t play in public any longer, never really wanted to – the audiences overwhelmed him; it was too much; he couldn’t block out all those faces, couldn’t be sure what would happen when he played, how it would sound, how they’d react.

—Just about to. Have a seat, Keith. This gal’s got business to do. C’mon and siddown. Already know what I want.

He hands me his menu. The table ruffles itself to make room. The man across from him redistributes the jackets and folders on the seat.

Menu in hand, I slide in and order last. Toast and a small OJ. As the waitress bustles off to another table, Bruce introduces the others: Beside him, Matt, a heavy man, with jowls and thin hair, and next to me, Aaron, with fair, almost effeminate features and a schoolboy wave combed up atop his forehead.

Matt reaches across the table to shake hands, frowning, serious. —The twelve-step meeting for friends of Bruce is at my house tonight.

Bruce bellows a laugh. Aaron chuckles lightly, a series of sniffs. He shakes my hand. ―It’s a pleasure to meet you, Keith, he says. His grip is tight and his voice sincere. Irony doesn’t suit him, you can tell.

He and Matt burst into laughter, and I laugh too, but not quite as loud, more like supporting notes in the bass clef.

Aaron smiles, a rubato smile, and I settle in, connected now, me and Aaron on one side, Bruce and Matt across from us, like teams.

—Never better! Bruce says. Figured out the secret to this business! He gives a conspiratorial nod and waits for someone to ask what the secret is.

—Boomers? I ask, keeping my face open, my eyebrows arched high. I notice Sherry’s group getting up from their table. She might have looked this way, but I don’t look back.

The food soon arrives. Bruce and Matt both have platters of eggs, sausages, hash browns, and extra dishes for toast and grits. Aaron has a yolk-free omelet, a plate of fruit, and tea that he sweetens from a packet of honey. My toast and juice look spare beside this feast. I wonder if I should have ordered more food.

Bruce nods with a mouthful of eggs. —Only one thing matters, he says. What the boomers want next. They’re done with rentals, done with starters, done with moving up, done with McMansions. Now it’s on to retirement communities. But we don’t call them that, do we? He nudges Matt, who’s poking his tongue at a forkful of hot grits.

Matt articulates his words, with the fork suspended before his mouth, ―Active-Adult-Communities. Then he slurps the grits down.

Bruce laughs, —Lipstick on a pig, you ask me! But that’s what they want – walkin’ trails, health clubs, big bathrooms – got to have those big bathrooms! – but now they’re on the main floor. Got addicted in the McMansions. Big bathrooms and big closets. Closets bigger than the living room in that little two-bedroom bungalow in Edmond where I grew up. Ain’t that true, Aaron?

Aaron nods. —Marble tops on the vanities, he says. We have a dozen choices from all over the world, Keith. You have your Bianco Antico, a gorgeous polished granite from Brazil; your Italian Lapidus, veined marble in brown or gold; your Amazon Forest. And from Spain, there’s your Golden Oasis, and then your Karoo Gold. That’s from Africa…

―Kin name every one of ‘em, too, like the twelve apostles, Bruce says, as if flipping the catalogue shut.

Aaron tinkles the spoon in his tea and turns to me. ―Double sinks, designer fixtures, cedar closets with built-in automatic tie racks. You ought to come down and see the models. Maybe you and your wife are wondering where you’ll retire.

—You give me a call, he says, and hands me a card with Bruce’s logo on it: Monson Properties, with a little roof and chimney outlined above the words. I remember the day we showed him that logo design.

—That’s it! he said. That’s it! You don’t need to show me another. And he signed the contract that day – radio, print, local TV ads. He loved doing the TV ads. Oklahoma poured through the monitors. On every night between the news and Leno, wearing his suspenders and cufflinks, walking the driveways and front porches and cavernous living rooms of his new subdivisions.

I hold the card in both hands to read it, the way Japanese businessmen do, like in Sherry’s book, a sign of respect. Vice President for Development, it says beneath Aaron’s name.

Bruce spreads a shiny glob of butter on his toast and glancing across the room, says, ―Hey, looka that!

We all turn and watch a soldier in dress uniform and a young woman in a skirt and white blouse follow the hostess to a booth. Other diners turn also. His jacket is a colorful patchwork of clusters and pins. A blue cord hangs from the epaulet on his right shoulder. His hair is buzz-clipped down to his mole-speckled skin. A dark tuft of hair caps his head like a blackened shoebrush.

Bruce looks around at each of us now, his lips pursed, his eyes glistening. ―Keeps things in perspective, don’t it?

We nod. We agree. He becomes fidgety and looks around for the server, who comes over when he waves.

Her eyes never find him when she nods, but she knows where he is, knows who Bruce means. Anyone would.

—Nobody pays for anything there, he says. I got that. He reaches in his pocket and slides a fifty from his billfold, adding, That should take care of it. You and their waitress split the tip. And as she starts away, he says, —And another thing, honey. He don’t know who bought breakfast. That’s just between us, okay? She smiles and pockets the bill, and he watches her whisper to the other waitress. Then both look over at Bruce, who winks as they smile back, now accessories.

We all nod at Bruce, full of admiration. We’re all participants, sitting at the table that anonymously paid the soldier’s breakfast tab.

We talk about main-floor master bedrooms and maintenance-free living until the flatware rests on the plates and the last sip of coffee has been sipped. The waitress arrives with checks for each of us. Money is shuffled all around like playing cards; tips flutter to the table; everyone slides out of the booth and into their jackets.

I shake hands with Aaron and Matt, and say to Bruce, —You guys go ahead. I’m gonna have a little more coffee. Just saw someone I know.

Bruce lingers as the others go up to the cashier and then leans over and quietly says, ―Listen, Keith, I’m really sorry. It had nothing to do with you. In fact, I called Mel Haworth and told him that. I said you did a great job. Just changed our strategy is all, trying some new things. The old campaign wasn’t part of it. Hope you understand. Nothing to do with you. Hope things worked out.

I watch him wind through the tables, watch the laughter and shoulder-slapping as Matt grabs a toothpick at the front counter and the three men leave the restaurant, and then I pour coffee from the carafe.

Bruce’s tip is almost half the cost of his breakfast – six dollars in singles and coins, as if he was cleaning the junk out of his pocket. The others weren’t quite as generous, but the waitress did well. Plus she has a big tip coming from the soldier’s table. My bill is less than five dollars. I only ate half a slice of toast and didn’t finish the juice. After a glance around, I reach for the creamer by Bruce’s place with my left hand. (I drink my coffee black, so now I’m wondering if anyone noticed that my coffee was black but now I’m adding cream.) With my arm stretched across the table for the cruet, I use my right hand to slide Bruce’s singles back toward me, leaving the coins behind. Now I pour cream into my cup, and in a nimble counterpoint, I crumple the bills in my fist and tuck them into my pocket.

I stir my coffee, take a sip, and hold my wrist up to eye-level to look at my watch. Oh, the time! my surprised look says to no one in particular.

As I pass the soldier’s table, the waitress is delivering the news that another customer bought their breakfast. The soldier and his girlfriend look around, but the server says, ―Oh, he’s gone. He didn’t want you to know. But she smiles at me, and the soldier catches my eye, now grinning curiously, gratefully, and I wink, and then pay my bill at the counter with the crumpled singles.

The car seems to find its way to the office on its own. Same route, same turns, same traffic lights, year after year. Morning sunlight shimmers on the rose-tinted windows of Benson-Haworth. I pass Sherry’s silver Beamer in the lot and a dozen other familiar cars. At the side door, smokers cluster around the outdoor ashtray, which resembles an oversized gourd with its slender post rising up to receive their butts. I decide to avoid the gauntlet. I park at the edge of the lot and listen to NPR while they smoke, but the news comes on – another suicide bombing in Iraq – so I snap the radio off and wait in the quiet car. Across the highway, the music store has a banner up advertising a piano sale. I start the engine and head back out of the lot.

It feels conspicuous in the store at this early hour. I’m the only customer. Behind the counter a guy in dreadlocks plucks at a guitar as he strings it with a crank handle on the tuning pegs. He doesn’t even look up as I pass on the way to the music bins. The whiny plunking continues; the notes ascend seamlessly, like one-way sirens. He cranks and picks, and sometimes sings along with the exotic tuning sounds. Within them I hear the opening of the No. 1 invention, repeated over and over in different keys, in off-colored whining notes like sitar music. I learned that one years ago.

So much music to learn and play. I leaf through a book of intermediate masterpieces from when I took up lessons again a few years ago. I hum a measure here and there; I hear myself playing; I recall the intricate fingerings in difficult passages I worked through at painfully slow tempos until I mastered them. Wasn’t easy finding a teacher who took adults. I went to her house every Tuesday night for almost three years and sat on a bench in her hallway. I waited beside the parent of the child whose lesson was in progress (they turned over several times in those years). We couldn’t talk much. The space was tight and the lesson underway right around the corner. —Where’s your child? they sometimes asked in voiceless undertones. Then, the blank look, the tight smile. One man – just once I saw this – his look: he wished it was him taking lessons. He didn’t say so, but I saw it – his eyes softened; he hesitated; he whispered, —That’s really wonderful. And I nodded back. Yes, it is, I thought. I’ll play for both of us, for you too. I only saw him once. His wife usually brought their daughter. Mostly I just fingered passages on my lap while I waited my turn.

I browse the music and admire the dazzling pages of The Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier. I have copies of both, but they’re beyond my reach. I still can’t play all the Inventions and Sinfonias, which Bach wrote as preparation for the WTC. Not ready yet. But here they are, the Inventions. And the pianos are over there – the sign said they were on sale. I take the music into the showroom. A woman talks on the phone in a nearby office, taking an order for band music.

I select a Steinway upright and prop the music on the stand, trying not to break the book’s spine, but the pages flutter willfully when I open to the No. 4 sinfonia, so I finally run my thumb down the center of the book and arrange myself at the bench, and then I begin the mournful opening. I play softly, unobtrusively, trying to blend into the white noise of the store. The guitarist leans over the counter for a look and then goes back to the guitar, now finger-picking a chord progression. The notes on the page are the same as my book at home, but it’s not the same edition so I struggle with the unfamiliar layout. The patter of conversation continues from the office. The keyboard action is quick, the tone crisp; I play more easily now.

Then, in the aisle, I’m aware of someone approaching. Maybe I shouldn’t have played, should have asked first, shouldn’t have brought the book over here. I miss a note and stop.

—Keep going, the man says, nearly at my shoulder. You sound good, he adds. Bach sounds best on a Steinway, don’t you think?

—Maybe not so good today, I say, though I thought it sounded fine till then, till I noticed him moving toward me, like a silhouette fluttering in a shower curtain.

A blood sport, that’s what Glenn called playing in front of people. Anything can happen. You can’t control the outcome.

—You play professionally? the salesman asks. His tie hangs short of his belt, and he wears pinkie rings on both hands but no wedding ring.

—Best way to buy a piano. Play a lot of them before you decide. But I’ll tell you – well, you probably know, since you’re already sitting here at a Steinway – most people start out buying an instrument and end up with furniture. They want the woodwork and curly-cues and spindly legs and fancy music stands. His hands dance sarcastically, fingering the air. But a real musician – like you, for instance – you’re buying a musical instrument. You take this instrument – this Steinway – plain flat-black design; simple, unornamented upright, but it’s a better piano than almost any baby grand over there. He wags a hand dismissively at a herd of baby grands, all crowded together like doomed cattle.

—Say, the salesman continues, I’ve got something for you. A little treat. Don’t worry, probably out of your price range, but don’t worry about it … you got a few minutes to see something special?

I follow him down the aisle, and he throws open the French doors alongside the showroom and leads me into a recital hall.

—Some of our teachers hold recitals here, he says. Win-win all around. Lots of traffic in the store and happy parents and kids, though it gets crazy some days. I’ll know I didn’t make it to the pearly gates if I come to and hear ‘Heart and Soul’ playing everywhere. Now, why don’t you go up and try out that Steinway? Ever play one like that, a full concert-grand?

—That’s the model D. Eight-foot eleven and three quarter inches long – exactly! Measured it myself after I saw that figure on the specs. Now this one – been rented out dozens of times to the symphony. Always keep it in tune. Costs over a hundred thousand! Go ahead, play it. It’ll give you a standard. You can measure every piano you ever play against this one. The kids don’t appreciate it … don’t know what they have in front of them when they sit there and play their little recital tunes, but a musician like you will – you’ll know.

—Enjoy it, he says, handing me the book. Give it a whirl. You’ll never want anything but a Steinway.

He gives me a thumbs-up as he pads down the steps and out through the French doors, closing them behind him.

With the top propped open like a lean-to and the strings receding into the shadow of the cover on the golden bronze plate before me, I hold the music book and breathe the aura of this wondrous instrument. I imagine the music that’s been played on it. Maybe the same piano I heard at the concert Ellie missed. It is. I’m certain now. The same gleaming wood. The room is quiet. The pages rattle as I open the book on the stand, now pushing the binding all the way back, flattening it.

I’ve opened to the No. 6. Gould at the toy piano. Each hand trades notes, beginning an octave apart; the left ascends and the right descends. I’ve almost memorized it. My teacher says my fingers have learned it. The music is just a prompt. I strike the opening E and play fearlessly into the empty hall. Oh, the piano is bright and clear! But the quiet when I’m done feels different than this morning. I imagine the room full of people in the chairs below – people I know: Ellie, with Noele squirming on her lap; Bruce and the others from breakfast; Sherry; the soldier and his girlfriend; the smokers outside the office. They sit and wait for something else, not music, something else, but I don’t know what else I have to give them, so I play it again, the same piece, even better this time, more quickly. I hum as I play. I hunch over the piano, like Glenn. I lose myself in the music. I throw my head back at the end of the piece. And then I play more; I go on to other tunes in the book, all the ones I can play. I play them all.

I don’t know long has passed, but the French doors open at the end of a piece, almost as if the salesman had been waiting, and he smiles as he approaches and asks, —So how’s that feel? Pretty good?

I have to say something, but nothing comes, no words. Sometimes there’s so much inside that there are no words. That’s why there’s music.

—Rock hard maple, he says, rapping a knuckle on the wood. Ebonized birch, tapered soundboard – just like a violin. He turns and admires the piano, running his palm along the curve like a tiny surfboard on a wave. You won’t find a better instrument. Care to look at some uprights now?

But I stay at the cushioned bench, settled there. Too comfortable to leave. I touch the keys lightly as if I were stroking Ellie’s breast, as if she were swelling under my fingers.

His abruptness seems crude and his presence voyeuristic. I can’t even look at him. ―Mind if I play a little more? I ask. I mean, if no one needs the room.

His smile freezes for a moment, and he glances toward the door, as if imagining us both strolling through it and into the row of uprights, and then he shrugs, pushing his lips upward. —Sure, shouldn’t be a problem. But this time he leaves the door open, and he’s not gone long before he returns, now tapping on the stage floor. —Sorry, my friend, but we have someone coming in and need the space.

I walk past him, past the counter, past the guitarist, who watches me, still picking.

From the door, I hear the salesman calling over the pianos, —Hey, what about the music? I thought you were going to buy that!

It’s late morning now. I’m hungry, so I drive through McDonald’s and buy French fries and then go to the pond in the office park. The ducks cluster at the water’s edge when I take a bench and I toss them pieces.

I arose early today – before dawn. A quick nap would be good, keep me sharp. A power nap. The book said they were good for you, good for business. I doze in the driver’s seat and drift through the muted noise of car doors and voices. Sometimes I recognize a song on a car radio.

A lawn mower erupts nearby, and for a moment I wonder where I am. My mouth is dry and my lips crusty; my jacket and shirt are rumpled. I can’t see anyone like this. Besides, I need to check some leads in the business directories at the library, so I drive there and wash my face in the men’s room, tucking my shirt in, straightening my tie.

I pull a couple of heavy volumes from the shelves in the reference section and browse them, but soon I’m thirsty and on my way back from the water fountain I notice the CD racks and the carrels with headphones. It’s like finding money in the pocket of pants you haven’t worn for a while – The French Suites are here, and the English and the Italian, sometimes two or three versions of the same work. I grab a fistful of disks and settle at one of the carrels and put on headphones, switching from one pianist to another, listening to their different touches, their accents, their tempos. Kids wander into the library with backpacks. School’s out. They fill the banks of computers; they throw themselves into lounge chairs nearby. They gossip on cell phones. They toss paper balls at each other. They eat snacks.

My health club is on the way to the office. Sometimes I take an afternoon break there when I’m working late. Gives me a lift.

My gym bag hasn’t been repacked since my last visit, but I just shake out the wrinkled clothes in the parking lot. Who cares once you work up a sweat? I watch people come and go at the front door while I repack the bag. Gets busy around now, as dusk approaches. Cars roll into the lot. At the door, I fall in with a few other members as they pass the front desk, calling out membership numbers to the attendant, who taps them into a computer. I’m already around the corner and in the passageway to the men’s locker room when the attendant calls, —Sir? Sir!

—No problem, I say. He’s seems contrite. It’s busy. I give my number and start away again, but now the boy says, —Uh, sir, could you give me that again. Sorry.

I repeat it, and now he scowls at the computer, frustrated as he fields numbers from other members who sweep past the counter. He picks up the phone, and another rings at the service desk across the hallway, and soon a trim young woman in a golf shirt bearing the health club’s logo and a brass name tag that says MICHELLE stands before me. —Hello, Mr. Gibbons! Glad to see you again! Can you step over this way? She gestures out of the hallway and over to the service desk.

—Is there a problem? I ask, following her. I guess the payment was late, I add.

She smiles, a fixed smile, one that endures complaints, questions about bills, inappropriate behavior; a smile that resolves problems and quells concerns, that seeks a happy ending for everyone. Now, looking at the computer screen at her desk, she says, —Yes, well, not late. It lapsed several months back. We’d have to reinstate it… She stares at the screen, wiggles the mouse, taps the keyboard, and then looks up, refreshing her smile. —But we could do that today. I could wave the initiation fee. How would that be? Would you like to renew the membership? We can use most of the data here and save a lot of paperwork.

—Oh, I see. It lapsed. The word sounds strange to me. I mouth it – lap-sd, laps-d. My lips widen before they collapse on the p. I look at MICHELLE, wondering if she’s noticed the word’s oddness.

—Ah, yes. Well… I’m sorry. She seems more regretful than I am, and then she adds, But how about if I give you a guest pass today, and then next time you’re in we can set it up?

Before I can respond, she says, —Here, Mr. Gibbons. Here’s a pass. She scribbles on the back of her business card and hands it to me, and I take it in both hands and read her name and thank her.

—Enjoy your workout! MICHELLE says, as she leaves her desk to talk with another member.

I watch a few members pass, look into the snack bar, where the smoothie machine whirrs and people watch TV. The clanking of weights drifts over the railing from upstairs. Now the effort to run on a treadmill or pedal on a cycle seems overwhelming. I retreat out the front door, the card still in hand.

The roads glimmer in endless streaks of headlights and taillights – cells in the veins and arteries of a single organism, one creature, now restless, breathing quick, shifting itself, rolling over, wandering from this place to that in a dark forest, guided only by instinct and scent, its figure unknowable to the cells that shape it, its nature unimaginable to them.

Escaping the crowded roads and now entering our subdivision, I’m greeted by the gushing limestone fountain at the entry, its floodlit waters splashing and rippling to welcome home the workforce troops from their day of labor, from tilling the fields of the economy, where they added that much more to their retirement plans, got that much closer to making the mortgage payment, earned a few days of groceries, covered the credit card interest, and maybe put something into the college fund this month.

Our house glows in warm amber from the front windows like a Thomas Kincaid painting, but there’s nothing sentimental or clichéd about how it appears now, in reality. The other houses, the street, the cars, all fade into a mist that surrounds this one house. Ellie’s here. I picture Noele playing on the carpet in the hearth room while she makes dinner. Through the prism of tinted glass in the panel beside the front door I can see them. They both look up as the doorbell chimes.

Ellie opens the door, with Noele perched on her hip, pink legs dangling, her round dark eyes staring curiously at my shadowy figure.

Ellie’s face and shoulders droop. Exasperation, perhaps pity – her skirt rustles with irritation. Then she tilts her head, draws a breath, and her eyes soften, as if I were a child who keeps dirtying his clothes in the same mud hole. A familiar pendant with the turquoise figure of Trickster dangles between her breasts, pushing on her sweater, defining them. I bought the pendant for her on vacation in New Mexico years ago. Her chin has thickened and her hips have widened since then, but her skin retains its freshness, though the glow in her eyes has faded.

—You can’t stay here tonight, Keith, she says, unlatching the outer door and pushing it open.

I take the baby in my arms as I step inside. Instant recognition follows: she squeezes my neck.

Ellie returns to the stove and says, —If you called I would have made enough for two.

I settle cross-legged on the floor in my jacket and suit with Noele while Ellie cooks and then I bring the baby to the table and set her in the booster seat when her place is set.

Ellie hasn’t put any food at her own place. The crêpe pan is on the stove and the bowl of batter on the counter. She snaps the burner off now, a sharp snap. She won’t eat until I leave. She sits beside Noele to feed her, guiding the fork, wiping her cheeks, while I stand by and watch.

I sit across from Noele, watching her eat, watching Ellie feed her, businesslike, quiet, not chattering with her as she usually does.

—I spoke to an agent yesterday, she says. The market’s terrible, but he says we can sell quickly if we price it right, if we’re not greedy … he didn’t say it that way, but that’s what he meant. She scrapes the bowl, with its parade of bunnies marching around the rim, and adds, ―There’ll be something left. We’ll each have something when it’s sold.

In the unlit dining room my music is still on the piano, where I left it this morning.

—You’re in your good suit, she says, brightening now. Did you have an interview?

I have to think for a moment, trying to recall. —Had breakfast with Bruce and a couple of his people, I say. Ran into Sherry, too.

—That’s something! I’ll bet he needs salespeople. She’ll give you a good reference. Why wouldn’t she?

—We’ll see, I respond, getting up from the table. I just want to get something.

I go into the dining room and flip on the light, and then gather the music from the stand and a few other books from the stack on top of the piano. The keyboard lid is shut, as I left it. I tap my fingers on it, idly, tap the rhythm of the No. 2, as if playing the keys hidden beneath it. I think of them, in the stifling darkness, the utter blackness, still, silent, buried alive, and I begin to lift the cover, just to let them breathe, knowing I shouldn’t, knowing what happens next before it happens.

I set the cover down and pull my hand back, and then return to the kitchen, where I brush Noele’s hair lightly and kiss her on the forehead.

Ellie takes my hand as I start away from the table and says, —You should call, that’s all. If you’d just call first… it’s too hard this way.

I nod and leave, and notice how the door latch clucks the first two notes of the No. 13 sinfonia as it shuts.

Bob Sommer’s first novel, Where the Wind Blew, was published in 2008 by the Wessex Collective. His work has appeared in literary, scholarly, commercial, and on-line publications, including Rain Taxi, Chronogram, The Kansas City Star, Cantaraville, Hudson Valley Magazine, American Literature, Southern Humanities Review, American Book Review, New Letters Review of Books, Centennial Review, New England Quarterly, Studies in American Fiction, and others. His personal essay, “No, We’re Not from Texas,” appeared in Prick of the Spindle, Vol. 2.2. He is currently working on a novel set in contemporary eastern Kansas. He blogs at Uncommon Hours.