“Zankou Chicken,” he muttered, shaking his head with a smile. “I was dying.”
“Hey!” I said, embarrassed all over again.
“It was funny, I’m just teasing. And speaking of food, I’m sorry we missed out on the cake. Ms. Makruhi is very proud of her desserts. They take hours. You would have liked it.” He sounded genuinely sad. Maybe it was more for Ms. Makruhi than the sugar.
We stopped in front of the piano. It was a beast, black lacquered, mirror-shiny, with all of its copper strings inside the propped-up lid. “You write your own music?” I asked.
He shrugged with one shoulder. “Mostly fragments. It’s hard to concentrate on anything longer than that these days.”
“But it’s classical?”
“I play other things too. I love all music. But on piano… when I play? It’s always been classical.” He took his hand out of his pocket and touched the keys, tapping out a few staccato low notes.
“Play for me,” I asked.
“Mm…”
“Please?”
He hesitated, squinting one eye, and then hooked his bare foot around the piano bench leg and pulled it out. When he sat, he patted the tufted black leather cushion next to him. “Watch out for my elbow,” he said, but when I made myself small and moved away, he pulled me back closer. Until our thighs touched. “Stay,” he commanded.
“Okay. Staying,” I said softly, looking at his face.
He was excited. There were those hawk eyes again, peering out from the weariness. “This is a couple of movements from a sonata called ‘The Tempest.’ It’s always been one of my favorites to play. Mostly because it always scared Mrs. Calloway, my music teacher in third grade.”
“Oh?”
“I like to improv on it. All right…”
It was so strange to sit here with him. Almost as intimidating as the giant sequoia tree: the piano made me feel small. Maybe it was because only the toes of my flats touched the rug beneath us.
Frida brushed by my foot, sniffing out new territory as Fen stretched out his hands over the keys.
He began to play a slow, haunting melody.
One that quickly exploded into rolling, complex, unrelenting passages that caught me off guard. Frida, too. She jumped back from the piano and barked, but Fen ignored it. His body and arms both arched as he moved up and down over the keyboard,locks of curls hanging in his eyes. It sounded like a storm. It felt like one too. Angry and full of grief. Anguish.
Goose bumps rose over my arms.
My legs.
I was afraid to move for several moments.
But I watched. I listened.
His playing was physical, full-bodied. He lurched over the piano like a dark vulture, and I felt every sinewy muscle flexing in his graceful movements, even in his thigh as he pushed the pedal below with his bare foot. And I felt the anguish in the notes he was playing as if I were a sponge, soaking each one up as rapidly as he rolled them out. I carried them inside me, riding out all the feelings they were whipping up until they changed—
The storm subsided into a softer movement. His playing slowed and sobered into something just as dark, but utterly beautiful.
How did he do this? No music in front of him. He’d memorized it. And I didn’t know much about classical music, but I knew talent when I heard it.
A sharp jealousy bit. I pushed it away, but it left its teeth marks in me. I was envious of his talent. Overwhelmingly happy for him too. And then a little scared.
Because a light turned on in the back of my head, and I was suddenly aware of how outmatched I was. Maybe we weren’t Bonnie and Clyde after all, both screwing up at life.
Fen was so much further above Eddie than I could have dreamed.
Shit, shit,shit!
