Page 20 of Play Me

But I love it.

The simplicity, the pure classical form of question and answer. I wonder if there’s been a single day since I learned the piece myself when I haven’t played it. I know this piece like most people know how to breathe. It just comes naturally from somewhere within me. An involuntary action that comes from somewhere in the very genetics of your body, your cells.

The music coming from my fingers lifts my spirit and I feel it start to erase the stress and worry of the day away.

“Da dum dum da... da da da dumm.”

I think I’m smiling as I hum along which would probably look silly to someone who couldn’t feel what I’m feeling, as the music permeates my body and mind.

My fingers can feel the ending is coming and I have to hold them back to stop them from rushing to the end and let it come as Beethoven intended. In the notes’ own pace and time.

I giggle a little. And then giggle at my giggle. I shouldn’t be so happy at playing such a common, simple piece. But to me that’s the best music of all.

A clap from the doorway startles me and I can see a reflection in the piano’s polished woodwork even before I turn.

He’s back.

SEBASTIAN

I watch the kids stream out of the school’s double doors. There are more than I imagined could be crammed into what looks like an average-sized school building.

While I wait for the school to empty I count the windows and wonder which one is Cadence’s classroom. And if she’s there looking out at me.

I can’t believe I’m here. Like some creepy stalker, scouring the Australian coast looking for a woman I met in a store for two minutes once. Put like that, it really does make me sound crazy. But the crazy part is that it doesn’t feel wrong at all.

Why I’ve felt like I can’t take a full breath unless I’m in her presence since the moment we met, I don’t know. Why when I touch her, the air around us can’t even contain the excitement and breaks into sparks, I don’t know. Why when I saw her in the store, in the front row of my own concert, in the dark alley, nothing else seems to focus and all I can see is her, I don’t know. It just is.

When I opened my greenroom door to see the rosin box and my note laying there on the floor, discarded, I told myself to stop. Stop chasing her, stop thinking about her, stop wondering about what it would be like to be with her. Stop playing over and over the short but quippy conversations we’d had that had left my mind reeling and my body wanting.

And my resolve had held strong, and it had lasted...a night. And this morning, first thing, I had Hank drive me to the music store where it had all started and it had led me here.

I don’t know why she didn’t come see me last night.

But I am going to find out why, and I am going to change her mind.

***

The hallways are empty when I walk through them. I cringe a little at the latent smell of high school boy that’s lingering and I wonder how many of these lockers house rotting sandwiches and month-old fruit.

I pass door after door, staring into abandoned classrooms, chairs left haphazardly around the room, dust still billowing in the air from cleaned blackboards. Five, six, seven rooms I’ve counted and still no Cadence to be seen.

But now, I can hear a soft tinkling from somewhere in the distance. It’s so soft, it almost feels like I’m imagining it. But my brain recognizes it before I do, and as I make my way to the further classroom down the hall, I can hear myself humming along to the melody of “Fur Elise”.

The door to the classroom is open, and the sound is crystal clear now. I don’t have to look to know who’s playing. It’s her. It can only be here.

Her touch on the piano is exquisite, and I want to just close my eyes and let the music envelop itself around me. This piece that has been so overplayed, it’s been relegated to almost a clichéd, banal experience, is coming alive to me like it hasn’t in years. Somehow she’s made this composition, this elevator, phone hold, cell phone ringtone music sound like what it was originally supposed to be...a love song. “Fur Elise”, for Elise...a music composed out of love, a gift from Beethoven to a beloved.

She breathes life, she imbues love back into it.

I creep to the doorway and peek around.

I watch her lost in her own performance. She’s smiling softly and swaying slightly. Her eyes are closed and she seems so at peace. And I know what that feels like. But it thrills me to see it manifested in her as well.

This woman...she could understand me. When so many other have tried and failed.

The familiar song is coming to an end and I feel my face flush at the thought of confronting her.

Get it together man, I psych myself up. I can’t remember the last time I was nervous talking to a woman, but everything feels new with her, and as if there’s so much as stake.