Every Note Played(18)
Focused on the numbers on the door and the promise of shelter, she barely registers the FOR SALE sign planted in the minuscule square patch of front lawn as she races past it. Out of breath and shoulders hugging her ears at the top of the stairs, she presses the doorbell and waits. Her hands, wet and lacking circulation and painfully cold, are aching to let go of her peace offerings and find comfort inside her coat pockets. Without a greeting or question as to who’s there, she’s buzzed inside.
When she reaches Richard’s unit, the door is ajar. She knocks as she edges the door open a bit more to be heard. “Hello?”
“Come on in!” a man’s voice, not Richard’s, hollers from somewhere inside. “We’ll be done in a minute!”
Karina enters, steps out of her shoes at the door, and returns to the kitchen, the scene of the crime. The lights are on. The room smells of coffee. The kitchen island and counters are wiped clean and are bare but for three glasses filled to the top with what looks to be vanilla milk shake, a tall straw standing erect in each. There’s no noise, no sign of anyone. She sets the wine and pierogi down on the counter, removes her raincoat, and drapes it over one of the barstools. She waits, not knowing whether to sit or stand, growing increasingly uneasy. Maybe she should find a piece of paper and pen, write a note, and leave.
Her attention wanders to the living room and screeches to a sudden stop, stunned. A wheelchair. A wheelchair unlike any other she’s ever seen. The tipped headrest and seat resemble a dentist’s chair. The two strapped footrests remind her of the stirrups on a gynecologist’s exam table. There are six wheels and shock absorbers and a joystick affixed to one of the arms. This is not a chair for a broken leg. It looks futuristic and barbaric. Cold rainwater drains from her hairline, trickling down her neck. She shivers.
The chair is positioned next to Richard’s piano. She looks again, and the piano is as unfamiliar and formidable as the wheelchair. An inner chill more penetrating than the rain on her skin drips down her spine. The key cover is shut. The music rack is bare. The bench is pushed in. She approaches Richard’s Steinway as if she were trespassing on sacred ground, her mind still disbelieving the incongruity of the sight before her. She hesitates, gathering courage, then slides her index finger along its lid, clearing a thick layer of fine dust, revealing a snail trail of the piano’s glossy black finish.
“Hi.”
She spins around, heart pounding, as if she were a criminal caught in an illicit act. Richard is standing behind a bald man with black-rimmed glasses.
“I’m Bill.” He wields an energetic wide smile, extending his hand to hers. “Richard’s home health aide.”
“Karina.” She shakes his hand.
“Okay, well, that’s it for me. Gotta run,” Bill says. “Melanie will be here for lunch, Rob or Kevin for dinner and bed. You’ve got three shakes in the kitchen. You all good?”
Richard nods. Bill checks something on Richard’s iPhone, worn on his chest and attached to a lanyard hung around his neck like a conference badge.
“Okay, my friend. Call us if you need us. See you in the morning.”
Richard stares at Karina as Bill leaves and says nothing. His hair is wet, combed, and parted too severely and neatly to the side. He looks like a young boy on school-picture day. He’s clean shaven, his face gaunt. His black sweater and jeans hang on him, long and baggy, as if they belonged to a big brother or were borrowed from Bill. Unsettled by the wheelchair, the abandoned piano, Richard’s emaciated appearance and prolonged silence, Karina forgets why she’s here and begins to wonder if he can speak at all.
He notices her apology on the counter.
“Pierogi,” she says. “I’m sure the wine is below your standards, but it’s the thought that counts.”
“Thank you.”
He walks into the kitchen, and that’s when she notices. His arms don’t swing. They sag from his shoulders, still, lifeless. And both hands look wrong, inhuman. The fingers of his right hand are stick straight, flattened. The other hand is fixed in a grotesquely curled claw. He positions himself in front of one of the milk shakes, lowers his head to the straw, and sips.
His arms are completely paralyzed. He watches her absorb this information. She smiles, trying to mask her real reaction, a trench coat wrapped around her naked horror.
“Want to have a seat?” He returns to the living room. “I don’t recommend that one.” He nods at the wheelchair.
The melody in his voice is gone. Every syllable is the same note, softer in volume, and slow, as if each monotone word is being dredged through molasses.
“You can still walk,” she says, confused.
“Ah. That’s my future. You have to order the chair before you need it or I guess you end up getting it six months after you die. I told Bill they might as well deliver my coffin, too.”
He laughs, but the sound of his amusement quickly turns into something else, a runaway choking wheeze, sounding nasty and villainous, gripping him tighter and tighter around the throat as if it aims to kill him. She sits a few feet in front of him, watching, a silent bystander, holding her own breath and strangely paralyzed, not knowing what to do. His final wheeze ejaculates a gob of spittle that lands on the face of his iPhone. She pretends not to notice as it oozes down the screen.
She looks away, over her shoulder, back at the piano and the wheelchair. Richard’s past and future. She thinks of all the time he used to fill learning, practicing, memorizing, perfecting—nine to ten hours and more a day. She looks back at Richard, at his useless hands. What on earth does he do all day now?