Every Note Played(27)
That first day of Technique class, Karina was wearing a lavender scarf wrapped around her long brown hair. He remembers her big green eyes and pale skin, her plump bottom lip distracting him from the lecture as he imagined how soft it would feel to kiss it. Then she spoke, called upon by Sherman Leiper. He can’t remember the question, but he can still remember the sound of her answer in that Polish accent, her perfectly charming broken English. He sat there captivated, fascinated, turned on, jealous that she wasn’t speaking to him. Her voice was a melody of exotic sounds and intonation, a song he wanted to learn.
He loved the melody of her voice, but it was her fearlessness that he eventually fell in love with. At eighteen, she’d left her country, her family, her first language, everything she knew. Although his story was less dramatic, he felt a kinship in this. They had a common independence, a sense of no return, that music would be their savior, that everything was riding on this education. Curtis was Richard’s path to freedom and fulfillment, and he found Karina on that same path with him, matching him stride for stride, holding his hand, smiling next to him. Their mutual passion for playing the music of Chopin and Schumann bled into a passion for each other. Their relationship at Curtis was heady and intense, their days and nights consumed in classes, lessons, practice, and sex.
Richard sighs as the bitter memories rise up from the shadowed corners of his mind, dialing into vivid focus. He’s surprised they held back from intruding for as long as they did. It’s hard for him to visit those old, happy memories of Karina without every horrible memory demanding equal viewing. In good times and in bad. The good and the bad—insoluble elements, prime numbers, oil and water. His good and bad memories of Karina don’t blend, balance, neutralize, or cancel each other out, and he’s stuck holding both, perfectly intact.
Videos from his memory bank play—their first coffee date in the student lounge, the first time they had sex, the last time they had sex, watching her play piano, which was always feeling her play piano, her green eyes loving him when he got his first big break, playing with the Cleveland Orchestra, her green eyes hating him at the dinner table after they moved to Boston, the morning Grace was born, Karina’s surgery, the day everything he believed unraveled—and too many emotions run through him. He’s happy, in love, betrayed, heartbroken, overcome with lust, disgust, rage, regret. The release he needs is laughter or crying or screaming or possibly all three, which would be fine if he were home and not on a bench in the Public Garden. The people walking by will think he’s nuts. He feels a little nuts.
He needs to get Karina off his mind. He’ll walk back home now. Walking will consume all of his mental energy and focus.
He’s standing next to the statue of George Washington when the laxative kicks in. A massive cramp seizes his large intestine, followed by urgent pressure, a five-day-late freight train barreling into the station, right now. The pain and fear of losing control keep him pinned in place, unable to move. But he must. He’s three blocks from home.
A few steps onward and the cold air against the sweat on his forehead makes him feel clammy, sick, as if he might pass out. He’s not going to make it. He has to. He reinstates his pep talk. Keep going. Five days of stagnant waste are now in motion, insisting on evacuation, and the struggle to walk combined with the struggle to hold it all in brings tears to his eyes. Keep going. Keep. Going.
Through sheer will and some kind of a miracle, he reaches his front step. The urge to shit is now screaming full tilt, a peristalsis of feces and water churning inside him, pressing downward. He won’t be able to hold it in much longer.
Dipping his chin to his chest, he summons all of his strength and pours it into his voice.
“Launch voice control. Call Beverly Haffmans.”
The phone rings and rings and rings and rings.
“Hi, you’ve reached Beverly Haffmans. Please leave a message after the beep.”
“Beverly, it’s Richard Evans, your neighbor. I’m at the front door. Are you there? Open the door if you get this message. Please. I need to get in. . . . End call.”
Shit. Where did she go? He presses her doorbell with his chin. No one answers. Unable to think of what else to do, he tries calling her again. The phone rings once and goes straight to voice mail.
“End call.”
He literally held his shit together with the promise to his body that he would relieve himself when he got home. He can’t pull down his pants, but he imagined soiling himself in the privacy of his own bathroom. Now that he’s on the stoop, he has no reserve left. His bowels have run out of patience and composure, and he swears he can feel the pressure in his eyeballs.
He has nowhere to go. Public restrooms aren’t an option. He has no hands. He could call 911, the lesser of two humiliating options. Wait. He remembers his other neighbor.
“Launch voice control. Call Peter Dickson.”
The phone rings twice.
“This is Peter.”
“Hi, Peter, this is Richard Evans, your neighbor. Are you home?”
“No, I’m in New York. What can I do you for?”
“Nothing, never mind, thanks.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yup. I gotta go. End call.”
He remembers the key in his pocket. In his fucking pocket, and he can’t reach it. He turns to the street to look for help. A young woman is jogging on the sidewalk, approaching his stoop.