I shrieked as I fell forward. But the arms that caught me were strong and altogether more corporeal than any spectre. I looked up into piercing blue eyes, and gasped as I saw who had been playing the Bosendorfer.
“Valentina. What a pleasant surprise.” Eliot smiled as he helped me find my balance again. His hands supported me easily, and I didn’t want him to let go.
“You’re not a ghost.” I said the first thing I could think of, but I guess Eliot wasn’t familiar with the legend.
“A ghost?” His smile touched his eyes with sincerity. “Not quite.”
“Sorry. I, um, I just— I heard you playing— I didn’t mean—”
“You were eavesdropping,” he said.
I blushed. “Yeah, I guess I was.”
“I was thinking that I might enjoy some company just now,” Eliot said. “How lucky for you to be on the other side of the door.” He motioned me into the room, apparently unfazed by my eavesdropping. He seemed taller than before, over six feet easily, but he moved with a grace that belied his massive stature.
Eliot slid onto the piano bench and patted the wood next to him, inviting me closer.
“Come, sit. You can tell me what I’m doing wrong,” he said. He began to play the first part of the piece again. I had played the song before—a classic, easy enough to learn but not easy to play well. Satie had written notes to sound dissonant before resolving into harmony, and I had always struggled to get the phrasing correct.
Not Eliot. His fingers glided across the keys effortlessly, and his hair hung forward, dark curls resting on his forehead, the scar running down the side of his cheek more visible now in the light. I sat beside him on the edge of the piano bench, afraid to let myself get too close. Afraid of my own desires. Without his wool coat and hat he looked like a different man than the one I had met sitting on the bench. His white buttoned shirt and crisp pants gave him an air of authority, and as he played I let my gaze drift over his profile. He stopped on a difficult passage in the second coda and turned to me, catching my eyes resting on his scar.
“It’s from a car accident,” he said, a note of bitterness in his voice.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just—”
“It’s alright,” he said, although he sounded more defensive, on edge. His fingers reached out to the sheet music, marking the notes as he spoke. “The accident was my fault. It’s a good reminder.”
“A reminder?”
“To be careful,” he said, with a finality that ended that part of the conversation. He turned back to the music.
“This sounds wrong,” he said, his fingers running across the keys again in irritation. “What is wrong? I am no musician.”
“The right hand is too heavy,” I said before I could stop myself. But he gave me his full attention.
“Too heavy?”
“Sorry, I shouldn’t criticize. I can’t even play it as well as you.” But I knew the song, and I knew that the melody should be lighter there.
“Try,” he said. “I’ll do the left, you do the right.”
I had played it that way before. He couldn’t know, but that was how I had learned the Gymnopedies, all of them. I couldn’t protest against his commanding tone, so I scooted over on the bench, and tentatively put my right hand on the keys.
“From the beginning, yes?” He breathed in expressively, his chest rising, and we fell down into the first notes together.
At first my fingers hesitated too much, then pressed down too sharply. The Bosendorfer startled me with the bright action of its keys, so unlike the practice pianos I was familiar with. The melody burst forth, too loud by a factor of ten. I started at the sound. Easy to have a heavy hand on this piano.
Eliot smiled gently over at me, but continued to play. I quickly collected myself and rejoined him, relaxing my finger muscles and applying a lighter touch to the melody. He moved from chord to chord and I moved with him, learning his rhythm as he learned mine.
By the last measure of the first page we played in tight synchrony, and I lost myself in the song. I wasn’t in the midnight piano room any longer. I was young, seven years old, and I could hear my mother humming the melody in my ear as she played the bottom chords, the extended octaves too much of a reach for my small hands.
I joined him in the last chord softly, the sound trailing off into the muffled walls of the room.
“Who taught you to play?”
“My mother.”
“Is she a musician? Professionally, I mean? You have a talent for it.”
“She’s— she was a musician. She traveled around and played for special events. Weddings, conferences.” My eyes watered at the thought of her saying goodbye to me before leaving.