Marla didn't even consider selecting one of the smaller pianos, though it would have been easier to move. She focused her attention on the larger grand and baby grand instruments. Franz remembered going with her on her rounds of various houses and churches. There were over half a dozen baby grands in Grantville, and she played each one extensively. He also remembered their conversation as they left the last house.
"Well, that was disappointing," she said, as they walked down the sidewalk from the house. "I haven't heard a baby grand yet that I really liked, but that one was just bad."
"So what will you do?" Franz asked.
"I don't have any choice. I have to have one of the big grands."
"Tell me again where they are."
"First Baptist Church has a Baldwin, the Methodist church has a recent model Steinway, and Marcus Wendell tells me there's an old Steinway in the High Street Mansion," Marla said.
"Do you know them well?"
"The ones in the churches I do. I haven't seen or played the old Steinway, but from what Marcus tells me, it needs some pretty extensive work done to it."
"So which one do you want?"
"I don't have time to wait on the mansion's piano to get fixed. Besides, Girolamo Zenti is having a bidding war with Bledsoe and Riebeck for it, and who knows how long it will take to settle that. It will have to be one of the church pianos. I'll take whichever one I can get," Marla answered, "but I want the Steinway. The Baldwin's tone is too dark, and although it's a lot newer than the mansion's piano, it's still old enough that I'm a little afraid to move it very far. No, it has to be the Methodist Steinway. It's going to put a big hole in the church's music program though," she said in a worried tone, concerned about her home church. "I hope that Reverend Jones will forgive me."
Ingram had once warned Franz that when Marla 'shifted into high gear,' she was hard to keep up with. Franz learned exactly what the older man had meant over the next three days, his recollection of which was a little blurred. He moved in Marla's wake, watching mostly in silence from behind her shoulder as she went from office to office and person to person, asking, pleading, demanding and negotiating. Her concern about the effect of this requisition on her home church didn't stop her from making it all the same.
At the end of it, Marla had forged an agreement between several parties wherein the Methodist church agreed to release their grand piano for shipment to Magdeburg. In exchange, the church was to receive some compensation from Mary Simpson's arts league, the use of the best of the baby grand pianos (which happened to be owned by a member of the church, who was also to be compensated), and an option to purchase a new grand from Bledsoe & Riebeck at cost when their new company was able to begin manufacturing them. The arts league agreed to pay the costs to transport the requisitioned instrument to Magdeburg, and the government agreed to give Bledsoe & Riebeck a tax deduction for the difference between the cost of the replacement piano and the price for which they would normally have sold it.
It was the piano that dictated when they would leave for Magdeburg. Their friends Ingram Bledsoe and Friedrich Braun first had to build a shipping crate for it. And of course, Marla was hovering at their shoulders while they were doing so, anxious that it should be perfect so that no harm should come to her beloved Steinway. It was well designed, well constructed and definitely well padded. She finally agreed it was time to encase the piano and prepare to leave. At that point Ingram, for the first time since Franz had become acquainted with him, became firm with her. His words were, "Marla, if you're here, you will drive us all batty. Even if you don't say anything, you'll make us so nervous there will be an accident. Now, be a good girl and go with Franz, and let us pack your baby up for you."
Franz smiled as he remembered the expression on Marla's face. She was surprised more than anything that a man she considered to be like a favorite uncle would speak so to her, but she did understand the sense of it, and reluctantly—very reluctantly—came away with Franz.
The next morning they went to the church to find that the piano was packed, wrapped in one of those marvelous sheets of plastic—Ingram called it a "tarp"—and sealed with some also marvelous sticky stuff. When he asked Ingram what it was, he thought he didn't hear the answer correctly. "Duck tape?" It gave rise to a number of interesting mental images.
"Duct tape. Duct with a 't,' " Ingram said. "The late-twentieth century's answer to twine and baling wire." And then Ingram had to explain what baling wire was.