His mouth was dry despite the drink, and Kellen Cage’s voice seemed to be coming from far away, with a trace of an echo to it. The lights in the atrium were growing brighter, slowly but obviously, as if someone had a hand on a dimmer switch and was rotating it gently, turning up the wattage. The headache was back, a faint throb down at the base of his skull, and that too-large buffet dinner was shifting in his stomach.
He put both hands on the bar, leaning onto the cold granite top, and was about to interrupt Kellen Cage to say he needed to step outside and get some air, when a new sound replaced that strange, echoing conversation around him. Music, a clear melody, pure and beautiful. Strings. A cello in the background, maybe, but at the forefront was a violin, a violin played as sweetly as anything Eric had ever heard. It was a soothing sound, a caress, and he felt the trapped air leave his lungs and the headache fade and his stomach settle. The cello hit on a low, long note and then the violin came back in over the top, soaring now, exuberant, and Eric was in awe of the beauty of it, turned to look for the source. It had to be live; he’d been around a lot of recording equipment and was certain they had yet to invent something that could capture sound this well.
The atrium was empty except for a few people in chairs, no band in sight, nothing but the piano player. He turned to look at him again then as the violin music dipped away, the song sad and sweet again. The piano player had his head bowed, and his hands were flying along, their motions completely out of sync with the strings. But the violin piece was coming from the piano. There wasn’t any doubt about it. The thing was no more than thirty feet away and Eric, blessed with good ears and better vision, knew without question that the violin music was coming from beneath the lid of that grand piano.
“You dig the music, huh?” Kellen Cage said.
Eric was still staring, waiting for something that showed him he was wrong but finding nothing—the piano, somehow, was playing a strings melody. The most beautiful strings melody he’d ever heard. But the hands didn’t match. The hands were not playing this song.
“What’s this song?” he said. His voice was a rasp.
“Huh?” Cage said, leaning closer, smelling of cologne.
“What’s the name of this song?”
Kellen Cage pulled his head back and gave Eric a curious smile. “You kidding me? It’s the thing from Casablanca, man. Everybody knows this one. ‘As Time Goes By.’ ”
That wasn’t the song Eric was hearing, but he could tell that Kellen was right from the way the piano player’s hands moved, locked in that gentle, familiar rhythm.
“I mean the violin thing,” Eric said.
“Violin?” Kellen said, and then the piano player’s tuxedo was gone and in its place he wore a rumpled suit and a bowler hat, and if Kellen said anything else, Eric did not hear it. He was staring at the piano player, whose face was hidden by the angle and by the bowler hat. Just over his shoulder, standing not five feet away, was a tall, thin boy with a violin at his shoulder, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He wore ill-fitting clothes, his bony forearms protruding from the shirtsleeves and several inches of socks exposed. His blond hair had not been cut in many weeks. There was an open violin case at his feet with scattered bills and coins tossed inside.
For a moment they just played on in that soft duet, the boy always with eyes shut, and then the man at the piano looked up. He lifted his head and looked Eric full in the face and smiled wide, and when he did, the beautiful, haunting strings melody shattered once again into a violent, urgent sawing, the notes frenzied and terrifying.
Eric opened his hand and the glass fell from it and hit the edge of the bar before dropping to the tile floor and breaking, sending splinters of glass sliding in all directions. The moment the glass broke, the music vanished. Cut off in midnote, like somebody had jerked out a stereo power cord. With it went the boy with the violin and the man in the bowler hat, replaced by the first piano player, who frowned but didn’t stop playing, bowed his head again, and now Eric could hear the song—“You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss…”
“As Time Goes By.” Made famous by Casablanca. Kellen was right, everybody knew this one.
“Uh-oh, going to need a mop if you want to finish that drink,” the bartender said, smiling, jocular. Eric felt Kellen’s hand on his arm, the grip strong.
“You okay? Eric? You all right?”
He was now. On one level, at least. On another…
“You mind if we go somewhere else?” Eric said. “There’s gotta be someplace to get a drink that isn’t in this hotel.”