The glow was gone. My apartment consumed me again. The sadness. The endorphin-mutilating self-criticism. Fuck. The slow viscous wave of grayness washed over me, but I was aware of a new sensation of not welcoming it. I could not stop it, but I wanted to. This was like finding a mud-caked penny on a sidewalk when you need two-fifty for the subway, but it was something.
I walked back to the window. The courtyard was now blackened by the wash of night, the winking eyes across from me mocking me with their secrets. I closed the curtain, then decided to leave just a five-inch opening.
What did Marzoli see? What did he mean by "I got it?"
Chapter Seven
There was a sharp, unapologetic rap on the door.
I stood next to the knob without turning it.
"Who is it?"
A buoyant voice replied, "Hi! It's your neighbor from upstairs."
"Who?"
"My name's Ruben. I just moved into the apartment above you."
"And?"
I was aware but hardly cared that with every annoyed word, I was creating the very first and most lasting impression this new neighbor would have.
Ruben continued sheepishly, "And … I wanted to say hi."
His voice was so fucking upbeat. Lord. I opened the door.
"Hi!" it said.
Standing before me was a tall, blond haired kid with a pretty-boy face and black glasses. He wore a pretentious suit with a black tie and had a dapper Johnny-on-the-spot disposition.
Hellishly cheerful.
"How much did the landlord jack the rent?" I asked in deadpan.
Ruben took a short breath in, then recovered with his Mormon schoolboy chipperness.
"I'm paying twenty-five hundred a month."
"He jacked it up a grand. You can file a complaint if you want to."
"I've got a trust fund of, like, millions."
He had to be new to New York, unless he just enjoyed making enemies.
"Anyway," he continued, pushing his designer glasses up the bridge of his nose, "I just wanted to work out a schedule."
"Schedule for what?"
"A practice schedule. I don't want to bug you. I'm a musician."
Oh, fuck. Musicians. Endless nights of pungent drafts of pot seeping down into my apartment.
"I play the piano. I'm going to Juilliard."
Oh, fuck. Juilliard. Endless nights of neurotic chord repetition seeping down into my apartment.
"Well," I began, measuring my knee-jerk feelings about this new curse to my life, "How many hours a day do you need to practice?"
"Three."
"Doesn't Juilliard have practice rooms?"
Suddenly Ruben's demeanor switched from boyishness to a precocious, entitled, spoiled, son-of-a-billionaire brat. His arms crossed. His lips stiffened. His left eyebrow raised. Apparently, he had paid me the courtesy of faking the nice-boy role, but I'd abused it. Now I'd get the real Ruben.
"My piano is better," he stated in a hostile, low voice.
"I work from home … ."
"Three p.m. to six p.m.?"
His proposal had all the subtext of a statement rather than a question, as if to say he was designating this time slot as his practice time regardless of my preference. In other words, this chat was intended to be a warning more than a collaborative working out of schedules. To complement his proposal, he took his glasses off nonchalantly and wiped the lenses. His face was much more tough than it had first appeared, the eyes more shadowed, the jawline more blunted.
"Don't play too loudly," I said.
He rolled his eyes.
"What are you practicing at the moment?"
"Shostakovich. Just kidding. Debussy."
The twirp smirked, as if I didn't get the difference between a composer known for his sweeping Russian double forte passages and a romantic composer known for softer French pianissimo passages. That image of Holly Hunter having her finger axed off in The Piano suddenly flashed into my brain.
I responded, "Stick to three to six, and we'll be good neighbors."
I closed the door on the twerp.
We're both assholes, and we both know it. Good goddamn grief.
Chapter Eight
My own piano sat against the wall, buried in debris. I began to remove the shit off it-the moldy sweater, the electronic power supply cords whose recipients had jumped ship years ago, thumbed paperbacks, discarded Starbucks cups. I lifted the keyboard cover.
My fingers drifted over the keys without pressing down. They hovered over F sharp two octaves above middle C. If I pressed down, the commitment to that one tone would cement the path that leads to the next, leading to the cementing of the next, and then the next. What if, at the end of the path, I churned out some uninspired, pedestrian, shitty song, reinforcing what a failure I'd become in a brand new way? That first note bore the weight of forty years of largely unsuccessful attempts at a career, the loss and disdain of a woman most men in Manhattan would give their left nut to hold at night, and the responsibility of finding out if the future had even the slightest bit of light in it.
My finger remained suspended above the keyboard, unable to commit.
Andrea Bocelli echoed through the window from the courtyard, mourning epically with exquisite tragedy. A fuck-lovely perfection I may never know. I turned to the window to identify which neighbor was responsible for this random choice of entertainment.
Mr. and Mrs. Perfect's apartment was empty … oh wait … no. Mr. Perfect emerged from the kitchen dressed in a suit, his head cocked to one side as he propped an iPhone against his ear. He spoke in an assured and patient manner, casually glancing out the window, then sauntering toward the other side of the house. His undirected stride was paced to the rhythm of his conversation. He was alone. I guess the family went to play in the snow in the country without him this weekend. But Bocelli was not coming from his apartment. But then, from where was it emanating? I lowered my eyes …
The Princess.
She sat at her dressing table, fussing with the seams of her sleeves. She was dressed in a gauzy navy-blue dress interwoven with silver threads, her hair up in a tight bun. When I'd last seen The Princess, she wore no more than jeans and an American Apparel stretch t-shirt. Unless she got a significant six-figure bump in her salary, I had no idea how she afforded an exquisitely tailored couture dress as a single girl in her twenties living in the heart of Manhattan in a small studio apartment. Did she have a sugar daddy? Did a parent die? Did she catch the boss cheating?
The romantic vocal strains wafted lushly from a CD player near her bed, accompanying her application of makeup to her cheeks, her lips, and her eyelashes as she carefully contoured herself to the ideal of ladyhood, obscuring every blemish, covering any millifraction of imperfection. She finally reached up to her bun and removed a pin. Her long dark locks fell down past her shoulders. She proceeded to run her fingers through them, smoothing every last strand with her fingers, a concerned look on her face.
How could anyone live with that much pressure to be perfect every second of every hour of every day? What was at risk for her if she weren't perfect? She was young-barely drinking age-so she still had lots of time. What was so imperfect about her interior that required that much overcompensating on the outside, right down to the final dab of perfume on her neck from the lid of the tiny ornate pink glass bottle?
When I was completing a song, staying up for forty-eight hours in a row perfecting every last cadence, every last sixteenth note, every last pianissimo or crescendo expression, I was the Princess. She used makeup, I used treble and bass clefs. She used a silver ribbon in her hair, I used crisp, perfectly un-smudged laser copy paper to print the score. She needed validation from the man she was about to meet, and I needed validation from any ear my music would meet. I understood the Princess's need, and a particularly petty part of me loathed her for reflecting my folly.
Errrrrg.
I lifted my hand. I closed the keyboard lid and piled the books and crap back on top of it.
Not ready.
Suddenly I became aware of a figure standing against the window above the Princess's apartment facing my apartment square on. My heart skipped a beat, and I automatically ducked to the right behind the curtain. It was perfectly unnecessary to hide. All the lights were out in my apartment, and the curtain wasn't open wide enough to see in. As far as anyone was concerned, nobody was home here on the third floor. Then why was someone facing my apartment with such direct attentiveness?
I slowly peeked around the curtain until I spied the figure again. To my surprise, Mr. Perfect stood at the window of his bedroom, facing my building. As always, he was wearing a suit, looking the picture of professionalism, dignity, power, and success. His hair was salt and pepper, feathered back to display the rugged handsomeness of his face.
This was a man to whom entire floors of employees in Manhattan glass high-rises might kowtow when he stepped off the elevator. This was a man university libraries might be named after. This was a man who might advise Atlas to shrug.