four MARGARET part 3
Bagheera wailed underfoot and I ate a cookie. Took the plate with me and sat at Melanie’s grandmother’s upright piano. Bagheera leapt onto the keys and wandered through a scale a quatre main in lazy steps toward the high end, then ran at a pounding gallop over the low notes.
The sheet music for “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” was open before me, tagged with another Post-it:
Today’s homework!
and a smiley face.
On my second night at Melanie’s we went back to the apartment after work. She wore fingerless gloves, pulled a black watch cap down to her perfect tarantula-leg brows.
My eyes grew wide when I saw her get in the cab with a Worth aluminum bat wrapped in dirty athletic tape.
Melanie rummaged behind the seats. Held up a softball glove and a ball.
If you bring a bat, at least bring a ball, she said. Makes it hard to argue we brought this along with the premeditated intent to use it as a weapon.
She blacked out the headlights as we made the block. Gave me a thumbs-up and kept Cheeto’s motor running while I went upstairs. If Vincent was home, if things got weird I would flick the apartment lights off and on. Melanie knew which window to watch and she held the bat across her lap, stuck her chin out over the dashboard and looked up to the third floor.
When I returned with my microKORG cradled in my arms Melanie went absolutely flaming bananas, honking the horn, flashing the lights and cheering as I climbed into the cab.
We talked about Glass Candy, Joanna Newsom, Depeche Mode. Bruce Hornsby, Brad Mehldau, Captain and Tennille. Bought wine on the way home and got up to our tits in Shiraz and Spotify.
Melanie removed her gloves and tuned her guitar and we sang “Landslide” twice. I’d left the power cable for my microKORG at the apartment so I accompanied Melanie on her piano while she sang in Russian.
She twisted the cork from a second bottle with her Swiss Army knife. Squeak and a pop and she said:
You can stay here as long as you like but now I’ve got one condition.
Melanie filled my glass past the point I could pick it up.
You’ve got to play. Like that, at least once a day, okay? And teach me how to sample something on your micro-borg.
I nodded. Leaned over the coffee table and slurped my wine with pouting lips, neck stretched like a tipsy Bambi drinking from a stream.
I mean it. If I’m not around you play for the cat, open the window, dedicate something to the neighbors but bitch you have to make music if you wanna stay here. Okay? I need to have some fuckin’ creativity happening around me. Call it homework.
I wiped my chin, lifted Bagheera from my laptop. Showed Melanie a video of me and Vincent opening for Turner Cody a million years ago when my microKORG was new.
She sat beside me on the couch, maxed the volume and ran the clip again. Gripped my arms with terrifying strength and played the track over.
This is your song?
Mostly, I said. So the music’s me and Vincent wrote the lyrics but he lifted verses from a Wilfred Owen poem. He got a letter about that, from some society in Britain.
Yeah? Well good for Wilfred Owen and fuck Vincent but seriously oh my god, you are really good girl. Really fucking good. Send this to me?
I did.
So that was Monday, Melanie’s night off and the final day of my life-crisis vacation from work. Now it was Friday and Monday seemed so far back in time I remembered it without sound, saw it in flickering black and white as Melanie sat at her grandmother’s piano, teaching herself the chords to “Owen” while I sang along.
I leaned away from the keys, ate another cookie and dusted the crumbs from my fingers. Pointed at Bagheera:
This one’s going out to you Baghs.
I warmed up, rolled through short choppy chords like Morse Code, improvised a jazz intro. Broke into the piece running and made it too big, then slowed it down. Brought it back to Elton’s original and deviated with a loud finish I couldn’t quite land.
Did my homework once as written, note perfect. Then a discordant bouncing klezmer nightmare cover with a runaway tempo.
I played “Owen”, singing Vincent’s parts. Realized I was still ready to suit up, go out and do business. I was thrilled to have this power restored, the ability to make myself and make other people feel something real by creating music from thin air.
I gasped for breath and scared the cat. Almost began to cry as a feeling of actual physical relief multiplied and moved through each of my limbs with its own creeping heat, a blushing full-body brush fire.
My field of vision stretched wide and every shape and color seemed to reset itself with sharpened focus, new hues and highlights enriched and glowing. Spread on the stand before me Elton’s musical notation bristled with smiley-faced ties and slurs, buggy whip treble clefs, buckshot crotchets and owl-eyed whole notes. The warps and waves of the piano’s wood grain stood proud in impossible dimensions of carved contour and relief.
The resonance of that moment overwhelmed me as I calculated all that I had lost. Then my internal abacus carried the one and reminded me that I’d stumbled across a truly priceless second chance. Been allowed to run back into a burning building and dash past my wasted years with Vincent to rescue this single simple thing I loved deeply, truly couldn’t live without.
When the dryer buzzed I cleaned the lint trap and finished packing. Scrubbed Bagheera’s fur just above her tail until she twisted back and scratched my knuckle bloody. I kept her corralled in the house with my suitcase and backed onto the porch. Slowly closed the door in her face and started to cry.
I got behind the wheel and buckled up, started the engine and sucked the blood from my knuckle. Then I really let go. Messy tears and screaming.
This is not a collapse, I told myself, but a release.
I forced deep breaths through my system until I felt dizzy. Blew my nose, rubbed it raw with papery fast-food napkins and when I could see well enough to drive I got Cheeto on the road.
©2017 J.R. Schaefers — all rights reserved.