Me, Cinderella?

by Rose, Aubrey

  “The music department has a ghost? No fucking way.” Quentin’s voice was tinged with curiosity. “Tell me.”

  Mark pulled the candle across the table and bent down so that the electric flame illuminated him from under his chin, reflecting in his dark eyes. When he spoke, he tried to sound eerie, but his somewhat-nasal voice spoiled the effect.

  “There’s a room in the back of the practice hall that’s always been locked. Inside is a really old Bosendorfer piano.”

  “Not just any Bosendorfer. A Grand Imperial Bosendorfer. Eight octaves,” I added.

  “Thanks for the lesson, music nerd,” Quentin said. “What about the ghost?”

  “Nobody’s ever seen it,” Mark said, his voice lowering. “But late at night, really late at night...”

  “Midnight, if you want to be exact,” I interjected.

  “Just when the clock strikes midnight,” Mark continued, “if you listen, you can hear the ghost playing in that locked room.”

  Quentin’s eyes widened.

  “No fucking way.”

  “Way,” Mark said.

  “So which problem are you guys working on?” I said. I’d heard this tale too many times to be impressed. Quentin shoved the book my way, his finger pressed to the second practice section.

  “Why won’t they open the ghost room up?” Quentin asked, still riveted by Mark’s story. Of course, it was just a story, no matter how many times the music majors repeated it in hushed tones. Nobody believed that there was actually a ghost in the old locked room. Some prankster with a remote control playing a radio through the air ducts, more like.

  “Some rich philanthropist guy gifted the piano to the school,” Mark said, shoving the candle back to the center of the table. “I guess they don’t want anyone messing it up, so they don’t let anyone use it.”

  “Makes sense,” Quentin said, rolling his eyes. “Music people.”

  “But Dr. Stetson said they might be opening it up Sunday for a special showing to music majors,” Mark said.

  “So much for us second-class citizens.” I lifted my eyes away from my textbook and joined Mark in an exaggerated shrug. The music majors always looked down their nose at the math and science kids who came to the practice halls to play just for fun.

  “You couldn’t go anyway, dummies,” Quentin said. “We have that thing on Sunday.”

  “What thing?” Mark said.

  “The internship Budapest thing. The one with all the tests and shit.”

  “That’s Sunday?”

  “I’ve only reminded you every day for the past week,” Quentin said.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. With all the panic over upcoming exams, I had forgotten what day it was. “Sunday?” My job had me scheduled all afternoon.

  “Look at this,” Quentin said, leaning back in his chair and balancing on only two legs while he spread his arms out, gesturing toward me and Mark. “The creme de la fucking creme, and they forget the most basic of shit. This is the test of the year, assholes.”

  “I didn’t forget,” Mark said. “I just forgot the day.”

  “You there, Brynn?” Quentin snapped his finger in front of my nose.

  My attention returned to the table.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I have to get someone to cover my shift.”

  “Get Shannon to do it.” Mark shrugged. “She’ll do it if you tell her what it’s for.”

  “Sure, get Shannon to do it.” Quentin said, flipping a textbook page. “Can we get on with this problem set already?”

  “Sure, how did you get that number nine was an equivalence relation?”

  Quentin let his chair fall forward to the ground with a loud crack. Two students at the other end of the library perked their heads up like meerkats at the sound, but Mark and Quentin were already bent over, hot in debate about whether or not the relation in number nine had the symmetric property.

  After we had finished a couple of problems, Mark turned to me and spoke softly. “You better ask your roommate soon if you want her to cover your shift. This is important to you, right?”

  “Yeah.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. I didn’t want to talk about it here. Not in front of Quentin. Mark only knew my secret because of an accidental slip of the tongue, and I wasn’t about to let Quentin see my pain, too.

  "Hey, did you see the weather for tomorrow?" I asked, hoping to change the subject.

  “We heard on the radio that it might snow for another three days,” Quentin said. "Do you know what that idiot newscaster said about it snowing today? ‘What are the chances?’ she said. ‘What are the chances?’ I hate it when non-math people talk about probability. "

  "What are the chances of it snowing today?" Mark said.

  "The chances are one hundred percent," Quentin said. "Do you know how I know?"

  "Because you know everything," I said, placing my chin on top of my folded hands.

  "Because it is snowing," Quentin said. "That's how I know."

  "But… it could've not snowed," I said.

  "Wrong." Quentin wasn’t one to mince words.

  "Wait. Is this that thing with the destiny and the quantum physics you’ve been going on about all week?" Mark said. He waved one hand in front of his face. "Wait. Brynn. Don't get him started."

  "Every particle in the universe has led us up to this point," Quentin said. “Every quark of every atom of every molecule has led us here.”

  "Great. Now you got him started."

  "Every single snowflake falling outside of this window was created due to the interaction of millions and millions of particles over billions and billions of years. Because it is falling, it was meant to fall. There was no other way for it to happen."

  Mark leaned back in his chair and put his hands on top of his head. "Thanks, philosopher king. See what I told you, Brynn? This is worse than that one month he decided to go vegetarian."

  “I did go vegetarian, you idiot. I’m still vegetarian.”

  "So there's no such thing as probability?" I asked. "Like, if everything has to happen in a particular way, then everything that happens has one hundred percent probability."

  "Exactly," Quentin said. "Well, no. If you have perfect initial conditions, then you can theoretically figure out what will happen in the next step of the universe."

  “Perfect initial conditions.”

  "So everything has to happen in a certain way," Mark said. "Isn’t that predetermination? Like, God?”

  "There is no God." Quentin said. "It's just physics."

  I let my head fall forward onto the table in mock relief. "Whew! Glad that’s settled. Guess we can do some of this homework now."

  “What do you think, Brynn?” Mark asked, not letting the subject drop. “God or physics? Or free will?”

  “Or ghosts,” Quentin said. “Don’t forget ghosts.”

  “I am one hundred percent indifferent to matters of fate,” I said, picking up my pen. “Sorry to bring it up. Let’s do these homework problems.”

  “I bet you think it’s fate,” Quentin said, but turned to the next question along with me.

  If fate was guiding my life, it was doing a piss poor job of it, I thought. And although on the surface I agreed with Quentin, I had to think that there was something else to the way the universe worked. I couldn’t accept the fact that my mother’s death had sentenced me to such a horrible fate just by chance. If randomness had broken my life, how could I hope to put together the pieces myself? I had to believe in some kind of free will, or at least a rational destiny, that would give some meaning to the darkness that had crept into my world.

  Three hours later, we had untangled most of the thorniest questions in the homework set. Question nine hung between us unanswered, with Mark and Quentin still arguing over symmetry on a subtle point in the relation’s definition. The caffeine had long since disappeared from my system, and I covered my mouth in a deep yawn.

  “Ok, guys,” Quentin said, closing his book with a decisive thud. “See you all to
morrow at the auditorium, where I will beat every single one of you motherfuckers out for that internship.”

  Mark guffawed. “You wish,” he said.

  “See you guys later.” I waved to Quentin who just held his hand up in farewell as he hurried down the stairs.

  “Want me to walk you back to your apartment?” Mark said. I was tempted—it was late, after all—but he had already packed up and all of my papers still lay spread out in front of me. Also, I felt like being alone for a while.

  “Nah,” I said. “Gotta check out a book before I go. See you later!”

  “Okay,” Mark said, a half-smile dimpling his face. “See you!”

  I stood up and stretched, looking through the windows overlooking the lawn below. I half-expected to see the man standing there below, staring up at me. Eliot.

  He wasn’t there. A few drunken undergraduates stumbled across the snow-crusted grass, clothed in overly skimpy miniskirts and Ugg boots. Nobody in California knew how to dress for the cold. My eyes focused on the snowflakes stuck to the window pane. It was cold. I should go home. The internship thing was Sunday, and I had been running on a sleep deficit for far too long.

  This is important to you, right?

  Mark’s words came back to me as I stared out the window, and the snowflakes blurred into a cottony white as tears filled my eyes. All of the junior-level math majors vied for the internship each year, but for me this prize was more personal. Sure, the free travel was tempting, and the semester abroad at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences would brighten my resume with prestige. But that wasn’t the main reason I wanted to win the internship prize, not by far.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.” - Liebniz

  I woke up in darkness. The clock at the side of the bed glowed green: 11:41. I rolled out of bed, pulled on some warm clothes sleepily, and tiptoed down the hall.

  Four times already this week I’d woken like this in the middle of the night, not being able to go back to sleep until I’d taken a long walk. I’d read once about how humans used to wake up all the time, just like this, before the industrial age. Benjamin Franklin had written about it—the odd hours between first and second sleep where people would wake up and read, pray, or make love.

  Me? I took walks. Most of the time I would walk to campus, just a few blocks from our apartment. At night the sidewalks were empty and the buildings loomed like ghosts over my head. Everything seemed older then, bigger. I would walk, think about math, and then I would be back in my bed, ready to slumber at two or three in the morning.

  I tugged on my boots and slid my keys into my pocket, closing the door behind me as quietly as I could. Shannon had agreed to cover for me, and I didn’t want to wake her up the night before she worked my shift. Hurrying down the stairs, I greeted the night as a friend, not even minding the rush of cold air and the soft sprinkling of snow. Perhaps it was my sleepiness, but I didn’t feel as cold during my night walks as I did during the day, even though the temperature dropped ten degrees or so.

  Passing briskly through the stone archways onto the campus, I let my mind wander to the internship test I would be taking tomorrow. Tomorrow, or today? I didn’t know the time. Six hours of the hardest math problems, or so I’d heard. I wondered if I would be up to the task.

  From somewhere in the distance I heard a bell ring out, and my mind jolted back to the present. I halted in my tracks, not sure where on campus my feet had taken me. The snow had stopped falling, and everything seemed unnaturally hushed. No whisper of cars on the neighboring streets, no rustle of night birds in the eaves of the buildings. Silence wrapped the world in a cradling hold.

  I blinked hard and looked up to see the music building in front of me. My body had brought me here unconsciously and now something urged me to go inside, to get out of the night. I looked around, my heart beating quickly as though expecting some predator to jump out of the shadows toward me, but nothing moved. I climbed the stone steps of the building slowly, careful not to slip on the icy granite.

  Security always locked the doors for the night, but as I reached for the brass handle I knew that this one would be open. Indeed, the oak door swung outward, a gust of warm air escaping like smoke into the chilly night. I turned back to survey the deserted campus, and again felt a thrill of fear, as though some monster watched me as I moved. A wolf, maybe, though I knew there were no wolves here. Still, I pulled the door closed behind me and locked the bolt myself, shutting out the night.

  One of the oldest on campus, the music building boasted an ornate interior, deep carvings in every square inch of the oak walls and thick red carpet lining the floors. My boots sank into the newly-vacuumed carpeting, leaving dark prints behind. The yellow lights above shone dimly through the hallway as I walked on, pushing through a high swinging oak door into the practice halls. Here the lights were dimmed, almost entirely off, and I moved through the darkness, letting one hand trail along the wall to guide me forward.

  Then I heard something that stopped me in my steps. Soft music drifted down the hall, muted by the carpet. A piano.

  For a moment, I thought someone might just be practicing late at night, an overzealous music major anxious to impress or a chemistry student embarrassed by her amateur playing. But as I moved tentatively down the hall, I could tell that it wasn’t an amateur at the keys. All of the normal practice rooms stood open, their doorways black and empty. The only closed door lay at the very back of the practice hall, and light shone brightly from the insulated glass panel above the door. The piano behind that door was the Bosendorfer.

  The midnight piano.

  Moving closer, I could hear the notes more distinctly. I recognized the song as a piece by Erik Satie, one of the Gymnopedies. The melody tiptoed along the higher register, a lonely, slow song full of simple repetition. The quarter notes came hesitantly, carefully, building louder as the song continued, but still restrained. The walls, designed to muffle the sound of studious beauty, made the music sound as distant as though it came from another country, far, far away.

  Was someone playing a prank on me? Perhaps it was a recording. I pressed my ear to the door and listened.

  The music eased into the final chords, the pause between them lingering a moment too long, and then only silence remained. I still had my ear pressed to the door when it opened, sending me tumbling forward into the arms of the midnight piano ghost.

  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 finge
rs 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.