Still Life Las Vegas

by James Sie

  “Don’t worry about him, he doesn’t bite.”

  The dog vibrated with anticipation at her feet, but she didn’t move to pat the creature’s waggling head, no matter how eagerly he stared up at her. Her accordion was on the floor, too, next to the dog, as if it were expecting to be pet as well.

  Lee sat next to Emily. He pulled the washcloth out of the bowl and wrung it out. Gently, he pulled down Emily’s hand to look at the gash created by the candelabra. “Tsk. Another victim of Liberace’s excesses,” he murmured, pressing the warm washcloth to her forehead while cupping the back of her head with his other hand. She winced, instinctively trying to wrench her head away, but his hands were firm.

  “What are you doing?” she said hoarsely.

  “Still, still,” he whispered. He began blotting up the dried blood. The pain above her eye blazed hot, then slowly subsided. “Calendula water,” he said, dipping the washcloth back into the bowl. He looked up again and stared at the wound. “You’ll live.”

  Emily felt the laugh rise up her windpipe, dry and bitter, but forced it down. “What?” Lee asked, catching the momentary twitching at the corners of her mouth. “Disappointed?”

  He wrung out the washcloth once more and this time wiped down the rest of her face, tucking his free hand under her chin to tilt her head up, like she was a little child back from the playground. Emily closed her eyes and let it happen. She felt the warmth of the cloth gently scraping against her face, her pores opening, giving away something of herself. She was feeling her skin again. She could almost fall asleep this way, chin resting on the palm of his hand, but he let go and she heard the washcloth dip back into the water.

  Emily opened her eyes. The water in the bowl was gray. Lee placed his hands, still damp, on the top of her head, like a benediction. He smoothed down the tangle of her hair. “I knew it,” he said. “There’s a good haircut underneath all that.”

  Emily jerked back, batted his hands away. “Stop it, please,” she said, reclaiming her hair with her own fingers.

  Lee got up and poured the water from the bowl into a large potted ficus. “What’s your name?”

  “Emily.”

  “Emily, would you like something to drink?”

  “No.”

  “Hmm.” Lee picked up the glass bowl and disappeared down the hall. The dog stayed by her, panting, face inches from her knees, demanding attention. His saucer eyes stared up imploringly, his quivering tongue flicked in and out between the sharp teeth, pink and moist.

  I could still do it, she thought suddenly. It wasn’t the best in guest etiquette, but she could think of nothing better than to lay herself down amid all this greenery and never get up. Emily swiped her bag from the couch and stood up, Mercutio barking at her side.

  Lee reappeared at that moment, carrying a tray set for tea. “For heaven’s sake, Mercutio, let her be,” he said mildly. The dog turned two circles and lay down. Lee placed the tray on the coffee table in front of her. The two cups were different from each other, and neither of them matched the teapot. “At least have some tea.”

  Emily shook her head. “I don’t want any, thank you,” she replied. “I really have to leave.”

  Lee raised an eyebrow. “You have some place you need to be?”

  Emily didn’t answer, but didn’t sit down, either.

  “Have some tea.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “Sit, please.”

  “Could I just use your bathroom?”

  “Certainly. But leave your bag.”

  She opened her mouth in indignation, ready to protest, but looking at Lee, with his steady, placid gaze, she felt exposed. How could he know? Had he checked her bag?

  “Why don’t you sit.” It wasn’t a question. “You have time for a little tea.” There was a touch of mild impatience to his voice. “It will fortify.”

  She sat.

  “Honey, with no lemon,” he said, smiling. That was exactly the way she drank it.

  The parking lot. Of course. He must have seen the bottles of pills rolling out of her bag in the parking lot. She didn’t remember any of them falling out, but they must have, just the same.

  “You picked exactly the wrong time to visit the Liberace Museum,” Lee observed, pouring the tea.

  Emily said nothing. There was a long pause as Lee drizzled some honey into Emily’s cup and slowly stirred. He held it out, looking at her expectantly. She took it.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Lee poured his own tea and gave a sad shake of his head. “Poor Little Bang,” he said, as if they’d been talking about him all this time. “You must forgive him. He’d worked at that museum for more than ten years, was absolutely devoted. He knew more about it than any of those blue-hairs and no-hairs running the place. Of course, they never saw him in this way. Little B was strictly custodial to them, but he never minded, because even if he was just washing the floors, he was washing the floors near the things he loved. And they let him polish the pianos, which he considered a great honor.”

  Emily took a sip of tea and grimaced. It tasted of clove, and fennel, and something pulled recently from the earth.

  “Buckthorn leaves,” Lee said, answering a question she hadn’t asked. “Keeps away the ghosts.”

  The tea was dark and bitter and astringent at the same time. When she finally swallowed, though, Emily felt tendrils of warmth spread throughout her chest. She breathed deeply.

  Lee continued. “His love of Liberace wasn’t ironic, you see. All the gaudiness, the superfluity Liberace lived by, none of it was kitsch to Little B. He believed in it. He thought Liberace was the most important entertainer of the twentieth century.”

  Lee lifted a teaspoon. “I wouldn’t go quite so far myself,” Lee said. “Liberace was an excellent showman, and I do like his choice of couture, but my musical preference runs toward the more traditional—”

  Suddenly Lee was opening his mouth into a perfect oval and singing an Italian aria. His voice was a dark mahogany baritone: rich, resonant, and obviously trained.

  Credo in un Dio crudel

  che m’ha creato simile a sè

  e che nell’ira io nomo.

  The air was filled with his singing: every molecule surrounding her expanded, luxuriating in the sound. Emily’s eyes widened, space clearing inside her head. A fog had been blasted away. She was awake, and alive. The skin on her arms tingled. This is why the plants grow so green, she thought. To be bathed in such music.

  And then, just as suddenly, it was over. Lee was scooping Mercutio up to the couch and scratching him behind the ear. “I trained in Milan,” he tossed off. “Now, about you…”

  Emily shook her head, his singing still reverberating in her body. She asked, “Why should I feel bad about Little Bang?”

  Lee smiled at Emily, almost coquettishly. “Ah. Yes. Let me tell you a story.” He took a sip of tea and set his cup down. Mercutio yawned and settled into Lee’s lap. “He’s heard it before,” Lee said, stroking the dog’s fur.

  “Imagine, Emily, a teenage son of immigrant hotel workers, ushering, for a lark, at Liberace’s bicentennial show at the Hilton. He has no expectations, he only knows that this is one of the biggest tickets in town. He hands out programs, he closes the curtains. The house darkens. Suddenly, a man appears, glittering and fabulous. Fanfare. A red, white, and blue Rolls-Royce convertible drives onto the stage. Little Bang’s life is changed forever.

  “He watched the show, many, many times, to see the magic Liberace created every night. He taught himself to play the piano, to emulate that glittering man on the stage. Little Bang’s family couldn’t afford a piano, of course, but he practiced every day on the organ in his parents’ church. Every day but Sunday. He had to bribe the priest with … oral satisfaction in exchange for time on the keyboard. Little Bang told me that fat old padre would push his head down and whisper, ‘an organ for an organ,’ right there in the sanctuary! Ah, Jesú! The kneeling that boy had to do to learn his craft!”


  Lee laughed, but Emily felt only a sharp sliver of recognition for the boy who wanted to practice that badly.

  Lee swirled his teaspoon in his cup and tapped it gently against the rim. “When Liberace died, Little Bang was devastated. I remember him coming to me, crying. ‘Oh, Lee,’ he said, ‘if only Liberace could have picked me up in a parking lot!’ Not that Liberace would have ever chosen Little Bang—my poor friend is too squat, his face too brutto, with his teeth all flying away from each other—Liberace would have recoiled in horror. But he played beautifully. He was a natural.”

  Lee fell silent, sipping his tea and lifting his gaze heavenward, as if he could hear the music. Emily picked up the thread. “And then he started working at the museum?”

  “Yes, yes! Exactly.” Lee set his cup down. “It gave him such solace, to be there among the things Liberace loved. They would show tapes of the Vegas shows, and Little Bang could really watch Liberace’s technique on the keyboard. There were the pianos there, too, of course, but Little B could never bring himself to play a note on any of them, as much as he longed to. He didn’t consider himself worthy.

  “Besides, he had a piano of his own by this time. Big Bang had moved into Little Bang’s apartment—what was it?—three years before, and Big B had boosted a piano for Little B to play. Don’t ask me how this was done, but he did it. Big Bang never understood this love for Liberace, but he loved Little Bang. If Little Bang wanted a piano, Big Bang would get it for him.”

  Lee paused to pick up Mercutio and bring the dog up to his face. “We all know that kind of love, don’t we, mi caro.” Mercutio responded with a series of rapid, wet licks to Lee’s face.

  “Last month the museum sponsored a contest for pianists to play in the style of Liberace. A ‘Play-a-Like,’ I believe it was called. The winner was to receive a thousand dollars, and, more than that, a standing engagement to perform a tribute to Liberace. Three times a week! On the very rhinestone piano played by Liberace! Do you see how this was everything Little Bang could have ever asked for in life?”

  Emily shifted in her seat, uneasy. She held no fond memories of musical competitions. She took a deep breath and thought of Little Bang, in Liberace’s overflowing cape, spraying business cards in the air, and the triangular photo of a piano player in the corner of a magazine. “Tony Sherbé,” she said.

  “Tony Sherbé!” Lee spat the name out. “Tony Sherbé is one of those dogs—no, not like you, my Mercutio, not like you—a jackal!—who comes around sniffing at the bones of animals who have died. This man sneered at Liberace; he had never seen him play. Possibly he had never even heard of him before the contest. Tony Sherbé was a second-rate graduate of a second-rate music school who was desperate for a job.

  “But he was charming, and he had good teeth, and he had cunning. Weeks before the competition, he would spend hours at the museum, finding out who had the power and when they were coming in, and then, arranging to be there just at that moment. He learned the names of the judges, their occupations, their favorite wines. It was shameless. He flirted openly with the older women; he suggestively held the gaze of the susceptible men. Faugh! He licked the faces of all of them!

  “Little Bang watched this all from behind his mop and pail. Tony never considered him a threat—he was less than a nothing, he was a janitor—and so Tony would even confide in Little B. He had this need to boast. ‘Let me tell you something, amigo,’ he told Little B, one day out by the dumpsters. ‘I’m gonna wipe up this competition. Watch me. I can play better with one arm in a cast than that old queer ever did.’

  “Little Bang may have wanted to help him into that arm cast, but he never let on. He stopped himself, because he knew he had to save it for the contest. Ah! The look Tony Sherbé had on his face when he found out Little Bang was one of his competitors!” Lee laughed softly, little puffs of soundless air.

  “Big Bang and I were there that day. When all the participants came up onto the stage to be introduced and the janitor walked up, well! Tony lost that gleaming smile. There was shock on his face, and dismay, and finally, murderous rage. He felt betrayed. It was too delicious.”

  Lee produced from nowhere a small biscuit that he placed directly into Mercutio’s waiting mouth. “Of course, the pleasure we got from seeing the smugness slip off his face didn’t last long. It wasn’t Little Bang’s fault. He was brilliant, there was no question. I’ve never heard him play better. He captured something about Liberace’s style that none of the others had: the quickness, the lightness, but also the precision and the grandeur. If you had closed your eyes you would have believed Liberace was in the room once more. Everyone felt it; the audience was on their feet the moment he stood up from the piano.

  “Little Bang had the soul, he had the passion, but, unfortunately, Tony Sherbé had the sequined vest.” Lee frowned at the spray of biscuit Mercutio had left on the cushion. “He sprang onto the stage with his shiny costume and insistently white teeth and we knew all was lost. Notes were slurred, notes were missed, but all was forgiven with a shake of his bobbling blond head. Little Bang never had a chance.”

  Lee leaned in toward Emily, who was herself leaning forward. “To lose to Tony Sherbé is painful enough. But we had underestimated the extent of his malice. Two days after being installed, he whispers intimately into the ear of the director of the museum, a sadly beguiled dowager by the name of Sylvia Stopplewhite, and the next day, Little Bang is relieved of his duties. Effective immediately, no explanation given. Just like that.”

  Lee snapped his fingers, and the sound cracked uncomfortably in Emily’s ear. She realized she had been holding her breath. “Is that true?” she asked.

  “As true as anything is,” Lee replied. He nodded to the accordion at Emily’s feet. “And what about you? Are you a musician as well? Do you play?”

  Emily stared at the accordion for a long time. She didn’t know whether it was the tea or the story, but her body had relaxed. She felt a certain vibration, a humming, emanating from her chest and spreading out to her arms and hands, which was not unpleasant. When Lee asked his question again, softly, Emily looked at him and, in answer, snapped the clasps on the case and opened it.

  The Rossetti seemed to be the only thing that hadn’t gotten road-beaten during the trip. It was as bright and shiny as when she had first pulled it out of the box all those years ago. There were no scratch marks, no scuffs, not one chip on the keyboard. The leather straps were a little darker but nothing else had changed. It still gleamed.

  “It’s been a long time,” she said finally.

  “Try it,” said Lee.

  As pristine as it may have looked on the outside, Emily knew the inside was an entirely different matter. After all these years, the tuning would be awry. The wax holding the reeds would have deteriorated, the reeds misaligned. Even the bellows might have disintegrated. Nothing lasts forever, she thought. Still, she grabbed the accordion and hoisted it onto her lap. It weighed nothing now; lifting toddlers in and out of car seats and up two flights of stairs had given her back and arms a new perspective.

  Slipping on the straps, Emily had the sensation of watching herself again, but this time, she saw a younger version suiting up. The back straps must have loosened, because she knew she wasn’t a petite fourteen-year-old girl and yet they fit her perfectly. The accordion was warm against her body. It was literally pressing on her heart, and she felt it there. Her shoulders squared, her arms bowed, her right fingers stroked the white keys, then drew back instinctively into position.

  One snap, two snaps, and the bellows were released. They appeared intact. She pulled back her left arm and took the deepest breath she had taken in six months. With a sweet exhale, her arm pressed in, her fingers pressed down, and a crystalline C-chord sailed out. Up the scale, down the scale, it had not lost its tuning. There was no wheezing, no sticking of the bellows. She tried a slow arpeggio up the keyboard, and to her amazement, her fingers remembered the way.

  She looked up. Lee was
holding Mercutio in his arms, gently rubbing his tummy. “Why don’t you play something for us?” he asked. Mercutio cocked an ear expectantly.

  Emily shook her head sadly, but her fingers were already twitching. Yes, yes, we can, they insisted. Her brain wheeled backward in time, lifetimes ago, searching, searching.… She could. She could try. If she could just remember the beginning of a song.… Somewhere far back in her mind she heard Mr. Wojcik entreating her: “The beginning is most important, ptaszku, it sets the mood! It prepares the listener for the delicacy that is to come.”

  Shut up, thought Emily, plucking out his voice and tossing it into the void. I’m not doing this for you.

  She pressed in and down. The opening chords to “Come Back to Sorrento” soared out. She had opened a door, and there it was before her, the long-lost world of chords and notes that had been silently waiting for her return. Emily started slowly, finding her way back into the music, but it was all there. All of it. Her fingers ran ahead, happy to be back; she grew expansive with every pull and press of the bellows. But the music was different than she had ever played it before. The notes hitched, elongated, took their own time getting to the melody, rather than holding fast to the beat. She was feeling the duskier tones to the music. She knew grief now, and anger, intimately, and it colored her playing.

  Emily closed her eyes. Playing the accordion always had a hypnotic, timeless quality to it, and now she realized how similar it was to the late-night sensation of rocking her children to sleep. Especially with Georgia, when there was none of the anxiety and uncertainty she had with Walt. Back and forth in the rocking chair, back and forth, Georgia pressed against her chest, in the darkness, in the quiet of night. There’s only you and me in the world. You and me. Safe.

  Emily began trembling; she felt her arms wobble. She took in a fierce breath and concentrated on the notes, the pumping, the pushing of buttons and keys. She could hide within the music, let it wash over her, let herself be rocked by it. She was the one being held; there was a hollow in the music, and she was nestling down into it. You and me. Let’s stay like this forever.