by Chris Cander
“I told you before, you’re a liability.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. Exactly how am I a liability? You’re not responsible for me.”
He looked at her, hard. “No, I certainly am not,” he said. Then he took a step back and seemed to gaze around at the stretch of rocky wilderness beyond the hotel. “Look,” he said after a moment, “you want to follow me around like a lost dog, I can’t stop you. But stay out of my way, understand?”
He stood scowling at the barren landscape, the wind kicking up silt and pushing at the wisps of hair he had left. He might be cruel, she thought, a cruel, crooked little man. But something told her that he wasn’t as threatening as he pretended to be. What was it that made him so angry?
“Fine,” she said. Then, as he turned toward his car, she asked, “So where are we going first?”
Greg lifted his sunglasses and leveled a glare at her that managed to be dull and piercing at the same time. “We?”
“Pardon me. You.”
“Well, I suppose you’ll just have to wait and see,” he said, then strode off.
* * *
—
Back on the two-lane highway that transected Death Valley, they drove about fifteen minutes, passing sporadic tufts of dusty green brush and a sign stating that the elevation was at sea level, until they reached a gravel turnoff marked SALT CREEK INTERPRETIVE TRAIL. How did Greg know where he was going? As decisive as he seemed to be about his route, he must have been familiar with the park. She wondered about the extent of his planning for this expedition, and this, in turn, increased her curiosity about his purpose in undertaking it.
After a mile or so, the road ended in a paved parking area where a wooden boardwalk stretched into the mountainous distance with a narrow creek on one side and sturdy, pale rock formations on the other.
Clara hung back—far enough so he couldn’t accuse her of intruding, but close enough to watch—and read several signs that described the Salt Creek ecosystem. Greg ordered the guys to get the piano unloaded and start rolling it up the boardwalk. “Sunset’s at six-oh-five, give or take,” he said, looking at his watch. “I want to go south to Badwater for that, so we need to hurry. It’s about thirty minutes from here.” Juan and Beto stepped up their pace. As Greg hustled to keep up with them, his limp turned into a sort of skip, reminding her of the old sheepdog her uncle had when he and her aunt took her in. Shep had “a hitch in his giddy-up,” as her uncle put it, and whenever the dog tried to run it had the same staccato gait as Greg did now. She’d loved that dog.
“Here,” Greg called. “Unstrap it and leave the dolly there. We’re going to put it in the creek.”
“What’s that?” she called, pulled out of her reminiscence. “What did you say?”
“I was talking to them,” he said, unscrewing and extending the legs of his tripod.
“Did you say you were going to put the piano in the creek?”
“Right over there,” he called to Beto, pointing to the middle of the shallow water. Sunlight skittered on the surface, which was mottled with rocks of various sizes.
“In the water?” Clara asked. She stood in front of him so he couldn’t ignore her.
He sighed. “Remember our agreement? The part about you not pestering me?” He attached a lens to the camera body and gave it a quick blast of compressed air from a can.
“Fuck your agreement. There’s no goddamn chance I’ll let you put my piano in the water.”
“And how are you going to stop me?”
To the surprise of both of them, she snatched the camera out of his hands and marched back toward the parking area.
“What the fuck? Get back here! That camera’s probably worth more than everything you own put together.”
She could hear him coming up behind her—step, thump, step, thump—and broke into a jog, jumped into her car, and locked the doors. She had just finished rolling up the driver’s window when Greg got there. She set the camera down on the passenger seat and jammed the key into the ignition. “If you put my piano in the creek, I’m leaving and taking your camera with me,” she shouted through the glass.
Panting, Greg leaned against the window, resting one arm on the glass and wearing an indifferent expression in spite of his chest heaving up and down. “You think I don’t have other cameras with me? What sort of photographer would I be if I only brought one?”
“Then I guess you won’t care if I keep it,” Clara said. She started the engine and tossed her arm over the seat, looking over her shoulder to navigate.
“Wait!” Greg shouted, slapping the glass as the car jerked away in reverse. “Stop!”
Her heart thundering, she arced the car around and then slammed it into drive like a stunt driver, a trick Peter had taught her one Sunday afternoon, and tore off up the gravel road. She heard Greg cry out but couldn’t see him through the dust her car had whipped up between them.
“Stop!” she heard. “Stop!” But she wasn’t sure if it was Greg who was calling or her own conscience. She slowed, and stopped, and looked at the camera, which had slid against the back of the seat. She picked it up and held it in her lap, feeling ridiculous and childish for having taken it. Then she turned the car around.
Greg was in the middle of the road, bent over with his hands on his thighs. As she approached, she could see that he was struggling to catch his breath. This made her feel even worse, realizing he’d probably tried to run after her. When he finally pushed himself upright again, his countenance carried the weight of defeat. She pulled up next to him and rolled down the window.
“I told you before I wouldn’t let anything happen to the piano,” he said to her. “And I’m not going to.”
“Then why the creek?” The camera remained in her lap.
“Did you happen to notice, since you’re so observant, how shallow it is, and that there’s a dry elevation in the middle of it? No? Well, there is, and it’s plenty wide to set the piano down without it getting its feet wet. In fact, the guys probably already have it in situ. They’re probably standing there in the middle of Salt Creek waiting for me to photograph it, which I will do as soon as you give my fucking camera back.”
“I thought you had others.”
He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and ran it over his cheeks and the back of his neck. “You really are a pain in the ass, aren’t you?” he said, staring down at her. It was odd how his voice conveyed so much and his expression so little, as though he were shielding his own vulnerability.
“No, actually, I’m not,” she said, and held the camera out to him with her good hand. It was a relief to be rid of it. Greg examined the body and lens to see if Clara might’ve inflicted some damage, even turned it on and clicked through a few of the images to be certain they were still there. “Look,” she said, “I’m sorry. I just—”
“I care a hell of a lot more about that piano than you could ever guess,” he said, his tone shifting to a softer register. “It’s not in my interest to ruin it now.”
Clara was thinking about his rather ominous use of now, whether he meant it might be in his interest to ruin it later, when he turned without another word and started back toward the creek. Clara watched him go, the limp more pronounced, the sun beating down on him, his bald spot gleaming with perspiration. Despite his harsh and haughty bearing, his intrepid stare, his apparent conscription to unhappiness, she didn’t entirely dislike him. In truth, she found him strangely appealing. In Greg, she recognized something of herself: a dull void where something had been lost. His forbearance suggested a wound deeper than whatever might’ve caused his uneven gait.
Considering his wounds made Clara think about her own, both physical and emotional. She walked down to the creek, wanting to see for herself that the piano was safe. There it was, on the dry spot in the middle where Greg had said it would be, with Juan and Beto stand
ing beside it looking bored but patient, waiting for instructions. The sight of the water made her thirsty, and her thirst made her angry. At that moment she didn’t want to need anything at all—not a drink, not a bathroom, not Greg’s money, not a sense of control, and certainly not a piano she could neither play nor let go of.
She sat down on the boardwalk and watched from a distance as Greg set up his camera according to whatever mysterious calculations he’d made, then manipulated the scene by shouting to his helpers for what seemed to her inconsequential adjustments that only increased the risk of getting the piano wet. At one point Beto stumbled, and Clara, flashing back to the disastrous move up the staircase, made a small, involuntary noise that—once she saw that he’d recovered his footing and the piano was again stable—made her even angrier at herself. Cradling her broken hand in her lap, she fought against an overwhelming urge to cry. She lost.
Thick, streaming tears cut into the thin coat of dust and sand on her face. Once she started she couldn’t stop, giving in to all the emotions that were behind and inside them, yet at the same time she was able to look at herself as if from a distant vantage—oh, there’s a woman who’s crying—and she felt a great inward tenderness as she bent forward, hugging her hand more tightly. This division of awareness allowed her to notice that the boardwalk was trembling along with her sobs, that her nose was running unattractively, and that the pathetic sounds she was making might have been loud enough to draw unwanted attention. Still, she let herself continue, let the frustration and thirst, the grief and embarrassment, and all the rest run down her cheeks and drop onto her jeans in fat splotches. Finally, after a few minutes, the well began to run dry, and the tears slowed, then stopped. She felt empty in a satisfying—though not entirely pleasant—sense. She no longer had to tangle with her emotions: the battle had been fought and was now over. She was like a car that had run out of gas, and the only option was to wait on the side of the road until she got the fuel with which to start again.
She looked over and saw that Greg had finished and was repacking his vest and backpack, and the movers had already carried the piano out of the stream and were positioning it on the dolly on the boardwalk. The sun was low enough to gild the setting with its eventide light, and she thought with a detached wonder how pretty and noble the piano looked. No wonder Greg wanted to photograph it. Whatever else there was to his relationship with the Blüthner seemed unimportant now; her curiosity had been supplanted by fatigue.
For lack of a tissue, she wiped her nose with the back of her good hand and realized how dirty she felt. Even though she was used to being filthy with car grease, this kind of road-driven wear and tear lacked dignity. Perhaps insisting on following Greg around did, too. She decided it was time for her to go home, but she wanted to blow her nose and wash her face and take care of her other human needs before doing so.
Slipping away unseen, she drove back to the motel with the intention of using the bathroom and maybe leaving a note for Greg to let him know he’d won, that she was getting out from underfoot. But pulling into the parking lot, she was overcome with fatigue and wanted desperately to lie down, even for just an hour or two, before driving the couple-hundred-plus miles home.
“Sorry, miss,” said the man at reception. “We don’t have any rooms left for tonight. They’re all booked up way in advance this time of the year. Late October, early November’s usually our busiest few weeks.”
“Nothing at all?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
She sighed, and thanked him, and followed his directions to the public restroom. Then, while waiting for her meal in the hotel’s restaurant, she wrote Greg a brief note on a paper napkin, apologizing again for having taken his camera, telling him she was leaving, and wishing him well. She read it over, then folded it up, tore it into small pieces, and dropped them into the breadbasket. On another napkin she wrote, I’m taking off.—Clara. It lay there on the table as she ate. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth with it and tossed it on her empty plate. She didn’t owe him a damn thing.
KATYA LEANED IN CLOSE to the bathroom mirror to apply the mascara to one eye, then leaned back to check the result. Satisfied, she repeated the process for the other eye. There weren’t too many wrinkles; she looked young for forty, she decided, even pretty. Then a bit of lipstick, not too much. She didn’t want it to seem as though she’d made a special effort. This was the first time she ever applied makeup or curled her hair or wore a pair of high heels to give a piano lesson.
Also for the first time, she wondered if it was appropriate to invite a student into her home. She didn’t have many, so typically she was pleased to have them come. Most of them were elementary-age children whose mothers drove them over, then sat on the sofa reading or knitting for the thirty minutes. Older children sometimes rode over after school on their bikes, dropping them carelessly in the front yard. She had a few adult students, women whose children were grown and gone and who wanted to finally do something for themselves or else to stave off the loneliness that had invaded their empty nests. One pair of students, a couple who’d been married for nearly fifty years, came twice a month at lunchtime, taking turns during a single half-hour lesson, each standing at the piano and offering encouragement as the other played. Never before, though, had an adult male come in the middle of the day, when her son was in school and her husband at work. But this was the only time slot that worked, since he had a busy schedule and a family of his own.
So why wouldn’t it be appropriate? She was a teacher and her home was the only classroom available to her. That she would be alone with a male student had never been an issue before. This would be nothing out of the ordinary, simply another introductory lesson.
Katya put cookies on a platter and set out the makings for tea, then straightened up the living room for a second time. She glanced at the clock: everything had been in order for too long already, and he wasn’t even due until noon. She sighed and sat down at the piano. Playing always helped calm her nerves, especially now that she had her old Blüthner back.
She chose Liszt’s étude “La Campanella” for its brisk allegretto tempo. Also, it was challenging technically, requiring finger agility for the large jumps with the right hand. The first few notes were played slowly, like a throat-clearing, the piece then gradually becoming faster, more urgent and, within a few minutes, complicated enough that she was so absorbed she forgot about the time and was startled when the doorbell rang. She jumped up and hurried to the door, then forced herself to pause and take a long breath so that when she opened it she’d appear calm.
“Hello, come in,” she said, spreading her arm toward the living room like one of those game-show hostesses she’d seen on TV.
He smiled at her, his rodimoye pyatno changing shape along the crease at his left eye. “I hope I’m not too early. I was worried about the traffic and for once there actually wasn’t any.”
She smiled in return, and cautioned herself to settle down. He was just a student. That he’d also somehow managed to make her knees go soft and her head light when he’d called, out of the blue, several months after he’d helped reunite her with her piano, and inquired about the offer of lessons she’d mentioned, was not something she should pay any attention to. But how could she fail to pay attention? It had been so long since she’d felt butterflies because of a man that she couldn’t even remember the last time.
“It’s nice to see you again.”
She led him to the piano and pulled the bench out for him. “Sit, please.”
He did, and she sat next to him.
“The piano looks great in here. I bet you’re glad to have it back after all that time, huh?”
“Oh yes,” she said, smiling at him. “So glad.”
He smiled back, and she could see his eyes darting over hers like a caress, and quickly dropped her gaze.
He clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “So
how does this work? I’ve never taken a piano lesson before.”
She straightened her already straight posture and nodded once. “Yes. First thing we must learn is posture, the foundation to all the expressive and technical skills, which will come later.”
He mimicked her posture, which made him several inches taller, and they both registered that and laughed.
“Good,” she said. “Now, basic playing movements. Your entire arm is relaxed. No tension in the shoulder, elbow, or wrist. Do this.” She pivoted to him and pulled his right arm out of his lap until it dangled between them. She drew in a quick breath at the intimacy of touching him, then forced herself to focus. “Now, raise the arm—relaxed, like this. Watch.” She demonstrated by lifting her own arm as if it were floating upward. “Keep the hand in a relaxed shape like this. Palm should be round like holding an apple. See? Okay, you try.” When he did, he looked like a robot or a puppet being manipulated by strings. “Okay, good. More relaxed. Yes, now round your hand more. Like a…how do you call it? Dome? Yes, like a dome. Good. Now watch, stay relaxed, but each fingertip should be crisp and precise—not wobbly like a cooked pasta.” She let her fingers drift to the keyboard and pressed a key with her middle finger. “Only press with the third finger for now, like this. Play deeply to the bottom of the key, then release. This will make a beautiful, deep, soft piano tone. Okay, now you.” He did, pressing down as she had instructed, but too hard and with such a quick release that it sounded harsh and percussive. “Very good,” she said. “It takes a lot of practice. Try once more. And try with your other hand also.” He played the same note several times with each hand, and they all sounded as terrible as the first one.
“How long have you been playing?” he asked.
“Since I was very small.”
“Did you take lessons? I should’ve tried to learn when I was a kid.”
“My father taught me at first, but mostly I learned by myself. Then later with teachers. I studied piano at university.”
