Heartstrings in B-Flat Minor

by Scott Johnson

  “What are you talking about? I was joking.”

  “That may be, but I can’t help it if it triggered things that aren’t so funny to me. Thanks to you,” she says, picking up some bills and sticking them in his face, “I’m ruined, bankrupt!”

  “Come on, you can’t be serious. Who else takes care of you like me?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me, Sterling!”

  “You exaggerate, dear, and you know it.”

  “Oh, is that so?”

  “Yeah, that’s so. What are a few bills that got forgotten while you were abroad? We all have bills that slip through the cracks now and then.”

  “Oh, that’s a good one coming from you.” She angrily tosses the bills back onto the pile on the table. “Let’s talk about your bills—as long as you’re bringing up the ‘we all’ thing. I have them memorized by now, and I don’t recall letting them fall into any cracks!”

  Sterling backs up to the door, quickly scans the hall for witnesses, and sees none. “This is true, my dear—you’ve been a wonder through all my legal woes. But honestly, good news is right around the corner, and your long-held patience is about to pay off.”

  “What, like I haven’t heard this before?”

  “Honestly, my lawyers just gave me some very promising details.”

  Sheryl, sniffling and looking fatigued, drops her combative air and wipes away her tears. “Don’t be playing games with me, Sterling. I can’t take it anymore and don’t deserve it. Never did. All your excuses and promises have turned my life into a perpetual nightmare.”

  “I promise, baby,” he assures with zeal. “Let’s get you upstairs and cleaned up. Then we’ll go celebrate your homecoming and windfall days ahead.”

  His finishing smile finally melts her resistance. She cracks a little one of her own. “Oh, why not?” she agrees. “It’s a cinch I wouldn’t be able to sleep.”

  A dryer’s bell rings. They dispense with the repartee, examining each other in silence for a few moments. Simultaneously, they lean in for another kiss. Sterling ultimately breaks their embrace to make a big show of folding her laundry as she watches.

  He exclaims, “Hey, that was some performance you put on at the airport! Saw it on the news at breakfast. Quite the media star, I’d say.”

  She chuckles. “Maybe somebody will come along and offer me big bucks for the real stories behind my Egyptian adventure. With any luck, there might even be something left over after knocking off a few bills.”

  “Right, that’d be nice,” he remarks, not biting on the reference to debts.

  “Yes,” she mumbles melancholically.

  “So,” he counters, “I was figuring you’d be famished by about now.”

  She appears ready to pick up the pace. “Well, it just so happens I am! But it has to be American cuisine! Any problem with that, good doctor?

  “Your wish, as they say, dear, is my command.”

  “Good. Obviously, I need a little time to get ready.”

  “Of course.”

  “All of this is such a surprise. I had no idea you were coming.”

  “Surprises are the best, right?” Done folding, he finishes packing her granny cart and leads the way to the hallway.

  Sheryl takes a last look for anything possibly left behind in the laundry room and then tags along after Sterling. “Cool your heels here a bit,” she says as they reach the lobby. “I’ll get ready as fast as possible.”

  Sterling stammers, “I, uh, really would prefer to wait in your living room. I can’t help but remember a certain other time I waited down here for you—and all that soon happened that day.”

  “Don’t be silly! That was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Believe me, it won’t happen again, ever. Besides, there’s no way you’re coming upstairs. My place is a mess. I haven’t had a chance yet to tidy up anything.”

  “Come on,” he counters, “as if I haven’t been up there before, even after trips.”

  “Sorry, Sterling. I’m not budging. It’s not negotiable.”

  “Okay, but try and make it snappy.”

  “Don’t make me laugh. Settle in with a good magazine, dear, and consider yourself lucky I’ve already finished my laundry. See you soon!”

  She exits to a bank of elevators, where one doorway opens for her right away.

  Back in her apartment inside a tiny bathroom, Sheryl feels like she’s still overseas—or more to the point, on a cruise ship, considering her bathroom’s constricted space. Stripped down and ready to shower, she first fiddles with a half-clogged showerhead to produce an erratic stream of water. “Third-world,” she grumbles.

  Soon she’s done showering away any remnants of the road. She clears steam from the middle of the mirror with a corner of her bath towel. Overwhelming sadness stares back at her. Or is it weariness, or both? “Look at you,” she unhappily mutters.

  Thoughts of Sterling down in the lobby don’t do much good at first. However, while the mirror fogs up again and she towels off, she allows herself to start thinking that perhaps better days finally really are just ahead, and she hurriedly leaves the steamy bathroom to find something to wear.

  Fifteen minutes later, Sheryl enters the elevator wearing a great parka. As the elevator descends to the ground floor, Sheryl primps in a wall mirror, thankfully alone, and tries to get pumped up for Sterling’s alleged news. She recalls having walked this plank before. It seems like she’s always having to pump it up, one way or another, as with various on-the-job challenges overseas, often working alone in crowds—and thankful for crowds within which to hide her sorrows. “There’s no crowd here,” she laments to the empty elevator.

  She has nobody with whom to commiserate about sorrows from always living on the run, about being unable to establish more than fleeting relationships with men of any quality, while always being mindful that the one man who is most consistently in her life, whether at the forefront or in the background, has been the source of much sorrow. Said sorrow, undeniably, always greets her upon her return home. Yet this same man, undeniably, has been the source of many pleasures. “So it is with men,” she rationalizes.

  The elevator slows to a stop at the ground floor. When the doors open, she shudders. For a moment, she can’t step forward. She contemplates reversing course and going back upstairs. With a mental sigh, she presses onward. Anyway, she further rationalizes, I’m starving.

  Sheryl and Sterling leave her building, bundled against the cold. The wind at last has died down, as has the snowfall, but it’s still a wintry mess. They blaze a trail with exhalation puffs reminiscent of a locomotive’s pulsating exhaust, trudging west on Diversey for the American Cuisine Grill a block away. “I’m ready for a big steak,” declares Sheryl between puffs of air.

  A sudden wind gust off the nearby great lake hits their backs, spinning them around in their tracks. Sheryl’s mouth takes in a blast of freezing air that numbs her lips even while exhilarating her brain. Instantly, her daydreaming thoughts turn elsewhere, sans Sterling.

  New Zealand’s Kawarau Bridge: in her mind, she’s there. It is September, early spring on this side of the planet. Sheryl stands midway out on the sturdy, century-old bridge a short drive northeast of Queenstown. She braces against an Antarctic blast of frigid air hitting her dead-on.

  Involuntarily, she gulps cold fresh air into her already light-headed system. Pleasantly dizzy and tripping on the oxygen injection, she leisurely scans her surroundings and is reminded of why she so loves this little bitty land down under. The mixture of lush flora and rocky terrain with a river running through it is stunning, especially given her suspended viewpoint. It has everything! is all she can think, busy as her mind already is.

  Mentally, she’s blocking out her tour group of Texas Tech newbie grads. They boisterously surround her on the bridge, whooping it up in preparation for bungee jumping. Ignoring the racket, Sheryl
fantasizes about immigrating here, knowing that anywhere she goes in this compact land of extremes, there are plenty of sights and weather zones at which to marvel. Landscapes range widely, from pristine beaches to alpine ranges to tropical forests. Strange mixtures of fauna, both native and introduced, are to be found everywhere, and despite spring’s occasional Antarctic wind gusts, Sheryl is covered liberally with sunscreen since most of the country annually basks in over two thousand hours of sunshine.

  All this and bungee jumping too! she jokes with herself, not entirely thrilled over some pressures from her tour group to go ahead and take a jump with them.

  “Don’t be chicken!” they shout every so often.

  Sheryl, now thirty and at the top of her game, smiles and nods but remains steadfast against taking a leap with her younger charges. However, she can’t ignore the attention draped on her by Troy, a muscular cowboy type. While taking in the scenery and verifying that she has a poncho in her purse—since rain pops up here anytime, sun or not—she notices Troy checking her out as he talks football with pals. She applies extra sunscreen to her face and throat partly to tease him.

  Be smart, she counsels herself. Involvement with anyone in her groups, whether paying customers or fellow workers, has proven disastrous in the past. There’s no denying it. She shouldn’t even try.

  A masculine voice calls out, “Hey, Sheryl,” in a pleasant drawl that ends her near-trancelike drift from reality. Troy approaches.

  Could be trouble, she thinks.

  “When are you going to jump?” he asks. “I’ll go if you go.”

  “That second part, I’d like to see, Troy. I hear you’re chicken.”

  “Then jump! I’ll be next in line.”

  They watch one of his classmates, Rachel, a normally upbeat redhead, stand at the brink, terrified. She sneaks a peek way below. Raucous razzing from travel mates convinces her that the time to jump is now, and she launches herself. Sheryl, from a short distance, holds her breath as she watches Rachel plummet, screaming, till the bungee cord tightens. Rachel hits the river and submerges halfway below the surface, only to be sprung from the drink as the cord recoils. Her lively audience howls in support.

  “Well, Sheryl,” persists Troy, “you next?”

  “Why don’t you go next and I’ll think about it?”

  “Shoot, it’s ladies first where I come from. Don’t worry, though—if you take the plunge, I’ll be coming fast, right behind you, honest.” He chuckles at his double entendre, pleasantly winking in case she missed it.

  “Troy! What would your mother say?” kids Sheryl.

  “Come on, Sheryl,” begs Troy. “If it would make it any easier for you, we can jump tandem. It’d be my pleasure.”

  “I’ll bet. But if I’m jumping, it’ll be a solo act.”

  “Hey, understood!”

  “Well, that’s a big if—because I’ve managed to avoid bungee bouncing many times and can’t say I regret it.”

  Sheryl has sidestepped the call to jump during half a dozen trips here. Pressure has been mounting, though, since there’s always a Troy in the crowd egging her on. And admittedly, she figures, in the rapidly growing world of extreme-adventure vacations, it’s inevitable that sooner or later she will end up jumping. After all, as soon as tomorrow, she’ll again be facing the same pressures. The Texans, mixing bungee jumping with white-water rafting in a weeklong thrill quest, have another jump in mind: the Nevis High Wire, over three times as high as here. She thinks, I’d be better off to get it over with here and now.

  Troy interjects into her thoughts, “Listen, Sheryl, the truth is, the guys have been giving me grief about not jumping. And now that Rachel’s jumped, there’ll be no hearing the end of it if I don’t. You could be my inspiration here, Sheryl.”

  Sheryl figures he appears sincere. She looks below, again thinking how inevitable it is that sooner or later she’ll have to do a bungee jump. Sheryl also knows, from tour-prep research, that Kawarau has a spotless safety record. Thinking now that there could be no better place for her bungee debut, she makes a snap decision. “Why not?” she enthusiastically barks.

  “That a girl!” shouts Troy. “You won’t regret it, Sheryl.”

  “Well, we’ll see about that,” she offers, still less than sure.

  They march to the Bungydome, a splashy high-tech visitor center, to buy tickets. The Kawarau Bridge Bungy is the birthplace of commercial bungee jumping. It offers a forty-three-meter vertical drop to the Kawarau River below. Daredevils have their choice of jumping solo or in tandem. Then there’s the triple-edged question of whether to bob just short of the river at the end of the drop, kiss the Kawarau, or be plunged into it. The ticket booth menu seems limitless.

  “Decisions, decisions,” mutters Troy as they read the options.

  “Oh, get wet,” suggests Sheryl. “Why not? Even if just a little.”

  “You got it. I’ll match you. Is that what you’re doing?”

  “I think I’ll take a full plunge, as long as I’m doing it.”

  Troy looks at her with surprise. “Oh, okay then, that’s me too!”

  They watch another tourist contemplating whether to jump. He stands on a turntable synchronized with 130 video monitors that all together give him a virtual taste of the real thing. The high-tech demo prompts a return of hesitations about jumping in the first place, both for Sheryl and especially for Troy, whose face turns ashen-white.

  Bordering on false bravado, Sheryl browbeats him a little. “Come on, Troy, be a man. Lead the way.”

  “Right, right,” he mumbles, apparently unfazed by the insult. With that, Troy snaps up a ticket for the full dunk.

  Sheryl considers reneging entirely. Nervous, self-conscious, and unable to go for broke, she ends up opting for just kissing the river. Minutes later, they are at the launch pad.

  “Get on with it, Troy!” some cowboy shouts from behind.

  A strapping male attendant whose blasé attitude says he’s heard it all, excuse-wise, has had enough of this and mechanically helps Troy into waist and ankle harnesses. Troy sucks it up.

  “Are we going for style points?” Troy asks, challenging Sheryl.

  The largely Texan audience howls, “Hell, yeah!”

  Sheryl doesn’t back down. “Sure! Like I said, lead the way, Troy. Show me how it’s done.”

  Troy steps to the brink. Naturally, he hesitates a final time. Sheryl waits rigidly behind him. Suddenly, she panics as scenes from her unfinished life rapidly play out in her mind, freaking her out to no end. Could this be a sign about this escapade being a needless death march after all? She inwardly battles. Now or never! she thinks. Yet her life flashes before her eyes. In the middle of a rabid crowd, she fights inner fears that these flashes are previews of a bad ending if she takes the leap.

  She figures that Troy also must be freaking out. “Get it on, Troy!” someone shouts as the razzing continues from behind.

  With self-preservation in mind, Sheryl encourages Troy to resist peer pressure. “Don’t do it for them, Troy—really. There’s no shame in calling it off.”

  He takes a deep breath to calm himself. “No way, girl. I’m taking the plunge,” he insists.

  He actually looks ready for this. The crowd quiets in an unexpected show of compassion and respect as he makes the sign of the cross. Inhaling deeply to pump up his inner strength, he suddenly springs horizontally away from the tower. “Yahoo!” Troy hollers out, Texas-style.

  His echoing bellow leaves an audio trail that bounces back and forth across canyon walls as he descends rapidly toward the river below. Sheryl watches him plummet, her focus finally detached from the passing scenes from her life. Within seconds, Troy disappears into the river, convincing her that something bad awaits if she goes through with this. However, as his tether pulls back up and Troy springs back out of the river, she breathes a sigh of relief.r />
  “He did it!” a former heckler admits.

  “With a lot less fuss than you!” remarks another.

  Troy’s fellow alumni cheer him wildly from above as a motorized rescue dinghy rushes toward him, having been docked at the landing of a long staircase to the top of the canyon wall. Troy, for his part, bobs up and down at the end of his rope, speechless. The dinghy driver frees him from the harness and rushes him dockside, where he regains his equilibrium and waves happily to the admiring bridge crowd way overhead.

  On the bridge, cheers for antlike Troy below fade. Razzing returns, this time directed at Sheryl. “Don’t let that chickenshit show you up, Sheryl!” shouts the same lout who moments earlier was taunting Troy.

  So much for respect or compassion, thinks Sheryl.

  “Yeah!” yells a brassy female member of the Texas troupe. “After all, you’re our fearless leader! You can do it, right?”

  Sheryl somehow manages to hide from everyone what feels to her like wide-eyed terror—everyone, that is, but the attendant sizing her up for her fitting. He can see her outright fear.

  “Don’t listen to them,” he advises. “Hundreds back off every year. But if you go for it, believe me, you’ll be fine.”

  “I’m fine now,” she assures him. “Don’t worry, I’m ready.”

  “Okay.”

  Once Sheryl’s ankles are shackled together with padded straps, panic returns to hit her hard. As the attendant double-checks her waist harness and its extending straps around her thighs, she realizes there’s nothing left for her to do except go for it, especially after her own prejump instructions for Troy. She promised, and he’s due return on that trust.

  The attendant motions for quiet, and the audience hushes.

  Sheryl thinks of God being always at her side. All fear of jumping immediately leaves her. Ankles tethered, she bunny-hops to the platform’s edge and launches herself into a freefall. Her mind freed from fear, she lives totally in the exhilaration of the moment. She smiles at a bird in flight and nose-dives to kiss the river. “Whoa!” she exclaims breathlessly when she reaches the water.