— What please what! you can’t even, just now it’s what you meant up there just now too isn’t it when you knew all the time… he caught balance backed against the piano as overhead in the beams, from the kitchen, through the bull’s eyed door to the garage lights came on all together, and a policeman through it brushing his hands.
— Want to get this place boarded up, lucky these kids didn’t burn it down for you.
He was staring down at the label of a record underfoot as though its label were in a language he did not understand and looked up slowly at the fragments of plates, glass, records and more records flung among books split, ink splattered pages of music some still untorn, with a sound of trying to clear his throat. — Kids…?
— Kids… the policeman nodded past his elbow, — who else would shit in your piano.
— You, you never can tell… he stared for an instant at the staved and unfinished notes on paper crumpled and smeared in the strings there before he turned with one step, and another as vague, to reach and tap a high C, and then far enough to fit his hand to an octave and falter a dissonant chord, again, and again, before he corrected it and looked up, — right? Believing and shitting are two very different things?
— Edward…
— Never have to clean your toilet bowl again… he recovered the dissonant chord, — right?
— Well yeah you, you want to get the place boarded up, some kid gets hurt in here you could be in real trouble… straightening jackets, belts, pocketing pads, flashlights in departing scurries to the lighted eaves, toward the door abruptly choreographed, Sousa in chords of play by ear, a glissando descending to a dull thump.
— Kids that’s all! a generation in heat that’s all… he pounded two chords against each other’s unrest — no subject is taboo, no act is forbidden that’s all…! and he struck into the sailors’ chorus from Dido and Aeneas, — you’ll never, no never, have to clean your…
— Look Edward we, we have to get back in to New York Stella’s got some dinner to get to and, watch that glass Stella…
— Rift the hills and roll the waters! flash the lightnings… he pounded chords, — the pulsating moment of climax playing teedle leedle leedle right inside your head… he found a tremolo far up the keyboard.
— Edward that’s enough please, we’re leaving…
— Wait wait trust me cousin! you wanted to hear this part… he banged C, hit F-sharp and bracketed C two octaves down — how she turned her bosom shaken in the dark of…
— Stella you think maybe we should wait and…
— I think we should leave yes, Edward…?
— Now for me the woods may wither, now for me the rooftree wait here’s Norman’s part, it may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought… he hunched over the keys to echo the Ring motif in sinister pianissimo, — he will hold thee something better than his dog, a little dearer than…
— All right yes maybe we just better go along, Edward?
— Rain or hail! or fire… he slammed another chord, stood there, and tapped C. — Master tunesmith wait… he dug in his pocket, — make a clean breast of the whole…
— Once you get things straightened out maybe you can call us up Edward? I’d like to get this waiv…
— Oh please! she caught his arm closing his suit jacket and his coat, hat on now tucking ends of his muffler and seeming all clothes beside her, — Edward? goodnight…
— We’ll call you up Edward, you’ll just be right here will you?
— I don’t know! he was getting a foot up now — I’ve had some offers, I’ve…
— But where would you…
His foot came down on the cluster at middle C — to, yes to Tribsterill go into the shoe business there… he bent to tie the lace — get to wear them around of course, where the muck runs down to…
— Please!
— Or wait yes that other place what was it, go into import export there in the privacy of my own…
— Well you just let us yes I’m coming Stella, watch that shovel there… and he got her arm past curtains stirred through the broken pane and the screen door hanging there on one hinge, neither open nor closed. — Kind of hate to just leave him there like that but I couldn’t see where there was anything we, watch that puddle… he caught her elbow as they gained the lawn.
— A laughing place… stabbed after them making their way round the yew, and then a sprinkling of piano notes, as beams of the police car swept them in an officious turn and sought the opening in the hedge.
— You think maybe we ought to stop in there again? He nodded over her head to the lighted windows where streak mounted streak down clapboards and glass from the gutter dangling at the corner of the house and branches thrashed where the trees rode high losing sight of each other as though readying to hurl their fruit in all directions and make a real night of it, one to emerge from with old wounds reopened and new ones inviting attention. — Or just to tell them goodnight…? but he was already holding opened for her the door of the car, and nothing turned her to look out or back as their lights caught the opening in the hedge, and then moved through it.
