Innocence

The radiance of the Clear settled upon me and silvered the windowpane. I was aware of her face mirrored in the glass as she looked over my right shoulder, but I dared not meet the eyes even in reflection. After a hesitation, she passed through me, through the window, into the night, and I thought that perhaps she lived in a different dimension from mine and was capable of exploring this world, though I could not cross into hers.

She drifted down through the falling snow and joined her two companions. They walked along the street in the direction that the man and dog had gone earlier.

The sonata came to an end, but Gwyneth must not have wanted praise for her playing. After the briefest silence, in the thrall that follows the final note of any soul-felt piece of music, she brought forth another melody from the keyboard. As quickly as I had recognized “Moonlight Sonata,” I knew this piece as well, but not its title. These were the beautiful but sad strains that, on certain nights, found their way into my windowless rooms and haunted me, the music for which I’d never been able to identify a source, as though it issued from another world invisible.

I crossed the room and stood behind and to one side of her, still at a respectful distance, so that she could continue to imagine she was playing only for herself and her lost father, but near enough that I could feel the music as well as hear it. Music is sound, sound consists of vibrations in the air, and these particular vibrations resonated with the marrow in my bones, with the tissues of my heart.

When Gwyneth finished, she sat with her head bowed, her hands resting on the keyslip, her face blushed by trembling candlelight.

She said nothing. I knew that I should give her silence as long as she wanted it, but I asked in a whisper, “What was that music?”

“The first was Beethoven.”

“Yes, I know. ‘Moonlight Sonata.’ But the second?”

“It’s my own composition. I wrote it in the week after my father died. It’s an expression of the pain… the pain of losing him.”

“It’s beautiful. I didn’t know you had such great talent.”

“Don’t be so awed. It’s just a thing I can do. A gift. It’s not work to me. I didn’t earn it.”

“You must have recorded the piece you just played.”

She shook her head. “No. It’s music only for him and me. And, this time at least, for you.”

“But I’ve heard it before.”

“You can’t have.”

As she began to play it again, this time pianissimo, I said, “But I have heard it many times. In my rooms under the city. And I can never trace it to a source.”

I stood in silence as she played the piece through to the end. The last note traveled away from us like a slow bird floating higher on a warm current of air.

After a silence, I said, “I really do hear it some nights.”

“I believe you.”

“But if you’ve never recorded it and no one else ever has…”

“Nevertheless, you’ve heard it. I don’t know how. But I think I might know why.”

I didn’t quite follow the logic of not-how-but-why, and yet I asked, “Why?”

At first she replied with silence, but then: “I don’t want to say—and be wrong. I don’t want to hope for the wrong thing.”

Her cell phone rang. She put it on SPEAKER. “Hello?”

All silken tones had been washed from the voice by bad whiskey, and the words came rough and low, as if spoken through a stone-filled craw. “Miss Gwyneth, it’s me.”

“Is something wrong, Simon?”

“Some guys they’re lookin’ for you.”

“What guys?”

“Neighbors at two of your apartments called me, said these guys came around askin’ about you. Your neighbors they didn’t much like the look of these guys, thought I should know.”

“My neighbors hardly ever see me come and go. I don’t know them, Simon, so how do you know them?”

“Well, Miss Gwyneth, they’re friendly, and I gave ’em my number in case, you know, there was ever a plumbin’ leak or somethin’ when you weren’t in residence.”

“The neighbors have the number of the property-management company, and that’s all they need. Simon, I told you never to talk about me to anyone.”

Her tone of disappointment seemed to distress him. “No, no, I never did. I never talked about you. I told ’em the other name, not your real one, and all we talked about was stuff, you know, just this and that, the way people do.”

She got to her feet. “But you gave them your phone number. Simon, you’ve got to get out of there right away.”

“Out of here? Out of my nice little place? Where would I go?”

“Anywhere. Those men will be coming for you.”

“But, Miss Gwyneth, those neighbors, they have just my phone number, not my address or even my last name.”

“The men who’ll be coming for you have connections, friends in high places, resources. They’ll find you eventually.”

“But where would I go? I don’t have anyplace else to go.”

“Go to my guardian. I’ll call him and tell him to expect you.”

“Even in good weather that’s too far, Miss Gwyneth. In this blizzard, it’s impossible far, I mean for a man my age.”

“You still don’t drive?”