J R

— It’s not funny it’s, wait! behind you my phonograph, is it still there? he came toward her all motion, provoked no more than a drop of her hand to switch the thing on sending its arm moving over the turning record with an ominous assurance taken up, as she turned, by strings foreboding in a minor key. — That’s not the point! if nothing’s gone or broken it’s the idea of somebody in here somebody I’ve never, I don’t even know, it’s like finding somebody’s broken into the one place I, where nothing happens, where I work where nothing else happens can’t you understand that! he came on loudly against the rising threat of strings sundering the eaves above — do you think music is just, composing do you think it’s just writing down notes? he brandished the beer can at the studio windows — just part of, of all that out there…? and the strings receded quelled by plaintive oboes seeking dialogue, severed by the stab of C under her finger.

— Is this F-sharp? she ran a finger along the stave, bent closer, struck it turning him on his heel as her left hand rose to bracket C two octaves down in tremolo.

— No wait what are you…

— All the spirit deeply dawning in, is this what you’re working on?

— It’s no it’s nothing! he pulled the pages from the rack — it’s just, it’s nothing… and left her standing, the strings patterning their descent in the slope of her shoulders to remain there, as she bent to close the keyboard, in the remnant of a shrug.

— They told me you’ve been teaching Edward, is it…

— Well I’m not! he’d dropped the pages in a chair behind him, sat on its arm clutching the beer can — I was but I’m not I, something just happened something as stupid as this, this breaking in here… he withdrew his foot abruptly, raised his eyes to her ankles’ approaching amble, turn and pass toward a bull’s eyed door beyond the fireplace.

— What’s in there… she found the switch and snapped it, peering through.

— Nothing just, just papers, programs old scores what’s…

— Uncle James’? he worked over here?

— Well he, of course he did yes I, because it’s one place it’s the one place an idea can be left here you can walk out and close the door and leave it here unfinished the most, the wildest secret fantasy and it stays on here by itself in that balance between, the balance between destruction and and realization until…

— He said this? Uncle James?

— What?

— From him, it just sounds quite romantic… she’d snapped the room beyond back into darkness and came from behind him with that ease of drift that brought his eyes up once she’d passed, — his music’s always so…

— Well why why shouldn’t he have said that something like that he, that he could come back the next day a week a month later he could open the door and find it here this same unfinished vision here just like he’d left it, this same awful balance waiting undisturbed just like he’d left it here to, to tip it and, the gray days I’ve come in here and built a fire to shut it all out so I could work those summers I, I haven’t even seen you since those summers…

— You can’t stay here though can you… she turned from the empty black of the fireplace — working? You couldn’t stay anyhow…

— What?

— With no heat here?

— With, here? I, I don’t know I…

— And if you’ve…

— I said I don’t know! he was up, took the steps after her she’d turned toward the stairs as counterpoint wove the strings toward extinction, — Stella…

— What happened.

— That you, just that you’re really standing right here in…

— No your music… she turned her head, caught his breath on her cheek — what happened to…

— No that’s what I was trying to find something like the, like Beethoven took Egmont his incidental music for Egmont I tried to, I found that long poem of Tennyson’s Locksley Hall of Tennyson’s I remembered it from school and I’ve been trying to work out something like, it’s something like an operatic suite that part you picked up there that line, those lines that open trust me cousin, the whole current of my being sets to, is that what you…

— No just that record, I thought something had happened to it.

— What the, that? that record?

— What happened. It just stopped.

— That it’s nothing it’s just a practice record it’s, that’s where the solo comes in the D-minor concerto without the piano part I thought you meant my, what I’m working on I…

— I didn’t think you wanted to talk about it.

— Well why shouldn’t I! what’s, why shouldn’t I talk about it…

— I don’t really know, Edward. What’s up there.

— The what?

— Up there, upstairs…

— Up, what! did you hear something?

— No, no I just meant what’s up there… she nodded up to shadows where the strings lurked again in ambush for their solo antagonist — up on that balcony…