Fawc 2 : Absolute Pitch
(Author's note: This story is a submission to the second Friendly Anonymous Writing Challenge (FAWC). The true author of this story is kept anonymous, but will be revealed on August 16th, 2013, in the comments section following this story. Each story in this challenge is centered around a random determination of four "mystery ingredients." There are no prizes given in this challenge; this is simply a friendly competition.)
(The mystery ingredients were Arrogant, music/rhyme, energetic, and game/toy.)
* * * *
"You realize Charles Schulz is spinning in his grave from laughter, right?" says Terra from behind me with a hint of a snicker. When I don't respond she sighs and pats my shoulder. I listen to her heels tapping on the floor behind me as she walks away. Her shoes making the last sounds in the concert hall... other than him.
It's very late at night. Most everyone is at one of the school victory parties. They are going on all over the campus. The football players won the big game against our major in state rival today. They even won by an impressive score, a true 'butt whooping'. Everyone is celebrating, except for me... and him.
His name is Chris Doran. He is a virtuoso level piano player. A blond haired piano player...
...and my name is Lucy. The irony of it is not lost on me in the least, I didn't need Terra pointing it out. It's an irony that has followed me for half my life. You see I've been in love with him for that long.
When was the first time I heard him play? More than a decade ago. His parents had rented the small apartment above our garage. My Mom and Dad renovated the place and let in boarders to try and earn some more money in the tight economy. Usually it rented to single guy coming here to the local college for classes. Some of them had been nice enough boys... some however were creeps that were always trying to hit on my mom when dad wasn't around.
Then Chris's family had taken the place. His mom was a RN in training, his dad an Engineering student. They hired my Mom to 'baby' sit Chris between the time when he got out of school each day and they got home. Mostly that entailed him sitting at our kitchen table doing his homework till they pulled up and he could go home. More often than not I would be sitting there with him, struggling with my own homework.
One time while we were working on our history together, Mom had called out to the two of us to come help her in the living room. When we walked in we could see her trying to pull grandma's old upright piano out from the wall. The thing weighed a ton and it's wooden caster hadn't rolled in my lifetime. The bare wall behind it told me that the thumb tacks had come out of the cheep wood paneling while she was dusting, and that the peacock tapestry had fallen behind the piano, yet again. I think that must have happened at least four times a year as I was growing up in that house.
We helped her shift it out from the wall, with Chris doing the most of the lifting. Then after she had rehung it, without dusting it first I had to point out, we moved it back. It was then that mom saw him running his hands almost longingly across the wooden key cover. She asked him if he could play.
He had nodded. He told us his grandfather had taught him how to play. He hadn't played though since the funeral. Mom, with a sniffle, invited him to play if he wished.
As he sat down I had expected to hear maybe some variation of 'chop sticks'.
What came from his hands dropped more than one jaw in the house. Dad came walking into the room to ask us to turn down the TV and stood there as stunned as Mom and me. I learned much later that he was playing Frederic Chopin's Fantaisie... his grandfathers favorite song. At the time I knew it only to be the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. I stood there in awe of this boy, my own age, and the fact that he could do what I could never do if I was to study piano for the rest of my life.
My mom talked to his mom that night. My family helped to pay for him to have music lessons. The first teacher had to pass him on to a second teacher though within a week. Chris already knew everything he was trying to teach him. It came out that the grandfather had been a jazz player back in the forties, then he played a pipe organ player at his church every Sunday till his death.
He had taught his grandson everything he knew.
That young man was being called a prodigy before he was 12. I heard the term 'Virtuoso' applied to Chris even before our senior year in high school. It had been well before then that the beauty of his playing had attracted me to him. It may have even started that very first day.
Leaning on the door of the college's main auditorium, looking down into the hall, I listen to him now. He's been coming here every day this week and playing till midnight if not later. The massive grand piano fills this hall with glorious sound at his command. Every note seems to drift up towards the ceiling, floating like snow flakes of sound, till they drift back down like a musical rain. Chris had only to play the piano here once and the school's music conductor had given him a key to the auditorium. Something that I've since learned has to be unheard of in the history of the school.
Looking down by my feet my eyes go to the little wooden wedge stuck under the bottom of the door to hold it propped open. A slight push and a sweep of my foot and it's gone. As I step inside the door closes behind me, my hand keeping it silent. I almost chuckle at that. I'm not wanting to interrupt him but I'm about to go interrupt him more than he has ever been before.
I make my way down to the stage slowly with only determination keeping my feet moving. Rejection, after rejection from him through all the years of high school has not deterred me from the hunt. He had taken no interest in the things that most boys liked. Cars, sports... girls. The fact he never dated anyone was a major joke in the high school locker rooms. A vile joke.
To stop it I had told people he and I had been on several dates. But that was a lie. I had asked him out the first week of our freshman year.
He said no.
When I had asked him to go to homecoming with me,a few weeks later.
He said no.
Then I asked him to take me to the prom.
He said no.
Year after year, he said no.
I guess I shouldn't feel especially slighted, after all he said no to all the girls. I did though, feel that way. I was the first 'girl' to see him as something worth paying attention to. I should have at least gotten some kind of privileged attention from that. Something... anything.
As I walk down to the stage I see him notice me, but he doesn't stop playing. Hell, he doesn't even miss a note. Dressed as beautifully and sexy as I can manage and I'm not worth a single missed note?
I'll have to change his mind.
Up the three steps, across the stage, my eyes never leaving him till I come to stand next to him. I let my hand run along the inside of the grand feeling the vibrations of his music in the wood.
"What do you want, Lucy? I'm busy," he doesn't even look up from the keys.
"You."
He gives a little huff and keeps play.