Part Two

Terrence found Jordan in his bedroom. Though he knew she had to be there, for it was the only place he hadn’t examined, his heart still froze when he opened the door. She sat on the stool before Grandmama’s upright piano, her back turned away from him. Her fingers grazed the keys tentatively. Terrence understood her caution, for he hardly ever had time to dust the thing, so it looked even grander and wiser than it was. It was a heavy, imposing heirloom which Terrence had abducted when he settled into his apartment. 

He remembered the fight better than he remembered sitting by Grandmama’s deathbed: he had thrown himself over the piano as though it were a poor, shaking thing attached to immovable train tracks. It had sat, miserable and forgotten, for thirteen years after Grandmama died, in the sitting room, because Felicity preferred to paint and couldn’t conjure a tune to save her life. Thus, the keys were permanently sheltered, until Terrence demanded he give the piano a new life in his apartment. He wouldn’t heed his sister’s baffled cries, didn’t care for her concerns that it wouldn’t fit, ‘Tell me, Terrence, where are you gonna put a damn piano?’. He insisted, and now here it was, squeezed into his bedroom, not quite forgotten, albeit miserably dressed in a thick layer of dust. 

‘What’s a relic like this doin’ in your room, Miller?’ asked Jordan. Of course she would be the one to rupture the silence, to pose the interrogation, though she was the trespasser. 

When she didn’t glance over her shoulder, Terrence replied, ‘It was my grandmother’s.’

‘I know that.’ Then she pressed down on one key, and Terrence winced; the piano key sank heavily and made a dreadful noise. She pressed down again, and again, as though attempting to force life into it. When it was clear her ear-splitting endeavors were futile, Jordan sighed loudly. She placed her hands down by her sides and rotated herself to face Terrence. He was struck briefly by her smooth, dark skin kissed by dim lamplight, like it was a secret they alone shared. It was a puerile and naive idea. 

Jordan was making a joke about Terrence’s ‘habit’ of squeezing large, ‘swanky’ furniture into rooms that refused to fit them. She seemed pleased with her own jest, her words accompanied by giggling. Terrence made no rebuttal; he was occupied with some other mildly entertaining observation, namely the evolved situation. At least one of them was sitting down now, the conversation elevated to something a bit more civil. Yet Terrence could hardly take a seat on his bed, which he was sour to admit, for there were no other places to sit in his bedroom. And so he was compelled to hover stiffly in the doorway, his eyes latched onto the girl at his grandmother’s piano: another memory, torn straight from one of those books in the room behind him, one forgotten but still dear. Occasionally, Terrence might return to some dusty title cemented into its shelf, once worshiped; he only needed to run his fingers over the cover to recite every word from memory, like a prayer.

‘I guess you never play this thing,’ said Jordan, turning back to the piano. She thumbed another key; the piano croaked flatly, the key nodding in assent. She raised a brow at Terrence, who shrugged.

‘I don’t,’ he confessed sheepishly. He had gone through all that weeping bother of lugging the thing here, all the way from his childhood home, only to never tickle a single key. His sister suggested he push it into the living room, for if he might not entertain it, perhaps a guest might. But they knew his apartment was unaccommodating, and so it remained, jostled between his wardrobe and his bed, haunting him. 

‘A shame.’ Jordan probed another key, one which throbbed more auspiciously than the last. ‘You oughta get somebody to tune it. Put it out of its misery, for Christ’s sake.’ When Terrence did not respond, Jordan emulated his shrug, before alternating between the remaining keys in an orchestra of the dead. Once the assessment had been concluded, she began to play what Terrence identified as her own rendition of The St. Louis Blues, altered for the piano, although she struggled immensely and did not sing. It was a nimble and agile song, unwelcome by this stony and cantankerous, old piano; her fingers’ flight across the keys was slowed considerably due to the instrument’s stubbornness. 

After lumbering through the song’s first verse, Terrence was sure Jordan would concede. But Jordan hammered away at the piano, and then the keys seemed to almost melt beneath her fingertips, the rigid melody thawing into a river. It was remarkable; as though the song had been intended to be performed exactly in this way. Though Jordan still did not sing, Terrence heard her: that prayer book on the shelf, that dusty treasure. Her back was turned, but he saw her face, except it was not the face of a woman, but a young girl whose heart he had broken all those years ago. 

It was a soupy September day, greatly unpleasant—the kind that summer likes to abandon in its wake, like a slug’s trail. After a mellow summer, Terrence decided he did not appreciate this delayed fever; he remembered waking under a heavy quilt of sweat, and cursing loudly. 

Sometime between Terrence’s stirring from unconsciousness, and the afternoon’s slaughter, there was a knock at the door, and Terrence’s mother was crying out in glee, and Terrence’s discomfort had become intolerable. Felicity had him by the ear, and he bellowed at her, flinging his arms about and hoping furiously he might strike her. And then he was elbowed into the doorway of his home, and stiffened into stone. 

The sun was bright and the earth parched, but Jordan’s face was soaked with tears, her eyes swollen, an angry scarlet. She had something in her grip, hands clasped before her—a flower, he thought. He wasn’t sure what kind: her fingers throttled it cruelly, the small and helpless flower. Its crushed petals were white. He saw her eyes were squinted, and she was shaking all over, and she did not breathe. Finally, she let out a kind of gasp, strangled and carnal, and the remains of the flower fluttered out from her unclenched palms. 

Terrence couldn’t recall why he had let her go. He only remembered her asking him, over and over, why? She shivered violently; he was reminded of that thing Grandmama liked to say, when little Terrence would return home with snowflakes in his hair, ‘Come in, come in, you’re shakin’ like a leaf, boy!’ Then he recalled that simple, agonizing motion of his shoulders rising and falling, like the slump of a limp wave arriving ashore. He wouldn’t have forgiven himself, either. It all felt quite like a bad dream; Terrence began to wonder if his memory was dull, wondering if it had ever happened at all.

Sometime during his deliberation, the piano’s melody had faded into a knowing silence. Terrence’s eyes met Jordan’s brown ones. He recognized that she had been watching him, although he could not guess for how long, and this mystery unnerved and embarrassed him deeply. 

Terrence’s head bobbed in a kind of apology. ‘You still play beautifully,’ he admitted. 

‘Thanks,’ she said. She gesticulated to the piano, her brows furrowed. ‘You need to get this tuned.’

‘I will.’ 

‘And learn how to play.’ Terrence thought he hid his grimace, but Jordan went on, her voice high and desperate, like she was pleading: ‘It’s a damn instrument, Miller, not a picture frame or a paintin’ that you can just put up and abandon. This ain’t a museum, you ought to learn and play.’ She pushed the stool back and stood, her eyes wide, as though she were shaking herself awake. Terrence felt himself shrink backward. Perhaps she noticed, but that didn’t matter, for her lips remained squeezed together, refusing air, refusing to entertain Terrence for another moment. Jordan turned and gently lowered the lid of the piano. ‘My boyfriend’s a piano tuner,’ she said. 

Terrence gave a half-nod, not caring that her back was turned and she couldn’t see. 

Once they had both returned to his living room, the air had thickened into a syrupy block, and there was no oxygen. Terrence’s head pounded and he felt like he was standing on the ocean floor, and his lips and eyes were unbearably dry. The clock on the wall told him it was time Jordan headed home. Jordan’s eyes followed his, and there was no doubt that she acknowledged her prolonged trip. Yet, she did not announce her departure, instead prompting Terrence to pour her another glass of pink lemonade. Nodding dumbly, Terrence obeyed. When she took the glass from him, their fingers met briefly, with a searing pain that perhaps only Terrence felt, for Jordan’s expression was steady. 

Jordan drained the glass as Terrence watched. She thanked him cordially and handed it back to him. His eyes lingered on her fingers, her sharpened fingernails, and his hand faltered in its journey. He didn’t miss her smile, long and keen. 

‘How is it I’ve never seen you around?’ ventured Terrence boldly, though he could not meet her gaze. 

Instead, his eyes rested on those fingers, clutching the head of a chair. Her body swung forward and she hung, suspended, before she yanked herself back. ‘I ain’t got a clue,’ she admitted. ‘Tomorrow’s my last day.’

‘At the club?’

‘Yeah.’

Terrence nodded slowly. He considered asking her what she planned to do, but settled on silence, remembering her boyfriend. Perhaps they had only started dating recently; he gathered the piano-tuner wasn’t keen on his prize coming home early in the morning and stinking of foreign men’s cologne. ‘Well,’ said Terrence, and hesitated, hovering between, That’s a shame, or, Congratulations. 

When he said nothing, Jordan smiled. ‘I might finish your lemonade,’ she said. 

Terrence was about to pour her another glass when she stood and nodded toward the door. His stomach clenched stubbornly. Before she could speak, he felt something writhe and rise inside of him; a rigid, masculine urge to assert himself, and to defend his apartment. It was something red-blooded and fierce, an innate impulse one might attune to some proud and territorial beast. ‘I’ll see you to the door,’ he announced. He could not read Jordan’s expression.

When Terrence opened the door, he found no wolfish neighbor looming outside, yellow-toothed and ravenous. His head turned and his eyes met Jordan’s, brown and narrow and beautiful. Perhaps his heart might stop beating and never wake, if he didn’t tear his eyes away, he thought; he did not look away. In fact, he felt quite determined, quite eager to probe her, not with a foolish tongue but a hopelessly scrupulous inspection. 

First, there was her hair. It was bobbed, short, and slick with gel, curling tightly against the side of her face: a dark, unforgiving black, except in the light, he had noticed, it seemed to shimmer like the night-sky, not quite black, not quite blue. He thought it was bizarre, albeit captivating, much like Jordan Reid was—at least, this butterfly that hovered before him, and not the caterpillar he had known and slept with. Like her hair, her face shone, her cheeks polished, her lips a dark red. Her eyebrows were thin and raised in amusement, but still he did not rip his gaze away, not daring to look away and forget her. 

A gold locket kissed Jordan’s collarbone. Terrence’s breath was still as ice. He wondered who was hidden inside that heart-shaped locket—that boyfriend, perhaps, the clever piano-tuner. Was it a child, rather, with fat cheeks and her mother’s brown eyes? The boyfriend’s daughter? The daughter of a stranger, Terrence speculated, the fruit of an unfortunate eve that plagued Jordan cruelly. No, another boyfriend, one who had left her at his doorstep one hot afternoon, shivering and sobbing as he stood, still and stupid. 

Jordan Reid wore a feathery, emerald green dress that clung to her skin and shimmered. Unable to avert his gaze, Terrence was charged with an idea, recognizing firmly that the outfit demanded dangerous attention. He cocked his chin and offered Jordan a ride in his cab. Her eyes seemed to twinkle at the suggestion. He imagined shuffling out of the apartment behind her, watching her stride ahead of him, her head twisting back; she would flaunt a bright smile and Terrence would wonder, how many men had she smiled at that way? He was no fool: he knew what girls who worked at those clubs did and said and hid. 

Terrence imagined catching up to Jordan at the elevator, and setting himself beside her to wait for its arrival. His whole body would be trembling, numb with anticipation; he would not dare to cast his eyes towards her, but he would ache for it. He imagined climbing inside the elevator and squeezing himself against the wall, unsure of where to look, unsure if he should talk. The sound of her laughter, clear and rich, filled his ears. He wondered if she would sit in the front or back seat of his cab. What would they talk about, if there was anything left to discuss at all? Would she desire conversation, or some pensive journey, cloaked in the shadows? He wondered if she would talk about that damned boyfriend of hers again. He wondered what he might say. 

But his imagination had gotten the better of him, running wild and undisciplined; he was foolish with desire and remorse, faced with this treasure he had long since buried, and forgotten, until now. Raising her hand to her mouth, Jordan laughed, and the sound was no longer inside his ears, but his visions would not take shape, for she delivered a sweet albeit brusque reply: ‘Thanks, Miller, but I’ll be alright.’ 

He held his hands behind his back, threading his fingers together and hoping his face did not expose his agony. ‘Very well,’ he assented, blankly. ‘Maybe we’ll see each other around now?’ 

Never before had Terrence seen a smile so beautiful and cruel—perhaps it was, in fact, her charm that commanded such an acute wickedness. He felt her grasp at a knife, blunt and unforgiving, and drive it through his stomach and keep it there. ‘Oh, Miller,’ she sighed almost dreamily. ‘I’m quittin’ my job at the club, remember?’

‘Oh, you said?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Oh.’ He added, quickly, before she could mention her boyfriend: ‘Well, safe journey home and good luck to you, Reid.’ 

That made her smile—honestly, now, he imagined, without any hint of malice or vengeance. She tipped an imaginary hat, her smile never faltering. ‘Goodnight, Miller, and good luck to you, too.’ With a flourish, she turned on her heel and marched towards the elevator. And then, as though the whole world was driven blind with hatred for the man, the elevator was immediately pried open, so Jordan vanished from his sight without another goodbye, and without any sort of indecision. 

Terrence heard the elevator doors close, and stared into the empty corridor, paralyzed, long after Jordan had abandoned him. When at last he returned to the present, he grasped the door handle of his apartment with trembling fingers and jammed it close. 

Outside, a girl in a feathery dress emerged onto the sidewalk. She stuck her hand out and hailed a passing cab. Dutifully, the cab slowed, and she climbed inside. As the cab drove off, a fight broke out on the opposite sidewalk between two large, hulking shadows. These jerking shadows belonged to two men, who sported identical, broad outlines and were huffing loudly at each other, as though they were not men at all, but a pair of mad bulls. No-one stopped to assess the scene, though several crossed to the opposite sidewalk, fearing to be caught in the disarray. The men were left to huff and scuffle, as, overhead, clouds congregated sullenly, hiding the moon.