Piano in the Dark (8 page)

“How was racquetball?” Dawn queried as I returned home. She stood at the kitchen island, positioned as if a store mannequin before the granite countertop as she worked on her notebook computer. She still wore her blouse and skirt from a long day at Macy’s, but was answering e-mail from her college prep business. As she click-clacked away in response, she scratched an itch on her calf with the other foot, her blue Steve Madden pumps resting on their sides where she’d discarded them.

“Too long,” I answered, having recently felt the sting from Ava’s scratches on my back as I exited the car. My stomach lurched as pangs of guilt swept over me. I wished Dawn had worked until closing tonight. Would’ve given me a better chance of gathering myself.

“Did you win?” she asked. She pushed her laptop away from the island’s edge then came closer. I knew my wife’s mannerisms well enough. Seduction was on her mind, but she never had to work hard at it with me. I was always willing, except for tonight. Things were different. Changed. I was marked with another woman’s essence, our DNA having intermingled.

“No, but it was close,” I answered with an exaggerated display of frustration, just as I felt the smarting reminder of Ava on my back again. “I just want to shower and go to bed. Facing Jacobi in the morning will be unbearable. And that’s not counting the grief until our rematch.”

“Oh. Maybe I can take your mind off things,” she said, her eyes narrowing and her voice became more playful.

“You don’t wanna do that,” I said as I waved an arm, scrunching my face to enforce my message. “I reek. And had some
taco cabana
too. Whoo!” I fanned the air for further effect.

Dawn couldn’t help but laugh as she backed away, her nose crinkling. “You don’t have to tell me twice. I know what those chicken flautas and
pico de gallo
do to you. Hurry up and get in the shower, boy.”

“Okay,” I said, leaning in just enough to kiss her on the cheek and hoping she didn’t smell the absence of what I conveyed. My supposed sweaty gym clothes were fresh, having hastily changed into them at a Chevron station off I-45 before dropping my sex-permeated gear at the dry cleaner’s.

The shower wasn’t fully warmed before I entered, rapidly foaming up my washcloth with sport-scented shower gel. Nerves still frayed, I vigorously scrubbed over every part of my body, as if I could shed my sins like a second skin. I’d given into the illusion of freedom, full-on, despite knowing deep down that something was off beyond obvious moral issues of what I had done. As the flow of water hit me in the face, I lamented spurning my wife’s affections while wrongly reflecting on the other woman I’d touched, kissed, caressed, tasted, and pleasured repeatedly today.

When I turned off the shower and exited, things were still silent on the other side of the bathroom door. I locked it, examining the scratches on my back more closely in the mirror. They didn’t look as noticeable as they felt, but were a valid reminder of my stupidity. After drying off, I applied a quick dab of Neosporin across it, then threw on a T-shirt for bed.

I tried to will myself to sleep, but kept reliving memories of another bed. Kept seeing Ava expressing her satisfaction as she sat atop my face, threatening to drown me in her love. I sniffed deeply of the hairs on my upper lip, ensuring that all was left from that was the memory of it. The clock on my nightstand only served to remind me that barely a minute had passed since my last glance at it. Frustrating. As I lay there, I unknowingly slipped into a deep sleep. I hadn’t realized it until Dawn joined me in the bed, pulling the sheets back on her side. I was startled awake, not knowing how exhausted I was. I’d probably been snoring.

“You awake?” she asked as I felt her bare leg on mine across the gulf.

“Kinda,” I replied as my voice cracked. “What’s up?”

“Something wrong?”

“Besides the usual?” I responded, commenting on our ever-present tension over my career advancement.

“Yes.”

“Nothing.”

“You sure?” she asked as she slid closer. I remained deathly still.

“Yeah. I’m sure,” I replied, telling myself there was no way Dawn and Ava were conspiring, even if it felt Ava had been fed information on me. “It’s just been a long day.” Long day—the accepted marital code loosely translated as:
No. We ain’t fucking tonight.
Through our marriage, I’d been the only recipient of this coded dismissal before. I wasn’t quite sure how my spouse would take being on the receiving end of such an affront.

I shut my eyes again; trying to flee back to the land of REM, for it would protect me. Keep me from revealing my guilt. I could feel Dawn’s eyes blistering my skin in the dark. Wondered what ill thoughts were hatching inside that head of hers. Her next action was a long sigh, frustration totally evident.

“Hey,” I said, daring to communicate again as I yawned. “What do you think about a cruise? We could leave out of Galveston next week. That would be a nice getaway, don’tchathink? Or maybe a run over to San Antonio and do the Riverwalk for a few days?” Maybe time away with Dawn would give me some clarity. Give me a moment to regroup and salvage this.

“I can’t do that, Chase,” she replied, her body’s movement in the bed not betraying any reaction to my proposal. “I just posted my SAT classes on the Web site. Testing season is full underway. Are you trying to make up for something?”

“No, babe. Not at all,” I said, my voice lowering second by second as I feigned drifting away again. While pretending to sleep, I heard Dawn as she reached for her nightstand drawer. After another long moment of silence, she sighed again.

Then I felt the faint vibrations as Dawn’s sigh was replaced by low murmurs and moans. I felt a minute sway through the mattress, growing to a distinct, noticeable motion. Despite that, Dawn tried to control her trembling legs as she brought herself to climax at the hands of her magic bullet. I knew she’d used it from time to time, but that didn’t make me any more comfortable that she was having to resort to this. For what seemed an eternity of building and subsiding, only to repeat again, Dawn let a deep gasp escape her throat as she buried her face in her pillow.

Then all was still again.

And the whole time I laid there, turned over, eyes tightly closed, pretending to be oblivious.

Just as I hoped Dawn was to me and what I had done.

I voluntarily relieved our courier of his duties today, running documents by the courthouse in his stead. Of course, my return to the office somehow brought me to Ava’s place. A bear in search of honey. This time, though, I came unannounced.

As I approached the intercom to ring her, I observed a man exiting her door. The tall, gaunt fellow wore a pair of Ray·Ban aviators, which concealed his eyes, and a heavy brown trench coat—a bit too much for the mild weather we were experiencing. Gave the impression of a vampire hiding from an unyielding sun. Rather than proceed with pressing the button, I walked toward him. We met at the bottom of her steps where we exchanged looks.

“Hello,” the thin-faced man with a wisp of blondish white hair said, his older, lined face revealing neither intimidation nor antagonism. He held out his hand, obliging me to take it.

“Hello,” I offered in kind, unsure of my feelings toward the stranger whose hand I was shaking. I knew with whom he’d just visited and wondered if he’d ever delighted in Ava’s smile…or more. Then he broke into an odd grin, snapping me out of my rabid speculation.

“You must be Chase.”

“Yes,” I responded flatly. Who in the fuck was he to know my name?

The stranger chuckled to himself. “Smith Sampson,” he offered. A name reserved for either an aristocrat or porn star. Probably the former, I supposed, from the look of things. Of course I could be completely wrong. “I can’t believe Ava found you.”

“Ava,” I echoed, seeing red that this man not only knew about me, but knew her by her real name. I was married, so it shouldn’t have mattered. But it did. I chuckled then. My turn. Two roosters having a jolly old crow-off on the steps of the henhouse. And what did he mean by her finding me? “You don’t use her pseudonym,” I said, continuing.

“That Charla Nuttier thing? Heavens no,” he said with a scoff. He laughed again, making me feel insignificant when I’d come here to feel important. To relish in feeling…special. Like maybe I could make the right choices in someone’s eyes. “Can’t say Ava doesn’t have a sense of humor with that one. Well, I must be off. Things to do. It was nice meeting you, sir. Ava’s a very special lady…as I’m sure you know.”

“Take care,” I said as I stepped aside. I waited for several seconds before ambling up the stairs to Ava’s door. Before knocking, I took one final look at the man, this Smith Sampson, as he walked to the black BMW 750 taking up two parking spaces. I yearned to know Ava better than he. Then I knocked on her door, two short raps from my knuckles.

The door swung open wildly, Ava in mid-conversation before I could see her. “You forgot something?” she asked, being startled. “Oh. Hey, Chase!”

“Can I come in?”

“Of course. I didn’t know you were coming over,” she said, wrapping her arms around me. She smiled from behind those bookish Coach glasses of hers, wearing a tunic smeared with dried paint., which eased my random thoughts about her visitor Smith for the moment. We kissed before I abruptly ended it.

“Yeah. Missed you. You busy?” I asked, withholding the bottled-up affection I held for her.

“For you? Never. I was just in the middle of therapy.”

“Therapy?” I asked, remembering what Jacobi had said and wondering if the thin, older man I’d met outside was more doctor than love doctor.

“My painting,” she said, motioning me to follow her to a room I hadn’t been in before.

“Oooh,” I gasped for effect, having my opening.

“When you said t
herapy
, I thought you meant like psychological. And that the man I met on your steps was…” I held it out there on the wind from my lips, leaving it to her to clarify.

“You met Smith? He’s my patron, silly,” she said, shaking her head. She continued, “What did he tell you?”

“Nothing really,” I replied. Ava grasped the door handle, pausing to analyze my statement and assess what my eyes revealed. After another fleeting smile, she flung open the door to her world.

The spare bedroom was draped in white sheets, shielding furniture and whatnot. Four easels occupied the center, forming a semicircle with displayed canvasses in various stages. A group of completed works off to our immediate left were purposely arranged in a row beside stacks of frames. The woman had a damned assembly line, engaging in a chase of whatever fleeting memories or phantoms besieged her. A paintbrush rested in a bamboo brush holder beside a tray of paints, which she picked up to return to work on the canvass furthest to our right.

“Ever been to the Netherlands, Chase? I call this one
Happiness
,” Ava stated as she painted what appeared to be the rough beginnings of a red lighthouse above a rocky cliff. Strange sailboats, similar to that in others paintings I recalled from my online research on her, drifted lazily below. But it was hard to concentrate on the art though, due to the artist, animalistic urges and all. “It’s too simplistic a name, though,” she said, continuing her monologue. “I’m sure they’ll ask me to change it.”

“Is that the setting for this painting? The Netherlands?” I asked, walking up behind her, needing to be in her proximity. I slowly touched her hair, letting my fingers gently comb through the ends before resting them on her shoulder. There was a brief moment when her hips bumped into my pelvis, to which I closed my eyes, thinking of better things I could be doing with her.

“I was in a bad way when I came here,” she said, ignoring my question as well as my hand and abruptly leaving an untold story to herself. “Smith befriended me. Helped me adapt and get established. Found this place for me too.”

“Did he pay for it?” I asked brusquely, having seen such things before. I wasn’t naive to the wants and desires of older, wealthy men in this city or any other, for that matter.

“Yes, he did,” she replied. “I had nothing.”

“Oh,” I offered, moving my hand away. The distance between our bodies widened.

“Don’t be jealous, Chase. He’s gay,” Ava said, giggling, as she turned to dab the tip of my nose with her brush. “You’re more of his type. But he knows you’re off-limits.”

“If he didn’t, I’d sure set him straight.”

Ava chuckled. “Straight. Unintended pun, huh? Don’t be such a homophobe, Chase.”

“I’m not a homophobe.”

“Yes, you are. I remember that time when we were in—” She stopped, closing her eyes as she mumbled something to herself too low to make out.

“There you go again. Stop it,” I chided.

“What?” she said, feigning innocence as she turned in the middle of a brush stroke. I knocked the paintbrush from her hand, a rage built upon a foundation of frustration consuming me. It fell onto the drop cloth beneath our feet. I grasped her shoulders, backing her against the wall. I moved closer to where our breath intermingled.

“I’m tired of these little things where I’m lost as to what you’re talking about, Ava. And it has to stop. Who are you? And how do you know so much about me?”

“I know you like any good wife should,” she said, her lips forming a smile before she licked them for my benefit. Still toying with me. I released my grip on her, regretting my outburst.

“Stop. Stop saying stuff like that. You’re not my wife. You turn me on, and you know you do, but other times you make me nervous…scared. This is one of those times. Stop fucking with me, Ava.”

“Do you think I’m just toying with you?”

“Maybe. Because this—this doesn’t make sense, despite our mutual attraction. It’s crazy. I can’t get you out my head. And I must be out my ever-loving mind,” I said, nervously rotating the wedding band on my finger a half turn with my thumb.

“Do you think I’m crazy, Chase?”

“No. But I don’t understand you. And I need to. Help me make sense of this.”

“What if you didn’t believe what I told you? And it drove you away?”

“It couldn’t. Unless you used to be a man,” I joked. “Does this Smith dude understand you?”

Ava gulped. “Yes,” she replied.

“What makes him so special?”

“I didn’t risk anything by telling him everything about me. I don’t love him, Chase. Not like that, at least. And despite all the help he’s been, it would hurt, but I could afford to lose him. I can’t lose you. Not now. Not again.”

“
Again
?”

“I mean…when you left the other day,” she said, picking up her paintbrush off the floor. She gracefully placed it back on the tray next to her paints. “I wanted to stay in your arms and never leave the bed. Wanted to hear you say my name softly from your weary lips long into the night. But I knew you had to go.”

‘“Yeah. I had to. I have a wife. A life…beyond this.”

“Even if it’s the wrong life?”

“Don’t say that. You don’t know me well enough to say something like that. I think I better go. I have work to do back at the office. They’re probably looking for me.”

“Even if you could be doing something else? Something better with your life?”

“Now you’re sounding like my wife. She’s always getting on me about not finishing law school.”

“I wasn’t referring to law school…or that office where you work. It’s nice, beautiful even, but you could share so much more of yourself with the world.”

I chuckled, eyeing my watch. Should’ve been back to work over an hour ago. No one would say anything, but I had a pile of work waiting on me. Instead, I was behaving like a flighty schoolkid at a fast-food joint with a ton of options. “What are you getting at?” I asked.

“Entertain me for just a moment longer. Look under that sheet in the corner,” she said, pointing at a large, bulky covered object.

I knew what it was the moment I came closer. Could make out the outline before my fingers pinched the white sheet and tugged. A piano.

“Nice,” I said with a smile, dragging my fingers across the keys. “But I don’t play anymore.”

“Try, Chase. For me.”

“Was this your husband’s?”

“No. But he had one similar to that.”

“And you want me to help you relive memories? Memories of him?”

“No. I want you to create your own memories. Pursue your own dreams.”

“This…this isn’t my dream,” I snapped, reflecting on a time long ago. “You’ve got me wrong. All wrong.”

I stormed away from the piano, annoyed with whatever type of manipulation she was attempting. Ava hastily moved into my path, barring me from a quick exit.

“Chase, don’t be mad at me. That wasn’t my intent,” she said, resting the palms of her hands on my chest.

“What are you trying to do, then? You keep saying things that don’t make sense, but then you know more about me than my wife. Little things that nobody knows. You say you know me from college, but I know you don’t. You couldn’t. You do things to me that if I knew you back then…Well.”

“I—I’m sorry to be putting you through this, Chase. And I want to be honest with you.”

“Then tell me how you really know me, damn it!”

“Because you’re my husband, Chase! You’re my husband! We met in college and we were married! Happily married! Not you and this other woman! Then…you left me. You died.”

What she said didn’t make a lick of sense, but staring into her eyes…

She believed it.