temperature was cooling, so the sun was setting, and Nik always liked the night crowds—or lack thereof.
His cane slid over the polished tiles like ice, catching every so often on bits of grout, the edges of benches, or a new vending machine. But it was easy to keep to the middle of the aisle, to remember the three stairs down and the listing curve that created a path right to the center lobby where the piano sat.
It wasn’t the same baby grand he’d learned to play on. That one, according to Van, had been white with a Liberace sort of sparkle to it. It was all frills and soft edges that echoed the seventies, and he could hear it in the old strings, feel it in the too-loose give of the keys that badly needed maintenance.
No one ever bought those baby grands, and Nik had never asked about the one he’d once considered his. He’d begged his mom on every birthday to buy it for him, but even as a kid without any real concept of money, he knew it was beyond their means. He was grateful for the upright delivered without warning, which was the precursor to what his life would become, even if it wouldn’t last.
When the owner of the shop, Mitchell, replaced his baby grand with a new one, Nik had gone home and quietly mourned. The new instrument was better, finely tuned with just the right amount of resistance in the keys and was better than the one at his school. But nothing would ever be the same as the one with the chipped minor keys and wriggly foot pedals.
When Nik approached his bench, he listened for the familiar, shuffling footsteps of the owner, but the place was dead silent. His music would probably bring him out eventually, but Nik didn’t mind a few moments to himself.
It always made him feel like an old lounge singer—like he should have an old, dirty scotch glass on a small table, a cigarette in his mouth, and a couple of hoarse old men shouting ballads at him. If he’d been born in a different era, maybe, but then again, he wouldn’t have lived to see much more than three years old. So maybe, in a way, he was blessed.
He breathed, flexed his fingers, and touched a couple of the keys. It was always jarring at first, those introductory notes that didn’t really mean anything. The mall had the perfect acoustics—high vaulted ceilings and smooth tile that let the sound carry. And maybe it was because he had no concept of what it looked like that he wondered why more auditoriums didn’t base their insides on the mall, but nothing beyond the old European cathedrals sounded like this.
His fingers wove up and down his scales, cascading through notes, faster and faster until he felt the burn, until one of his fingers slipped. He stopped and laughed, then tapped out an old Irish jig he’d long-since forgotten the name of. But it was lively, and it was pretty, and it made his heart beat out a staccato rhythm to match the notes.
His shoulders bounced with it, body swaying, feet tapping the pedals to draw out the sounds. His head rocked from side to side, his elbows lagging a little, but no one was watching him for form. Or if they were, he wouldn’t let himself give a single shit here in this place that belonged to him. He finished the song and imagined an applause until he heard the rhythmic clapping of small hands.
“Play Frozen?” The voice was small, androgynous in the way that most children’s voices were, and then he felt tiny fingers clutching at his elbow. “Do you know Elsa?”
He couldn’t help his laugh. He had four eight-year-old girls under his instruction. He fucking knew Elsa. He turned and offered his hand. “I’m Nik. Do you know how to shake hands?”
The fingers slipped into his, small, chubby, a little sticky. The child couldn’t have been more than five, and he always liked the little ones—so unapologetic in what they wanted, not yet weighted down by the judgment of the world.
“Play Elsa,” the child demanded again.
“Did your mommy teach you how to say please?” he chastised, then hated himself for assuming and braced himself for a possible reprimand in case no mother existed.
“No, she said it’s okay if I don’t haff to say please,” the child insisted, and he heard the lie, and he loved it.
“Will you tell me your