Then Beethoven, the Moonlight Sonata, always a winner.
The Steinway was fantastic. And so was she. Maybe the low stakes relaxed her. Maybe the years off had allowed her to understand her technique in a way she couldn’t when she was practicing all the time. Whatever the reason, she grew stronger as the minutes passed, her hands loosening, quickening. She wished her last teacher, who toward the end had told her, Rebecca, playing like you do is supposed to be fun, I wish I could see you smile, had been there to watch.
Halfway through the Beethoven her hands weakened. She’d forgotten how much stamina these pieces required. She would quit while she was ahead. She quickly ended, turned to the oldsters.
She’d assumed half of them would be asleep. Wrong. They were enraptured, leaning forward in their seats. A woman cried, the tears cutting runnels through her heavy mascara. A man simply stared, his jaw open wide, revealing his empty mouth.
She’d forgotten how much power music could have.
Brian stood against the wall by the front desk, smiling. He gave her a silent thumbs-up and tears stung her eyes. Embarrassing. But he had given this joy back to her, he had seen what she couldn’t.
She stood, bowed formally to the crowd like she really was at Carnegie Hall. “Thank you.” They clapped, uncertainly at first, then steadily—
Then a thump echoed from the back row and a woman shouted “Gordon!” in a high, frightened voice.
Brian got to him before Rebecca. “Call 911!”
The man was heavy, maybe seventy-five, his thin gray hair was combed across the top of his speckled head.
He had landed on his side. Brian snaked an arm under him, put him on his back.
“Sir! Gordon! Can you hear me?”
Nothing. Brian touched two fingers to the man’s neck, then reached down and slapped his face. The man’s fleshy jowls jiggled. Otherwise he didn’t blink, didn’t stir. “Oh God,” the woman said. Rebecca was pretty sure he was dead. She’d never been this close to a newly dead person before.
The man wore a white button-down shirt with a greasy stained collar. Brian tore it open, revealing flabby breasts covered with white hair. Brian didn’t seem fazed. He put his fingers in the man’s mouth, tugged open his lower jaw. Two quick breaths, puff puff, the strange intimacy of CPR. Then pressed down on the man’s chest with interlaced fingers, began compressions, counting aloud, One two three four five…
“My husband,” the woman beside Rebecca said. She was among the younger residents, early sixties maybe, and wore shocking-red lipstick that had skidded onto her teeth.
“I’m so sorry.” Rebecca reached to hug her.
“Don’t touch me.” The woman stepped back. “He’s dead and you killed him.” The woman’s brown eyes bulged. She clawed at Rebecca, a skeletal hand topped with red fingernails. “Witch.” Screaming now. “Witch! WITCH!”
Rebecca staggered back as a staff member finally reached them. “Mrs. Hendricks, please—”
* * *
His name was Gordon Hendricks, they found out a half hour later in the manager’s office. He was seventy-four and had worked in the UVA maintenance department for thirty-five years.
“A smoker, two previous heart attacks, a coronary waiting to happen,” the manager told them. The screaming woman was his wife, Delilah, who was suffering from early-onset dementia. “She’s flat-out crazy.”
“I’m so sorry,” Rebecca said. “Is she going to be okay?”
“She should be. I hope you know it wasn’t your fault. They loved you. In fact, if that hadn’t happened we’d probably ask you to come back every month.”
“You still can,” Brian said. “Free up some rooms.”
“We take the death of any resident very seriously,” the manager said.
“Too soon?”
The manager didn’t smile. Rebecca didn’t think what Brian had said was very funny either.
* * *
They walked back through the lobby, empty now, the chairs gone. A guy in a blue uniform mopped the floor where Gordon had collapsed.
Outside the parking lot lights glared down.
“Strumming my pain with his fingers,” Brian murmured. “Singing my life with his words…”
Rebecca knew the lyrics. Everyone did. They’d been inescapable for almost a year. Lauryn Hill and the Fugees, a remake of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly with His Song.” She couldn’t believe he was same man who had gone to the trouble to find her a piano to play. “He just died, Brian. He’s still warm.”
“You want to cry about it? Or laugh.”
“Are those my only choices? Jesus, what’s wrong with you.” She stopped midstride, stared at him.
He nodded, then blinked. The humanity seemed to come back to his eyes. “Sorry.”