a way out of the quandary he found himself in while at the same time knowing that they wouldn’t find one; the bald crown of his head went even whiter than it usually was. He mumbled:
“Hello.”
“What are you…” I started, but I couldn’t finish the sentence. A wave of dizziness was sweeping over me. The piano music was still spilling from his flat into the sunlit stairwell.
“I had an audition,” he murmured.
“Then who…” I asked.
“Recording,” he said, his eyes still moping at the floor.
“But there are mistakes in it!” I said. “And loopbacks, and…”
“A recording of me. I made it myself, especially. It’s the same thing, more or less. Isn’t it?”
It was my turn to go white now. There were no mirrors in the building, but I’m sure that if there had been and I’d looked in one I would have seen myself completely white: white with both rage and dizziness.
“No!” I shouted. “No, it is not! It is just absolutely not the same thing!”
“Why not?” he asked. His voice was still monotonous and flat but was shaking a little.
“Because…It absolutely isn’t! It’s just not the same because…It’s not the same at all.” I was shouting as loud as I could, and yet my voice was coming out broken and faint. I could hardly breathe. I’d been lying on my side when he came up the stairs towards me, and had only half-risen—a reclining posture, like those dying Roman emperors in paintings. I tried to stand up now but couldn’t. Panic welled up inside me. I tried to be formal. I forced a deep breath into my lungs and said:
“I shall pursue this matter via Naz. You may go now. I should prefer to be alone.”
He turned around and left. I made straight for my flat. No sooner had I got there than I threw up. I lurched into the bathroom and stood holding the sink for a long, long time after I’d finished puking. When I could, I raised my eyes up to the crack; this oriented me again, stopped me feeling dizzy. The building was on my side, even if this bad man wasn’t. When I felt well enough to move, I went into the living room, sat down on my sofa and phoned Naz.
“It’s totally unacceptable!” I told him after I’d explained what had just happened. “Completely totally!”
“Shall I fire him?” asked Naz.
“Yes!” I said. “No! No, don’t fire him. He’s perfect—in the way he looks, I mean. And in the way he plays. Even the way he speaks: that vacant monotone. But give him hell! Really bad! Hurt him! Metaphorically, I mean, I suppose. He has to understand that what he’s done just won’t fly any more. Make him understand that!”
“I’ll talk to him immediately,” Naz said.
“Where are you now?” I asked him.
“I’m in my office,” he said. “I’ll come over. Can I bring you anything?”
“Some water,” I said. “Sparkling.”
I hung up—then phoned him back straight away.
“Find out how often he’s pulled this one, when you talk to him,” I said.
Naz turned up with the water after half an hour. Apparently the pianist was sorry: he hadn’t realized how vital it was that he should actually be playing the whole time. He’d only used the cassette two times before, when he’d needed to do something else, and…
“Something else?” I interrupted. “I don’t pay him to do other stuff! Three times, no less!”
“He’s agreed not to do it again,” Naz said.
“He’s agreed, has he? That’s nice of him. Shall we give him a raise?”
Naz smiled. “Shall I stick a surveillance camera on him?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “No cameras. Find some other way of making sure he’s doing it properly, though.”
The thing behind Naz’s eyes whirred for a while and then he nodded.
It wasn’t unreasonable to expect this guy to play when he’d been paid to play—been paid enormous amounts of money, at that. And the hours weren’t that bad: I generally put the building into on mode for between six and eight hours each day—mostly in stretches of two hours. Sometimes there’d be a five-hour stretch. Once I went right through a night and half the next day. That was my prerogative, though: it had been written in the contracts that all re-enactors and all back-up staff had signed—written right there in big print for them to read.
I moved through the spaces of my building and its courtyard as I saw fit, just like I’d told Naz I would when we’d first met. I roamed around