The Last Solos

“Play.”

The word travelled through the half-open door without enough volume to determine whom it addressed.

Beverly came into the dining room. Her lipstick had worn away from the middle of the lower lip. She held the empty water glass and looked at Glenn, then at the open score.

“He thinks there’s a piano.”

Glenn looked toward the bedroom.

“Sometimes he thinks we’re on the boat,” she said. “Sometimes he knows exactly what George is doing.”

Grant called for more water. Beverly went to the kitchen. The tap ran, coughed once in the pipe and steadied.

Flynn said the word again.

Glenn carried the score into the hall.

There was no piano in Grant’s apartment. In the sitting room stood a radio cabinet, a small table and a bookcase whose upper shelf bowed under medical texts. Against one wall a sewing machine had been covered with a patterned cloth. The machine’s treadle and iron frame gave it the shape of an instrument waiting beneath concealment.

Flynn’s eyes were open.

The room had darkened. Grant had turned on the bedside lamp, but the shade directed light downward onto the sheet and left the face above it in shadow. Beverly held the water glass near Flynn’s chest. The red tie had been moved from the chair to the dresser, where it crossed a registry photograph left beside the water carafe.

“You asked for a piano,” Glenn said from the door. Flynn looked toward his hands, empty except for the folded score.

“Did I? We ought to find you one.” He tried to turn toward Grant as the doctor checked his neck, but the movement shortened the next breath.

“Lie still a moment,” Grant said. “I want to see how you’re breathing.”

Flynn closed his eyes until his chest settled. “You’ve seen enough of that.”

Glenn remained beside the door.

Beverly asked whether he could play the radio. The cabinet received two stations clearly and a third beneath static. Neither clear station carried music. One broadcast traffic conditions at the Lions Gate Bridge. The other described a hockey practice.

“Not the radio,” Flynn said.

The hand outside the blanket opened. The fingers moved as though locating an object on a table.

Glenn came closer.

Flynn’s eyes returned to him. “Bach.”

“Which piece?”

“I don’t know what they’re called.” Flynn’s mouth moved as if he might add something, but he closed his eyes again.

Beverly looked down at the glass.

Glenn waited, then chose the aria he had been working on that morning.

He sat in the chair beside the bed. The seat was lower than the dining chair and softer than any bench he used. His knees rose above the hips. The position shortened the forearms and would have altered every weight at the keyboard.

He placed both hands on his thighs.

Flynn watched them.

The radiator released one knock from the hall. Traffic passed on Burnaby Street. A trolley wire vibrated beyond the window after the car had gone. In the apartment above, a tap opened and pipes delivered water through the wall.

Glenn began the aria without moving the fingers.

He did not hum. He heard the opening in relation to the available sounds: the first bass note beneath the oxygen hiss, the right-hand turn after the trolley wire, the repeat altered by Flynn’s breath entering too late.

Flynn continued watching the hands.

“Nothing,” he said.

“There is no piano,” Glenn said.

“There never is when you need one.”

The eyes closed.

Glenn kept the aria inside the hands. At the first repeat he altered the tempo because Flynn’s breathing would not support the original. At the second, the bed frame touched the wall. At the third, Grant lifted the mask and the oxygen entered with a stronger mechanical note that obscured the bass.

Beverly sat at the foot of the bed. She could not hear what Glenn heard, but the stillness had given her a task. She watched the right hand on his thigh. The thumb moved once beneath the palm, then the second finger, the smallest possible descent through an invisible key.

Flynn opened his eyes at that movement.

For several breaths he appeared to follow it.

“Too fast,” he said.

Glenn stopped.

Glenn could not tell what Flynn had followed. He looked at the still hand on the sheet.

Glenn began again more slowly.

The thumb descended. The second finger followed. The hand travelled through the opening measure against wool rather than ivory. There was no sound from the fingers. Oxygen, pipes, traffic, the loose window, Beverly swallowing, Grant setting a bottle on the dresser remained audible.

Flynn’s breathing approached the imagined tempo and lost it.

Glenn did not adjust immediately.

He allowed the separation to remain until the hand and body occupied different time.

When the aria reached the first cadence, Flynn had fallen asleep or withdrawn from the performance. The face gave no answer. The open hand on the sheet had closed around nothing.

Glenn completed the repeat.

Grant stood behind him without touching the chair. “He may not hear you.”

Glenn kept his eyes on Flynn’s hand. “I’m only sitting with him.”

Grant remained behind the chair, watching for the next breath before going back to the mask.

Outside, the trolley wire stopped vibrating.

Glenn removed the gloves from his coat pocket and placed them on the bed table beside the water glass. He did not put them on.