Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

“Get the fuck out.”

The second I set foot in the kitchen, Margot was waving me away. “But people are arriving and I wanna make sure the deviled eggs are ready, and the fondue is just the way Joel likes it, and I need to—”

“Do nothing. You need to do nothing . I’ve organized the caterers, they know what they’re doing, and I bet their deviled eggs are a shitload better than yours, no offense. Now all you need to do is get the fuck out of the kitchen and do nothing. Smile for your guests if you want to. Cry if you want to. But you don’t need to do a goddamn thing this afternoon, Noah. These people are here for you, not the other way around. Are we clear?”

Before I could respond, she gave me a shove and pushed me out of the kitchen and into the living room where people were beginning to file into the house.

As they greeted me, their heads tended to tilt.

Their eyes watered.

Their brows creased with concern and sympathy and pity.

That was a beautiful service.

Joel would have loved it.

How are you holding up?

A little over a week ago, the same people had gathered for Joel’s surprise party. Now we were all together again… and nothing would ever be the same.

Over in the corner, Lloyd looked after the record player as Shirley Bassey spun on the turntable. He already had Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone lined up next, just as he’d been told. As he’d entered that afternoon, he’d promised me, “No Nicki tonight, I promise.” That was before he eyed me up and down and added, “Are you eating okay? You’ve lost a shit-ton of weight. That suit is like two sizes too big for you now.”

“I’m fine. Just look after the music, please.”

From behind me, Pete tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey Noah, thanks for the Ben Platt tickets. The concert was amazing. You and Joel would have loved it. I miss him.”

“Me too,” I uttered.

Through the door came Robert and Andrew. They hugged me before Robert said, “Are you doing okay? Is there anything we can do?”

“I’m fine.”

“We postponed the night out to the jazz club, we knew this week would be hard on you. We’re thinking maybe next week. What do you think? Do you need a night out to let your hair down?”

“Oh, I don’t—”

“Too soon? We didn’t know if it would be too soon. Andrew and I have never lost anyone close before, we weren’t sure what was an appropriate length of time before you—”

“Would you both excuse me for a second? I think I left something upstairs.”

I hurried up the stairs so fast I skipped every second step.

I closed the door to the bedroom, then decided to leave it open just an inch, so I could hear my name mentioned if people came looking for me.

I sat on the edge of the bed and from under it came an unimpressed grumble from Chet.

“Trust me, I don’t want anyone here either. If I could I’d be under there with you, although I figure you’d try to bite me for invading your personal space.”

I couldn’t deny the feeling that this was Chet’s room now.

I hadn’t slept in here for over a week.

I hadn’t changed the sheets.

I didn’t want to wash his DNA out of anything, not his pillowcase or his towel or even the bath mat.

I had no intention of cleaning the hair from his comb or the stubble from his electric razor.

In fact, aside from his clothes, the only thing of his I’d touched was his toothbrush. In a bleary moment—the kind when the tears flowed without warning or any sign of stopping—I’d thrown my toothbrush away and started using his.

I figured it was the closest I’d ever get to kissing him again.

So, I brushed slowly…

Tenderly…

Often.

The knock at the door was soft, yet it still made me flinch.

“Yes? Hello?” I quickly wiped my cheeks. I had started doing it out of habit now, whether I was crying or not. After the day in the dog park, I realized that sometimes I didn’t even know I was crying at all. “Come in.”

The small frame of a person appeared in silhouette in the doorway, the light from the hall bright behind them. “Noah? Are you all right?”

I recognized the German accent immediately. “Hannah. Come in. Yeah, I’m doing just fine.”

“Really? Because it’s okay if you’re not.”

I faked a laugh as though it would be convincing. “Really, I’m doing good. I’m doing great. Things have just been… a bit busy, that’s all.”

As she entered the room, I noticed she’d changed her hairstyle since I’d seen her last. It was now short and darker, black even, and shaped into a bob. I tried to remember the last time we met. A recital at Juilliard two years ago maybe. Perhaps three. I noticed also that she was holding something in her hands. A box. Chocolates to help process the grief, I assumed at first, until I saw it wasn’t a chocolate box in her hands, but an old shoebox.

She pointed to the spot beside me on the bed. “May I?”

I nodded and smoothed over the unwashed sheets. “Of course.”

Hannah sat beside me.

She touched a hand to my shoulder, and it felt strange.

She was Joel’s work colleague, his friend. She had never physically touched me before, she was not a particularly tactile person. On the contrary, she was very matter-of-fact, very play by the rules. She considered music more of a science than an art. That’s where she and Joel differed. It was also where they complemented each other, why their friendship clicked.

For a moment she sat in silence, one hand on my shoulder, the other resting on the shoebox in her lap. “Do you remember when we were in Hamburg? When you and Joel visited me at the Steinway factory, and I showed you through the workshop and the showroom?”

“Of course. It was a wonderful day.”

She smiled warmly. “It was the best day. I gave Joel a piano key from the showroom. It had the slightest of imperfections and couldn’t be used. Steinway is most particular about what goes into their pianos. Did you know they source only one kind of wood for their diaphragmatic soundboards? Sitka spruce from the Pacific Northwest. The trees have to be at least two hundred years old. It’s the only wood in the world with just the right strength-to-weight ratio and flexibility. The key I gave Joel, however, failed to live up to Steinway’s impeccable standards. He kept it in his office at Juilliard. He showed it to all his new students on the first day of class. He would tell them where it was from and why it was in his hand, being shown to a bunch of students instead of being played on a Steinway. He’d tell them that if every key on a Steinway needed to be perfect, then they needed to allow themselves to be the imperfection in the equation. Make mistakes, own them, be inspired by them. Experiment with the music. Reinvent it, reimagine it, take it apart and build it from the ground up. Mess with it. Screw it up. Fuck it up. Be imperfect . That’s what art… that’s what life … is all about.” She gave a gentle chuckle. “As you can guess, he and I had some rather lively debates on his teaching techniques, but his energy, his passion, his courage to step outside the square… that’s what we all loved about him most.”

She took the lid off the shoebox and held up a single white piano key. It was either an A, D, or G. She placed it in my palm, and I cradled it like it was an injured bird, knowing it would be covered in his fingerprints, terrified of rubbing them off.

I wanted to put it back in the box.

I wanted to keep it exactly the way it was: untainted, untarnished, imperfectly perfect.

But Hannah saw me look into the box and said, “There’s something else.”

I saw a cassette tape with handwriting on the label so messy it was impossible to read what it said, not without more light than the lamp by the bed could provide.

“What is that?” I had a strange feeling I didn’t want to know.

“The day he…” Hannah took a breath. “The last afternoon I saw him, Joel went to mail a letter. I would have walked with him—God, I’d give anything to go back and insist I walk with him—but I wanted to rush home and get changed in time for the surprise party.”

“What was so fucking important he had to put a letter in the mail anyway?”

“It was a letter in response to this. It’s an audition tape that arrived from a student who was applying for a scholarship. There was no email, no phone number, just the return address written on the tape.”

“And Joel was posting a reply? Where is it?”

“The actual letter?” Hannah shrugged. “Who knows if it ended up in the mailbox. Who knows if it ended up on the street? Who knows if it got caught in the wind and blew down a stormwater drain?”

Quickly she took the piano key from my hand, placed it in the box with the cassette tape, and put the lid on top, just in time to catch a tear. She wiped her eye and stood, placing the box on the bed where she’d been sitting. “I’m just going to leave this here. You don’t have to look at what’s in there. You don’t even have to keep it if you don’t want to. I just thought…”

She didn’t finish her sentence.

That’s the thing I was noticing about grief. It left a lot of sentences unfinished.

Quickly and quietly, Hannah left the room.

I sat there a while longer, just staring at the box, not sure what to do with it. All I knew was, I couldn’t deal with it that moment. It wasn’t the only thing I didn’t know how to deal with.

From the drawer of my bedside table, I pulled out the ring box.

The one I was supposed to give Joel the night of his party.

I opened the shoebox and dropped the ring box inside, then put the lid back on.

I bent low and slid the shoebox under the bed.

It wasn’t out of mind, but at least it was out of sight.

I wondered how long it would be before I looked at it again.