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For some time after 1900 had looked upon New York City from halfway between the Virginian and solid land, and ultimately turned his back on the latter, he’d been strange. Not cowed or defensive or any of the other things. Just strange, off in some way that was hard to pin down. His music remained, as always, brilliant, but Max sensed a new pensiveness in his friend’s demeanor when he wasn’t playing, a twist to his mouth like he was physically prodding at some mysterious problem with his tongue, worrying it like a loose tooth.
Max had chalked it up to the shock of first love, which was an experience best endured by children, who were blessedly incapable of fully processing the disquieting revelation that your heart, though it would continue to reside in your chest, was no longer entirely your own. He himself had had some experience in that area, and as with any troubling thing, he knew that it took time to figure out how to live with. Like learning how to walk on a boat.
On one night following 1900's abortive attempt at changing his fate, Max had awakened abruptly in his berth. This wasn’t unusual; something about life at sea had made him prone to vivid dreams, the kind whose details were scrubbed away by the act of waking, but whose emotional contents often survived the transition. Tonight, he was overcome with an unspecified restlessness, an anxiety that seemed to teeter between feeling anticipatory and utterly unfounded. Determined to shake it off, he put on his robe and got out of bed. He found himself meandering toward the ballroom, which at this time of night was often the brightest place aboard the Virginian by virtue of its enormous domed glass ceiling, which scattered fat sequins of moonlight across the parquet floor. It was easily his favorite place on the ship.
When he came to the room, however, he quickly observed that he was not alone. 1900 was seated at the grand piano’s bench, unrumpled in his tuxedo despite it being nearly three in the morning, and he was staring intently at an unremarkable point in the distance. He had the air of someone who had seen a ghost, immediately accepted its reality, and had already begun to seriously mull over the scientific implications of such a being.
“Hey,” greeted Max, “Trouble sleeping?”
There was a long pause.
“You lied to me,” the pianist finally muttered, apropos of nothing.
“I’m sorry?”
“You lied.” His brow furrowed. “You’ve never lied to me before.”
“Still not sure what we’re talking about, pal,” Max said uneasily, trying for blasé and fearing he’d missed the mark spectacularly.
The more he thought about it, the more he didn’t like this whole setup. 1900 was sitting at his piano bench, which was familiar enough, but ever since Max had entered the room, he’d just been staring out and intermittently playing the same note over and over again, depressing its key methodically, unmusically. And usually, when 1900 played, the sound of the instrument couldn’t be contained. It got into the air, into your skin, into your blood, its delirious radiance burrowing deep and leaving its mark, like the grooves in the master copy of that damned recording.
But now, instead of leaping out of the piano and into every corner of the ballroom, it seemed as if the empty space had consumed the sound of that terrible single note, ruthlessly cutting it back, pruning it to something small and utterly devoid of enchantment. It was a utilitarian noise, as though the piano had become nothing more than a tool for the tallying up of some ineffable thing. There was something starkly horrifying about it.
“You weren’t really happy when I said I was leaving,” the other man paused, adding sullenly, redundantly, “so you lied.”
Managing blasé, and even chuckling a bit for good measure, Max managed to obscure how off-kilter he felt and formulate a reply.
“Sure, maybe a little. Hell, I like hanging around here, playing music with you and the rest of the fellas. But sometimes you’ve got to do something new. Everyone does. That’s just life. Sometimes when you’re happy for someone, you’re not a hundred percent happy for yourself. And anyways, you came back, didn’t you?”
“Oh,” said 1900, seemingly satisfied with the explanation, and Max tried to keep his sigh of relief to himself, but the pianist’s expression quickly darkened, punctuated by another stab at that single note.
“No. No, that’s not it at all.”
How did this fucking guy get to be so perceptive? For someone who’d never been inside a house--hell, a building-- he’d certainly picked up a thing or two when it came to reading a room. Max was debating as to whether to tell him as much or to laugh him off when the other man took his finger off the key he’d been tormenting--middle C--and raised his hand in an almost triumphant gesture, as though he’d teased out the solution to a complicated riddle.
In a maddeningly simple, unreadable voice, he said, “I see now. You must be in love with me.”
And Max felt like his heart had stopped. Or maybe like it had started up for the first time since that night when 1900 had taken the brakes off his piano, and he just couldn’t stand its beating anymore. And before he knew it, he’d wasted too much time trying to acclimate to the change, a damning stretch of silence without a tune in the air to shake it away. He felt seasick again.
Suddenly, he knew what the man 1900 had told him about meant when he said that the ocean screamed, because now it was everywhere, a cataclysmic roar, and how had the pianist ever played over this? How could any of them have been brazen or stupid enough to live their lives out in the middle of this huge and annihilating scream?
Maybe 1900 had spoken more--Max couldn’t be positive. Time passed. He watched as, eventually, the other man put his hands on the keys and straightened his back in anticipation of the first notes of a song, but he didn’t stick around to hear what he’d played. It would’ve said too much, and besides, he wasn’t sure if it would be a tune he knew how to accompany.
The next day, Max cried as he played his trumpet for the passengers of the Virginian. And when that song was done, he packed his bags.