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It’s almost noon but you only now stumbled out of your warm bed; the sheets all messed up on your side and neatly folded on his. The flat is a bit chilly, a faint draft is climbing up your pyjama bottoms, making you shiver, so you quickly pull a warm jumper out of the closet and slide into it hurryingly. You had a very pleasant dream only now. You can’t recall exactly what it was — just this simple warm, cozy feeling of safety and the nearness of a familiar body.
The thing that woke you up from the dream was, as always, the grand piano standing in the living room. It was probably the most used object in your apartment – even the sofa or the coffee maker sometimes could take a break. But not the piano. The shiny black instrument was in use throughout most of the day, every day. If it wasn’t you who was playing, then it was him practicing or giving lessons.
The faint sound that can be heard now from the living room is definitely not his music. No, you’ve learned to recognize it everywhere; all those years of rivalry and unhealthy obsession which at some point turned out to be nothing else but love and later those sweet years of being together have taught you everything about his playing. You were familiar with every small movement of his long, slinky fingers, evey bow of his head, every arch of his back and every breath he took while playing.
This is not his music; you couldn’t be more sure of that, although you recognized the piece immediately — it is one of the very famous compositions, overplayed heavily by high-school students. You remember playing it too, at some point in your school career.
This is not his music: it sounds boring, childish even. It doesn’t have that heart-wrenching passion that his music always had, that lightness of quick notes being played as if they were raindrops falling unassisted to the ground, it lacks the tender touch of his fingers. Instead someone seems to be fighting the keys, pressing them harshly and forcefully. Obviously, the player could seem skilled to an untrained ear… but then again your ears were not untrained and as a matter of fact you were considered to be one of the most rigorous critics in the world.
You try to walk quietly through the hallway; if you are careful enough, you could probably get away with sneaking into the kitchen and make yourself a cup of coffee, just not from the loud coffee maker — the instant kind that you only drink on such occasions.
It’s almost like a routine for you both now. You — being woken up by the piano played by an obvious stranger, then sneaking into the kitchen for some coffee. And him — locked up with a student in the living room; the strict, cold-hearted teacher who pretends to live alone, too afraid of all the gossip that would spread around the classical music world if any of his students found out anything about the two of you.
You both agreed that it would be easier this way. In the last couple of years the two of you became very recognisable in your industry. Well to be fair, you have always been known to every person who lived in Paris and was a trained musician, but recently he also started to receive the amount of recognition his music deserved. You were so proud!...
...and only a tiny bit jealous that he managed to gain all this attention by playing only a handful of concerts a year and by being his usual shy, withdrawn self — and not behaving like a raging lunatic on stage, like you were since the age of fifteen.
The music stops for a second, a false tone sounding out in the apartment and you wince uncontrollably but the player quickly resumes playing, correcting their mistake and getting back to tempo. You have your coffee in your hand now. You borrowed his cup again and he will probably sulk about it later but you don’t mind the scolding and are to scared to take your own coffee cup from the dishwasher — it is a very noise-provoking activity. You sneak back into the corridor which is dark with only a small triangle of light formed on tle floor right in front of the half closed door to the living room.
The music is a bit louder now. You come closer to the door — a risky move, but you really want to peak inside through the gap in the door and see for yourself who is playing your instrument.
But when your eyes finally gaze into the sunfilled room with high ceilings, an old couch in the back and a lot of bookshelves climbing up the blue walls — it isn’t the piano and the person sitting in front of it that gets your attention.
There he stands, right in front of your eyes, turned in such a way that you can see his very noble side profile. He is fixed in a very focused pose: with one hand pressed thoughtfully to his mouth, his eyebrows knotted slightly, his other arm wrapped aroung his waist. He doesn’t notice your intrusion; and it is for the better, because that way you can just stand here and watch him for a second, and he is beautiful, God, he is beautiful…
There was something so precious about his delicate posture with white shirt collar peaking out of a blue cardigan which he had wrapped over himself (he must've been cold, because he never wore such informal clothes in front of his students).
The girl (of course, it was a girl; a very pretty, young girl, probably a college student) sitting by the piano is focused on her playing. It is time for the cadenza now. She hunches her back like a cat getting ready to jump and fires away with the quick passages, messing some of them but finally reaching the end of the piece. She strikes the last three chords with such force that you can’t help but pull an annoyed face.
But he does not. He just stands there, frozen like a wax figure, fingers still pressed to his slightly pursed lips, his dainty figure wrapped cosily in the blue cardigan.
He is silent for some time. Then, without moving any part of his body, besides his lips, he speaks, in a very reserved, quiet and ever so slightly ironic tone:
"Bien. Now, let’s try the cadenza again… But this time try to be gentle and not act like you want to break my piano."
The girl’s shoulders fall down a bit, her head too, a sulky gesture, but after two seconds of feeling sorry for herself, she nodds earnestly and says:
"Of course, mounsier. I apologize."
And resumes her playing, which suddenly sounds a lot more pleasant. You listen to it in awe; it is truly miraculous, how little it takes for some students to improve. Or perhaps, she simply has an incredible teacher.
You are starting to ponder this, when suddenly he turns his head and looks directly at you with no suprised look on his face, like he knew perfectly well that you have been standing behind the door this whole time.
He looks back at the girl briefly, checking that she is busy playing and that she is turned away from the door. Then he walks across the room quietly, his footsteps muffled by the very expensive white carpet covering the wooden floor (he bought it impulsively; you nearly had a hart attack when you first saw the receipt).
He stands in front of the half closed door and looks into your eyes, his head tilted a little bit up to make up for the height difference. His face could be read as serious, maybe event petulant, but the small curl of his lips gives away the fact that he is in fact very glad to see you.
He bites his lower lip and then reaches out quickly to squeeze your cold fingers — the gesture is so quick, you almost are not sure if it really happened. Then he makes an incredibly peculiar motion with his lips which (you guess) is supposed to be a small air-kiss…
…and then he slamms the door in your face, closing it fully, so you are not able to look inside anymore.
His temper is becoming worse and worse with every passing year. You've known each other for most of your life and could still recall all those bygone years when he was still a shy, well-behaved and courteous teenager. But some time has passed, he was neither the teenage, nor the twenty-something boy you once hated.
You both grew older; your eyes seem to always look tired, there are some smile lines on your cheeks and wrinkles in the corners of his and your eyes.
A couple of weeks ago he found a first grey hair on his head...
Yes, some time has passed and his temper was becoming worse and worse. You reckoned, by the time he hits fifty, he will be absolutely unbearable.
And dear God, you simply couldn’t wait to witness it all and always be right next to him.
