The Darkest Joy (12 page)

Aunt Milli had been a pianist back in the day.

And in the center of the room, the bare floor covered in wide rough-sawn wood planks, is a hulking shape that I know very well.

A sheet covers it like a secret shroud but I’d recognize that shape anywhere.

With shaking hands and a heart that threatens to beat its way out of my chest, I pluck the corner of the sheet with my fingers.

And like that Band-Aid I’ve thought about earlier, I tear the cloth covering away. It falls away like a ghost . . . a whisper and a breath, disappearing.

Literally, I can’t breathe.

Not because of panic.

But unbridled joy.

Hot scalding tears crawl down my face. They’re the first I’ve shed in happiness.

A square grand piano teases me, our distance kissing close, and I move toward it, laying my upper body against the smooth top, the feel of the polished wood under my cheek like a lover’s caress. The hardwood heats underneath my wet face, my beating heart the only noise in the stillness of my discovery.

I don’t know how long I’m there, but finally, with a reluctant reverence I straighten, cracking my back as I twist from my awkward bow.

When I can, I pull my eyes away from the gift the piano represents and look around the room. I see there are windows.
They line the wall, their frames touching the ceiling but no more than eighteen inches deep, but wide, maybe three feet. Each one has wood molding that separates them from the next. Covered by shutters.
That’s why I couldn’t see
, I think.

I walk over to the nest of windows and unhook interior wooden shutters and lift them up. There are hooks on the ceiling and like mini garage door panels, they latch there, and I know where I’ve woken up in.

Where my soul is driving me.

The sunlight swamps the room, illuminating the small basement. The chimney from the first floor is a full Mason, beginning at the foundation in the corner of this subterranean room and rising through the main story and roof. It looks as if it grew up out of the ground. The rustic hearth is flush with the wood floor, old tiles in a deep emerald with a wash of gold cover the floor over the brick and move up the sides to flank a dark hole where wood belongs. A small wood mantel holds a sterling frame.

I know those people.

I move to the fireplace like a person lost in the fog and pick it up.

There is my great-aunt Milli, smiling in the arms of an impossibly young man. She’s impossibly young too. I stroke a finger down their faces, feeling more connected to her in death than I ever was in life.

I slowly turn, and every corner tells a story: an old steam trunk holds quilts; large vases adorn small tables topped by aging marble, begging for wildflowers. My hands touch everything, making it mine. Making it real.

I’m stalling and I know it.

I turn and look at the keys of the piano.

Like a magnet I move as though through water to that board of buttery yellow teeth.

I hit middle C and a deep boggy sound, low and wide, resonates in the underground space, the strange acoustics of the stone foundation and wood interior interact.

Perfectly.

A sigh escapes me and I’m on the bench before I know I’ve moved.

My fingers fit the keys perfectly and they move of their own volition. Not tentative.

Hungry. Starved.

My fingers eat the notes in my head like a person coming awake from a dream and realizing it’s been real all along.

My hands crave the feeling absent so long from my life and for the first time, guilt doesn’t pierce my heart, sick fear doesn’t pump through my blood in an adrenaline rush . . . I play and the music comes.

It begins to heal me . . . if I’ll let it.

As I move through my fifth piece, my fingers become fatigued. Yet still . . . I play.

I play until the sun is rearranging itself on the horizon, the low rays flowing over my hands like spilled blood.

I pull up beside the psychedelic yawn of a VW bus and shake my head. I know Tucker painted that flower-power disaster
on Brooke’s car. I chuckle, it’s just him. Somehow, it doesn’t suit her.

Not that I know Brooke. I don’t. But I sure as hell want to.

I jump out of my 1974 Bronco. It’s the rig I drive in the winter but I don’t like it dead for four months so I alternate. It’s my baby (which is why I’m rolling up East End, the armpit of rural roads, at a crawl).

Call me desperate.

You’d be right.

I click the door shut gently and take stock of the landscape. I fold my arms and survey the place.

It looks pretty good still, but nothing like it did back in the day. There’s pictures in the Dawg from when Brooke’s aunt played her rowdy sets on the piano that still sits in the fabled corner. There’s even a few of this place. I look it over with a critical eye. The porch still hangs true, if weathered. It’s deep and wide as it should be for our icy eight months of winter and four of a summer that’s cool and temperate, the sea curbing true heat. I laugh again to myself. It’ll be winter again before we know it.

I begin to climb the steps, trepidation weighing each leaden pace.

I told Brooke she doesn’t have to worry about any bullshit while she works for me.

Liar, liar, asshole on fire
, I think.

I pause, a strange feeling permeates my brain.

Uncertainty.

Fuck it
. I raise my hand to knock and see the door is ajar. I push it open and step inside.

It smells like a goddamned lemon exploded
, I think, looking around for the contaminant.

Ah
, a can of Pledge stands up like a lone flag in the garbage can, a mashed-up graveyard of used paper towels alongside it.

Someone’s been busy
.

I smile, taking in the spartan digs. A ratty couch with a wool granny’s afghan lays folded on top, the squares shouting their color at me from across the small space. A cell phone sits on a tall narrow wood table, sentinel beside the door, a small oil-type lamp perched on top. There’s a tiny 1950s Formica kitchen table with a lick of chrome like a belly band holding a surface with gold flecks in a sea of battered white and two mismatched chairs. A great cast-iron porcelain sink with attached drainboard sits in the corner, its brilliant white a slash of brightness in the dim interior.

Sun’s low
, I note, glancing through the ancient glass. The redness of the sky eases me.
A red sky at night is a sailor’s delight
, I hear my mind recite.

I love the sunset when it’s red.

Good waters tomorrow
, I think absently.

Faintly, a sound moves through the confines of the cabin and it pulls my attention.

I can’t find it. My eyes search every nook of the small cabin.

Where is that sound coming from?

There’s something about it that strikes me as my eyes hit a slim door.

In the low light of the sun that hangs like a bloody globe at the edge of the horizon, a glint strikes out, facets like diamonds shooting their prisms around the room like rainbow glitter.

I walk to the sparkling thing.

When my shadow passes over it, my hand falls on the crystal knob, turning it.

The door was nearly lost to the eye, looking like the end run of cabinetry in the kitchen.

I open it and the music floods up the stairs like invisible water in reverse.

“Für Elise,” my mind brings to me instantly.

I stand where I am and it’s then that I realize that maybe she’s more than a hot dalliance, someone who I fell into protecting by a coincidence of fate. Her music makes me feel as though I am the instrument and she is playing me. More connects us than that night in the sea, the chemistry we share. Brooke’s music fills the space as if she’s the melody and I am the harmony. It’s not a casual and random connection, I realize. Her music moves me, resonating in that hidden place deep inside me that no one touches, no one sees. I drift down the steep coffin steps.

I catch sight of Brooke as she sits hunched over a piano that dwarfs her.

Yet . . . she commands it.

Her hair falls around her, cloaking her in black as the sun hits her fingers as they move over the keys, bathed in scarlet light. Brooke looks ethereal, perfect.

Hot.

But I knew that, didn’t I?
No reason lying to myself. I’m caving to the chemistry, end of story.

I’ve played this piece on my guitar. I stray to the classics when I’m not doing a rock set at the Dawg.

Classical music is pure; Beethoven, Mozart. They weren’t distracted back then with YouTube, the Internet, and shit.

It’s just music. They eat, sleep, and drink music.

That’s what I am watching right now. Brooke doesn’t just taste her notes.

She devours them.

I reach the end of the steps as her hands float and stab the notes, the dynamics spot-on.

This is no amateur player
, I think.

In fact . . . I know it.

What the hell is a girl with this kind of skill doing as a deckhand?

The last notes echo into the stillness of the room and a deep breath escapes her. I see her slim shoulders rise and fall.

Naturally.

In relaxation.

I realize I’ve never seen Brooke relax and almost feel bad that I’m going to bust that awesomeness up.

Almost
.

I hope I’m not pissing up a rope here. I’m taking a gamble that she’s going to go with what I want.

“Brooke,” I say softly.

She whips around, a sliver of sun slanting across her face, making her soft lavender eyes seem to glow in her face.

I swallow.
Fuck
, she makes me nervous.
Excited
. “Remember what I said?” My eyes search hers, gauging her reaction.

Brooke nods, her eyes a touch wide, her hand to her chest. My eyes move to the softness of her mouth, crimson in the illusion the sun makes of her face.

“That I won’t have to worry?” she asks with a hint of a smile in her eyes, in her voice.

I nod, all the smooth words I’m going to blow her away with jammed in my craw like sideways toothpicks.

Shit
. What the hell is wrong with me?

I stand there in front of her like a dumbass and she slips off the bench, moving toward me. Some trick of the light washes her with gold and a small noise between a growl and a moan breaks free and suddenly Brooke’s in front of me.

Jesus, she’s so perfect
, I think before I fall.

Into her. Her arms come around my neck and my hands automatically are on her ass, picking her up. Intellect grinds to a halt as I look around for somewhere and Brooke pulls my mouth to hers.

She wipes my mind like an eraser. The beat of Brooke is against me and it’s the only rhythm I hear. As I deepen the kiss my hands stray to frame her face; delicate—like an eggshell, beautiful.

She’s just the living artwork I like.

My fingers splay over smooth cheeks like silk under the brush of my calloused touch, her mouth parting for mine as I slip the tip of my tongue between her lips, breaking the seal of both our mouths. Somehow, my hand finds the back of her neck. Waist-length dark hair is fisted in my hand as I tighten my hold on her hair and neck, bringing Brooke closer, and she gives a soft moan of pleasure and I know I’ve gone too far. My body tells me.

My mind tries to interfere. How did I go from hiring Brooke, to saving her . . . to devouring her lips like a starving man . . . in the middle of a basement music room? Her presence has stolen my professionalism as surely as a weight on the
end of one of my hooks. I let my hands fall reluctantly from her and back away, giving us both breathing room.

Brooke watches my brooding retreat then raises her hand to put it on the lips I’ve just mauled.

I’d do it again if she let me, if I let myself. In a nanosecond.

We stare.

I back farther away.

Then she finally speaks. “That was . . .”

“Wrong?” I admit with a question in my voice.

Brooke shakes her head slowly. “No,” she clarifies in a soft voice. She looks at me again. “I’m just surprised . . .”

My eyes scan her face, flushed a light pink, her lips fuller and plump from having been kissed by me and God help me, I want to continue my bout of unprofessionalism and do it again. Instead, I move toward the steep stairs I just came down, making that small distance a barrier between us.

I watch Brooke notice the purposeful distance and she looks so isolated standing there, the sunlight backlighting her with the huge old square grand as a backdrop. I hold my hand out and she looks at it, finally stepping forward. Then she takes it and I tow her upstairs.

Without a solid plan for the first time in my life.

C
hance walks me down the gangplank, hands covering my eyes, and I’m laughing . . . and trying not to think about that stolen kiss in the hidden music room.

But I do.

With my eyes closed and the scent of the sea and Chance inextricably mixed, it’s all I can think about.