The Demon's Riddle (5 page)

Finally the rehearsal was over. Kerry thought it would never end, although she did notice at the end that Cavanaugh transformed into something a taskmaster, working every detail as if it was the most important note in the piece, which for all she knew it might be. She could feel the energy of the choir as a whole flagging, and she wondered if Cavanaugh noticed that, he was so immersed in the process that he seemed somewhat oblivious to that part of it.
 

Then suddenly, all at once, it was over. The conductor did seem to notice that his charges were tapped out, and indeed maybe even physically exhausted as well. This was the most rigorous rehearsal Kerry could ever remember the choir going through, and while she was exhilarated at the familiarity of this kind of process, she knew that at this point none of her fellow singers shared her enthusiasm.

Cavanaugh closed things out rather unceremoniously, ending the rehearsal rather abruptly. Kerry had the definite feeling he wasn't satisfied, that he wanted to do more, but he knew better to push when there was little or no energy left to give. He collected the music quickly and efficiently, leaving no instructions as to their next meeting, which struck Kerry as decidedly odd given how much the piece itself obviously needed polishing. 

She wondered what that was about, but just as she did this Cavanaugh caught her eye and nodded toward the stairs down to the church entrance, an obvious gesture that she should join him on his way out. Kerry met him at the top of the stairs, aware that multiple pairs of eyes were following her from the choir as she did.

She could almost anticipate the vocal buzz that would follow and the words and thoughts that would dominate the conversations. There would be gossip about this, she thought to herself ruefully, and it was only a matter of time before some aspect of all this would get back to her father. There would be an inquisition about this, she knew that already, and Kerry felt her stomach clench at the thought of that confrontation.

But then she was with Cavanaugh, walking down the stairs, and somehow Kerry relaxed, without knowing quite how that happened. There was something about being in his presence that was magical for her, and she reveled in it, wondering if it could even shield her from her father's impending wrath. She said nothing as they came to the door, and Cavanaugh pushed on it gently, opening it almost effortlessly, which was a wonder to Kerry given how heavy she knew it was. 

As he held the door open for her, he spoke, softly. "So...your solo."

"Yes...my solo," Kerry repeated, as if she were an automaton, even though that was the last thing she felt like.

"You're curious about it," he added, his tone matter of fact.

"Slightly," she replied, the word coming out instinctively. 

"Slightly." He smiled as the door closed, making a noise like thunder.
 

Kerry giggled, hopping down the stairs ahead of him. "Ok," she started, "maybe more than slightly."

"Ah...I thought so."

After that was silence, and a very pregnant silence at that, as they walked down the church sidewalk. Kerry wondered exactly where they were going, and then she remembered that she hadn't seen his motorcycle.

"Where is it?" she blurted out, before realizing that he would have no idea what she was talking about.

"I beg your pardon?" He turned to her, his eyebrows arched slightly.

"The motorcycle," Kerry said simply, glad it was dark so her fierce blushing wouldn't be quite as obvious, even though she suspected it was to him. 

"Ah," he said, pointing to where the sidewalk broke off to the left, in parallel with the church. He smiled again, that damn piercing, penetrating smile. "You'd like to walk with me?"

Kerry snorted. "I'd like to know what you're doing with me," she stammered. "With all this."

"All what?" he asked, the eyebrows lifting again.
 

"You know exactly what, Mr. Cavanaugh," she stated, her voice soft but fierce. "The music. The solo. All of it."

"You already know that," he said, striding toward the bike. 

"I do?"

"Of course."

"Why don't you tell me then?" she asked, totally frustrated. "Because I'm totally lost right now."

"No you're not," he said as he mounted the bike, managing to make the awkward motion of leg over seat look smooth and athletically natural. She watched, transfixed, carefully measuring the arc of his leg as it swung over the seat."You know exactly where you are."

Kerry almost blurted out "I do?" again, then realized how much that would make her sound like a blithering idiot. Cavanaugh waited, seemingly enjoying her awkwardness, then finally decided to rescue her.
 

"You're here. With me." He gripped the handlebars and throttled the engine, then realized if he started the bike she wouldn't be able to hear him, so he stopped. "And tomorrow night we'll start your solo."

"We will?" 

"Of course." He put the helmet on, sliding it over his head, managing to make that awkward motion look sexy as well. "We'll meet here. Same time as the rehearsal."

She started do answer with another "we will?," then managed to hold herself back. Instead she stared into his eyes, which was like looking into a bottomless well, not knowing if she would drown or enter a totally new world of wonder. For her own safety, Kerry decided it was the latter.

"We will, then," she said softly, trying to convince herself that she was making the decision.

Cavanaugh smiled softly, and this time he did throttle the bike to life, slowly but firmly. The bike sputtered to life, then roared, and the conductor brought the throttle down to idle, making it purr in a way that made Kerry think of music, and singing. 

She wanted to say something else, but the noise of the engine was too loud, even just idling. Cavanaugh slid his leg back toward the kickstand, in a single motion that was somehow both violent and languid. The conductor nodded, gracefully balancing the motorcycle between his legs, and then he was off into the night, the roar of the engine filling her ears, like an ocean wave she had suddenly become caught in, crashing down around her.
 

The wait that followed was even more agonizing than the previous one between rehearsals. Kerry's return home was uneventful -- her father had turned in early, thankfully, so at least she didn't have to face another inquisition.
 

But her sleep was turbulent, to say the least. She tried to read and then watch TV before going to bed, knowing that both of those efforts would prove futile as potential distractions. Kerry simply wasn't tired, and she knew she wasn't going to be. She had to at least try to sleep, though, even though she had no idea how to go about it, what to do to tire herself out, or if she could even do that to any significant degree.
 

She turned in around midnight, feeling what she hoped might be the beginning of fatigue but remaining skeptical about that possibility. Kerry normally dreamed all the time, but as a rule she could only remember the beginnings of her dreams and was rarely able to get past the preamble.
 

Tonight was different, of course. Kerry felt herself plunging into the first dream as if she was diving to the bottom of that well, the one that began when she looked into Cavanaugh's eyes. She saw him constantly after that in the dream, but only in snippets, there was no narrative to the dream, only pictures and flashes that were both profound and intense.

Kerry heard his voice as well, but similarly, only in phrases, asking brief questions that were more riddles than anything else and giving short answers that barely helped illuminate the nature of the riddle. There was an odd kind of violence in the way these two things were juxtaposed, his voice and the image of him, as if something or someone was creating a strange, disjointed film that wasn't designed to make sense, only change her sense of who she was.

Kerry knew there was no way something like that could actually be happening, but that was what it felt like. There were times when it felt like she was trying to wake up from the dream and couldn't, and other passages of what felt like time when she felt like she was diving deeper into it, even though that made no sense at all when she tried to express it to herself.
 

She heard music in her dreams as well. This was a staple of normal dreaming for Kerry, and it was much more coherent, something that occasionally saved her from going insane from not being able to remember the rest of the dream.

On this night, she heard snippets of music as well, most of them from the three pieces from Cavanaugh. They were less jarring than the visuals or the conversational interludes, though, and Kerry also heard herself singing, passages from her final concert at Oberlin. She might have been singing out loud during the dream, there were times in college when her roommates had heard her doing this at night, something she was teased relentlessly for during rehearsals for that penultimate concert. 

The music eventually coalesced into some kind of coherent whole, blending together Cavanaugh's music with her solos from the concert. Kerry had no idea how this was possible, but somehow it all made sense and fit together for her, and as it did she had the sense in the dream that it would be brilliant, this final combination, something that would stand for generations as a truly great piece of music that would be passed on, heralded and enjoyed by each group of musicians that followed.
 

As the dream ended Kerry tried desperately to hold onto it all, to try and keep it with her when she finally reentered the waking world. This was an utterly new experience for her, trying to hang onto a dream, and she had no idea how to do it. Just before she woke Kerry had the sensation that she was watching herself, shifting and turning in bed, as if that physical movement might allow her to keep the music in her dream from escaping.
 

In the end, though, it was all for naught. Kerry woke up able to remember parts of what she had heard in her sleep, but the whole of it was gone, vanished into the night like a ghost or a specter. There were two or three sections that remained intact, and for a
moment after she awoke Kerry thought of writing them down, grabbing a notebook from the nightstand so that they could be preserved.

As soon as she did this, though, she knew it would be unnecessary, that the parts that had survived the night would remain with her, and she also knew she would be able to recall them whenever that became necessary. Somehow she had an intuitive sense of when it might be, but there was something fragmented about her sense of time, and Kerry thought this might be some fragment of the dream she had carried into reality in a way that made no rational sense.
 

Once she was awake, the passage of the day was quicker this time. She amused herself at the store by singing and reciting passages from Cavanaugh's music in her head, making up playful variations that made her giggle, but fortunately there was no one around -- Mrs.
Dalrymple was off, her next bookkeeping day off in the future.

After a while Kerry started to sing these variations out loud, to hear how they sounded when voiced, but there was something about this that seemed like a violation, as if it was something she wasn't supposed to do until she was with Cavanaugh again.

The dinner hour was smoother as well. Her father was out and about when she got home from the store, and thankfully he didn't show up for dinner, either. Kerry prepared something simple for him, chicken and vegetables, then put it in the oven with the heat on low, and she left a note on the counter so he would know what she'd done when he got home.

She had the sense that he might be after another conquest, but this was something she didn't want to know about, there had been fewer since she'd gotten home from college, but it was still a painful thing to be part of, even peripherally. And Kerry wanted to avoid that at all costs if possible.
 

She rushed through her own dinner and arrived at the church twenty minutes early, which made her feel decidedly girlish and immature, as if she was being too eager preparing for a date, or coming on too strong, or something.
 

Just as she was trying to figure out how to act with him, Cavanaugh arrived with a roar. The motorcycle seemed to come from out of nowhere, or maybe that was just Kerry's imagination, but suddenly he was almost on top of her, the bike throbbing. He lifted the visor of the helmet and smiled, just slightly, then nodded toward the rear of the bike. For a moment Kerry didn't realize what he wanted, and then finally she got it, she was supposed to get on the back of the bike.  

She wrapped her arms around him, feeling the preternatural heat that seemed to be coming from his body. It felt weird to try and find a place for her feet, but when she finally did Kerry guessed it must have been ok, he didn't say anything or turn his head to indicate that she'd done something wrong.
 

The bike pulled out slowly, which surprised Kerry. She guessed she was expecting a bolt of thunder or something similar, but they got to cruising speed quickly as Cavanaugh made his way through town. He kept going, though, and this made her wonder, because there was nothing outside the city limits for miles that she knew about. Where was he taking her?

It took a while for Kerry to get the answer to that question. They kept going past the grain silo of the old feed plant, the one her father had worked in as a kid, she must have heard that story about a thousand times at least. Then he turned off onto a dirt road, and Kerry realized what should have been obvious from the start: he could be taking her anywhere. 

But he wasn't. After a couple of miles on the dirt road, Cavanaugh pulled up in front of what looked like an abandoned warehouse. Kerry had never seen it before, in fact she had no idea it even existed. He hopped off the bike and extended his hand to her, graceful as always, and Kerry took it and followed his lead as he led her to the front door.
 

She had no idea what she'd find when they entered, but it was certainly a lot more luxurious than anything that even her fetid imagination could conjure up. It didn't start well; the elevator was more like a dumbwaiter, old and decrepit and seemingly about to break down.
 

When they got off, though, Kerry stepped into the middle of an ultra-modern loft apartment, something she might have imagined in the middle of Manhattan, owned by some elite artist. The open loft was dominated by two grand pianos, end to end, facing one another. Beside them was a couch, and in front of the couch was a gold music stand, which looked like a valuable antique to her.
 

She wanted to ask about it, but then Kerry saw the microphone stand in front of the music stand. It looked like something from out of a top-notch recording studio, and Kerry gasped in spite of herself, clasping her hands together to contain her excitement.
 

She looked at him, then at the stand, and he gestured for her to take her place in front of it. The act of speech failed her, utterly and completely, and suddenly Kerry wondered how her voice would project through it, backed by one of the Steinways. It was beyond
anything she had ever experienced, even at the insular but elite musical cocoon that was Oberlin.

The same piece of music lay on the stand, and Kerry looked at him again, waiting for some kind of explanation. Her wait was extended, though, until he put away the helmet and hung up his leather jacket, the briefness of those few moments beginning to drive her mad with anticipation.

Finally he spoke. "What do you know of the music we rehearsed last night?" he asked softly. 

Kerry looked down at the floor. "Nothing," she replied. "I did all the searches I could think of, but I couldn't come up with anything.
 

He chuckled. "You weren't supposed to."

"Ok?"

"There's good reason for that. It came from a poem that eventually became an opera."

Kerry frowned. "So you didn't run any of this by my father? He's very particular about his church music."

Cavanaugh laughed, louder this time. "I know. But he checked up on me with the other choir directors in the area, and I seem to have earned his trust somehow."

"Impressive." She smiled coyly. "Somehow that seems to have eluded me over the years."

This time his laughter came out in peals, ringing through the apartment like a church bell. "That's because you're his daughter."

Her smile brightened. "Good point."

He paused,
the walked over behind the piano, lifting the cover before he sat down.

"So what was it?" Kerry finally asked, unable to stand the waiting.

"Russian music," Cavanaugh answered mysteriously. "From the 1800s."

"It certainly didn't sound Russian," Kerry commented. "Maybe the melody, a little, but it was nothing I could even remotely recognize."

"Right! he answered enthusiastically, seemingly delighted by her sudden boldness. "That's because I did the arrangement myself."

Kerry stared at him, knowing he was teasing her. "So are you going to tell me what it was, or not?"

"Of course." He paused again, then reached over to the piano stand and grabbed a small booklet that he handed her. "The poem was written by Mikhail Lermontov. It's called 'The Demon.'"

Kerry giggled in spite of herself. "You're kidding, right?

"Not at all," Cavanaugh answered, his expression serious. "He wrote it when he was thirteen." Then he pointed at the booklet. "It's on the third page, before the libretto I adapted it from."

"Libretto?"

"Yes." He seemed to warm to the task of providing an explanation. "It's all there. Take a look."

Kerry fingered the booklet, then gave him her best pouty look. "Tell me what's in it?

He smiled. "Sorry, it doesn't work that way." He gave her a mock scowl. "Read."

So she did. At first Kerry was intimidated, not being much acquainted with poetry, but it was all in there, straightforward and easy to understand. The story of the demon, wandering in loneliness, bearing the curse of immortality, until he spotted Tamara, his eternal love, and decided he must have her. She read the rest, and a chill crept through Kerry when she got to the part where the demon killed Tamara's
fiance. Kerry took a deep breath to calm herself, and keep the deepest sense of longing and desire she had ever felt at bay. If she could even do that. 

When she was done Kerry closed the booklet, then looked up, suddenly seeing Cavanaugh in a new light. She thought about how to handle this, and finally decided to go for playful. "
Sooo...you're doing this to mess with my dad, right?"

He laughed, letting loose again, this time with a huge belly laugh. "Hardly," he said when he finally caught his breath. "But it is a nice bonus."

She decided to challenge him. "What if I decide to tell him about it?"

He laughed, a more subdued chuckle this time. "That would be interesting," he answered. "But we both know you won't."

"And why is that?"

"Because of the music." He pointed at the stand and the
mic. "We both know how much you want it. And how much you need it."

Kerry felt something clutch in her belly, realizing immediately that he was right. Then she felt desire, warm and liquid, emanating from the center of her body. "So tell me about it," she said, trying to distract him from something she knew he was aware of. "The music."

"It's all there," he shot back, pointing at the booklet. "But I will give you a preview."

He paused, then pointed at the music stand. "He was a contemporary of Tchaikovsky," Cavanaugh added. "The poem was banned for being sacrilegious, of course, which is probably part of what drew Rubinstein's attention. The work was performed occasionally until just after the turn of the century, and it was well received. But musically it was too similar to other operas of the era, so finally it faded away.
 

Kerry smiled. "So you decided to resurrect it."

Cavanaugh grinned at her. "In a manner of speaking."

"And you adapted it for a church service," she continued. "In
lil' ol' McCord, Mississippi."

"Uh huh," Cavanaugh replied, his eyes locking in on hers, just as they had that first time in church.
 

"So what happens now?" Kerry asked, butterflies leaping in the pit of her stomach.
 

"Very simple." He shuffled the piano music, and this time Kerry knew he wasn't simply killing a few seconds, he was genuinely searching for something. He plucked several papers from the pile, then reached down and found a few more. When he had everything in order, he set the papers back down, then handed a couple of sheets to her.
 

"This is my part?" she said, recognizing it immediately. "And you're going to...accompany me? On the piano."

He smiled. "That would be the general idea." He struck the first chord, gently. "After all, it's not like you've never done this before."

"True."

With that, he launched into the piano rendition, providing the outline of what she was to sing. Kerry listened carefully to the chords, and even more carefully to the spaces in between the sound, where she would add expression and nuance. When he was finished she nodded, and this time he went straight into the intro, nodding again when she was to make her entrance. 

She made a couple of small errors, mostly out of nervousness, and there were a couple of times when Kerry wanted to stop, to rework what she had just done. But Cavanaugh shook his head vigorously each time he felt this urge coming from her, wanting her to correct the mistakes on her own. Slowly, Kerry began to understand what he wanted from her, and she leveled out, responding to the cues Cavanaugh gave her.
 

By the time they reached the passage where the demon reveals himself to Tamara, Kerry could feel something happening to her, and between them as well. His playing seemed to be infusing her with a unique combination of power and strength, the likes of which she had never felt before. In spite of what was happening in the libretto, though, the music still sounded like a hymn, and she marveled at his talents, the ability to make something so profane sound eminently sacred.
 

When they were done he launched into it again, having helped her smooth out the rough passages. This time their union was seamless, piano and voice supporting each other, exchanging, cajoling and teasing. It was like making love, Kerry realized that about halfway through, and she felt her power growing and she became a new version of herself.
 

Finally, when it was over and the sound had dissipated, Cavanaugh rose slowly and smiled. He took a seat on the couch, and motioned for Kerry to come to him. As she did, Kerry felt him transform, not necessarily in any physical way she could have identified. But there was no doubt in her mind or her heart that he changed, somehow, in his nature.