Page 13 of Steam

That was unprecedented. The man had only ever played at eight o’clock sharp—and when he started that morning, it was a little past ten. Barrett had almost spilled his coffee on the deposition he’d been poring over when the man upstairs started up on one of Bach’s inventions.

He moved on quickly to Mendelssohn, then Schumann, and what might’ve been Bartók. The pianist was all over the map that morning and Barrett loved it. What luck, he thought, that he was home today to hear him play.

* * *

Josh was bangingthrough his fourth Beethoven piece of the morning when he saw movement from the corner of his eye.

When he looked to his left, he realized someone had slipped a piece of paper under his door.

Goddamn it, here it comes…

His old downstairs neighbor had complained constantly about Josh’s piano playing. The guy had either died, gone deaf, or moved out because over the past few weeks, he’d had no complaints and no one thumping on their ceilings with a broomhandle during sonatas.

Josh had kept his fingers crossed that it meant someone new had moved in who either wasn’t generally home at eight to hear his playing or was there but tolerated it. But playing on a Saturday morning must have been pushing it for the new tenant. As Josh finished up the piece, he became more and more distracted thinking about the probable contents of the note.

“Please restrict your playing or I will be forced to report you.”

Or maybe, “Condo policies dictate noise restrictions on weekends. Please familiarize yourself with Page 17, Sec. A for…”

Or perhaps a simple and to the point, “STOP PLAYING!!!!!!!!!!!!”

He fumbled through a few more bars and realized that there was no way he was going to be able to finish up the piece well when he was so distracted. He might as well get up and read the damn note. Time to face the facts.

He slid the bench out, cracked his neck, and went to retrieve the note.

It was written on fine linen paper, folded to protect the message, and Josh had the most uncanny and abrupt feeling that it was a love note when he opened it up to reveal a beautiful, looping script—as if a professional calligrapher had picked up a ballpoint pen.

“A humble request to the pianist:

Liebesträume No. 3 in A flat.”

Josh laughed, the noise bubbling out of him uncontrollable and high—and even as it happened, he realized that he hadn’t laughed in days—maybe not since he’d started working on that godforsaken Wagner portrait.

He was relieved and amused and flattered all at the same time. A least one of his neighbors didn’t mind his practicing.

And he knew the Liebesträume in question by heart, one of Franz Liszt’s most beautiful and well-known works. It would be simple to fulfill the request, and wonderful because he knew he’d be making the neighbor happy. It would just take—

Fuck. Fuck! Liszt!

All week he’d been trying to capture Wagner, but why hadn’t he even thought about Liszt? Good old Franz had the serious type of face that matched his music perfectly. Josh could see him in his mind’s eye, the way that he’d had chin-length hair as a young man that had blanched a perfect white in his old age, growing coarse and standing out from his face. He could see Liszt’s soulful eyes, could picture him stooped over the piano or standing boastfully with a thumb hooked into his waistcoat.

Franz motherfucking Liszt!

How simple it was. And all it had taken was the note. He itched to begin sketching, eager to abandon Wagner and start to work on Liszt—but certainly he owed his neighbor a concert after the anonymous request had blasted through his art block like an armored tank.

He sat back down at the piano, took a deep breath, counted a few measures in his head, and began the song.

He could see the portrait he was going to paint of Liszt in his head, colored by the notes he was playing. A splash of cerulean blue there, a smudge of rose under his eyes. The elegant sweep of his nose rendered with a sienna shadow. The painting he was putting together in his head was everything that he hadn’t been able to do for Wagner.

Good riddance.It was Liszt’s time to shine.

In the five minutes that it took to complete the piece, he’d already plotted out every color field, the exact lines he’d use, the paints he would mix to get the precise shades in his mind’s eye. It was as effortless as playing the song had been.

When he finished, Josh sat in silence for a few seconds, his hands resting on the keys. Had his neighbor heard the request being played?

But then, faintly, Josh could hear something. Loud clapping. He moved quietly, trying to figure out if he was hearing it from the hallway, upstairs, or from one side of his condo.

No. It was coming from below. He stooped in one corner of the room next to a vent, and maybe the downstairs neighbor heard him because through the vent he heard a faint “Bravo!”

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