Chapter 17 #2
I play the piano for a couple hours. A portly man with a pockmarked face gets drunk and sings “My Funny Valentine” four times.
A young couple put a twenty in the tip jar on the piano and sing “Every Time We Say Goodbye” horribly off-key, but mostly I just play old classics as background music for the bar.
Then, as if the day hadn’t been unexpected enough, Grant takes the microphone.
He asks if I know “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning.” I say of course I do, and I think he’s joking, but he stays standing there in front of the piano with the mic, and when I play, he starts to sing.
All of the chatty couples at booths and the patrons bellied up to the bar all stop and listen.
He has a lovely, euphonious voice, and I’m completely taken aback.
He’s a shy singer who doesn’t try to make eye contact with anyone or put on a show, and when the song is over, the place erupts with applause.
The off-key couple, a little tipsy, even give him a standing ovation and shove more money into the tip jar.
After everyone is gone for the night except a few kitchen staff taking inventory in the back, I linger. I think maybe Grant has taken the back staircase up to his room and I’ve missed him, but then he appears from the swinging kitchen door with a couple glasses of wine in hand.
“May I join you?” he asks. I slide over on the piano bench, allowing him to sit down.
“Thanks,” I say, taking the glass of wine. “Nobody told me you were putting out a record.” I hold my glass up to clink. “You were...really good.”
He clinks back but gives me a dismissive gesture.
“Do you always sing? Is that why piano-bar nights are so popular?” I ask, and I think I see him blush.
“No. That’s the only song I know,” he says, and I laugh.
“That seems like a random song to be the only one you know,” I say.
“When Caleb was little there was a movie we watched, I don’t remember the name, but that song was in it, and when I put him to bed that night, it was the first song that came to mind when he told me to sing to him like Mommy does.
She was working, so I sang him that. Then he always asked for it,” he says, and I don’t know what to say.
The fact that he’s talking about Caleb at all is a big deal, and I fear saying the wrong thing back after this vulnerability he’s shown.
“He was a musician, right?” I ask, hoping it’s okay to ask.
“He played in a band. I mean, they weren’t good.” We both laugh quietly. “He was studying journalism, of all things. Third year of college, and he loved it.”
“Oh, really? That’s what I did before. I was a reporter. In Tampa. ‘Bay News 9,’” I say. I know Paige probably mentioned Caleb’s major. I remember him changing it a few times, and it’s not the kind of thing you pay that much attention to at the time, so I guess I’d forgotten.
“I didn’t know that,” Grant says. “I could see it, though. You have a camera-friendly face.” He smiles and looks down at the piano keys.
“He wanted to be an investigative journalist. At least, for six months that was the plan. It might have changed again in due course.” He puts down his glass and pokes absently at a couple piano keys.
“I can teach you how to play it, if you want,” I say, and he laughs.
“You make it look pretty easy, I’ll give you that, but I can pretty close to guarantee you that I would be terrible.”
“Not possible. Look.” I put his finger on middle C, and I guide him, singing the simple notes. “C, D, E, E, hours of the morning. C, D, E, wide world is fast asleep.”
He opens his mouth in mock surprise, pleased with himself, and repeats the notes on his own, making a few mistakes, but still looking at the notes like they’re magic when they come out as the tune he recognizes.
“You’re a musical prodigy, I bet, with a voice like that,” I say.
“You’re very generous,” he says. We both give a short, nervous sort of laugh.
I look up at him, and I don’t know who kisses who.
We move in to each other at the same time.
It’s not the passionate, against-the-wall, clothes-ripping sort of thing I had let myself fantasize about a few times until my guilt shut it down.
It’s impossibly soft and tender. Like two people who love each other rather than unfaithful spouses in the throes of a heated affair.
He holds the back of my head, and my hands run down his back and then up through his hair, and then, as if we’re both struck by some simultaneous realization, it stops as mutually as it started.
I think. Except that I didn’t want it to stop.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“No, no. I’m sorry,” I say, fixing my unfamiliar hair, which feels twisted and wild.
“We can’t,” he says, with a sad longing I know very well. There is silence for a minute.
“I know,” I reluctantly agree. Then I stand, and he plucks my coat from the old-timey, tree-shaped coatrack near the door and helps me on with it.
When I open the door the wind whips fallen leaves inside the entrance, and I hold my skirt down and yelp.
Then he leans in and kisses my cheek and whispers, “I’ll probably regret it for the rest of my life, though.
” I look him in the eye and squeeze his hand.
For the umpteenth time today, I’m about to cry, but again I do not.
I drive in the quiet dark until I get to our street.
It’s very late, and the houses are all dark, even mine.
I feel a little like a woman with nothing to lose, so when I see Alfalfa, stalking through the Kinneys’ lawn, I decide that could be my reason for being there if I get caught.
It’s too cold for the cat to be out, so I stop to collect him.
I retrieve the camera from where I left it.
I think it will blend right in with the front-yard tree I clip it to.
Maybe it will see inside some of these front windows and show me who the real Lucas is.
Maybe not, of course. It could be just filming the side of the house for all I know, but it’s worth a shot.