Chapter 10 Jamie #2
I wander those wide halls of the Gensler apartment and eventually find myself in the library—yes, the Genslers have a library—and choose a book.
It’s older, probably a classic, which I’d know if I ever paid attention in high school English class.
I bring it into a small sitting room, where I settle on an emerald-green settee (that’s the word, right?) and try to read.
It’s hard, only because I have a constant sense of how very fucking aesthetic it is to be sitting in this Victorian-style room reading a book that feels like it was printed in 1900, the soft afternoon light dipping through the tall windows to cast pale gold patterns across the floor.
It’s distracting enough that I keep needing to flip back and reread every few pages.
But that might also be the way my brain has started turning to jelly the longer I’m at Parker.
I had to take some compulsory liberal arts classes early on, but ever since, it’s just been piano, composition, theory, and more piano.
My mind is atrophying. Like if they did an autopsy, all they’d find up there is a quivering pudding filled with drowning half notes.
What is left of my brain is fully attuned to music, which is why the sound of someone playing piano immediately jolts me out of the book.
Someone—Marigold, of course. Not just because we’re the only people living here, but because I know her playing too well by now. I’ve learned her style like I first learned to read: note by note, and then, as if out of nowhere, it became second nature.
If I’m honest with myself, I was just waiting for a chance to toss the book aside. So I don’t fight it.
I follow the sound of Marigold’s playing into the main room.
She sits at the grand piano, hands moving across the keys, playing one part of Schubert’s Grand Duo: the Sonata in C Major for piano four-hands.
Schubert himself had once described the piece as a feminine take on a Beethoven symphony.
I see that more than ever when Marigold plays it.
Of course, with her musicality, she makes even the most aggressive Rachmaninoff sound incredible—but her performance of subtler pieces has always been one of her strongest suits.
In my opinion, anyway. She brings a softness to the work that not many performers can.
It’s like she’s cradling the music in the palms of both hands, wrapping it in cool silk and treasuring it near her heart.
With her head bent forward, a curtain of amber hair obscuring her face, she doesn’t see me. It’s only when I approach, and a floorboard creaks underfoot, that she stops playing, jerking upright like I’ve caught her doing something criminal.
“Don’t stop on my account,” I say.
“Sorry. Was I bothering you?”
The worst part is that she actually seems sincere about the question, not like she’s trying to start shit.
“No. Of course not. It sounds fine.” From the look on her face, I can tell she doesn’t believe me. Complimenting each other, historically, is very much not our vibe. I rephrase: “Does seem kind of silly playing just one part, though.”
Ah, there it is—Marigold gives me a sardonic look. “Oh, sorry, I forgot I was supposed to bring my partner along with me for every practice.”
“What’s this for, anyway?”
“I’m doing a performance for a charity thing in a couple months. Nothing major—it’s a favor for my dad, really.”
I should drop it and leave her be, let her carry on playing half a duet, alone in this massive room with this expensive antique piano.
But instead I find myself saying: “Well, good thing I’m here.”
Her head jerks back up. I always love it when I can earn that expression on Marigold’s face: sheer shock, her brown eyes gone huge and round. “Wait. What? Really?”
“Sure.”
She wets her lips. And if my gaze dips down for a brief second to watch the course of her tongue sweeping over that lush pink mouth, it’s entirely against my will.
“Haha,” she says. “Funny one.”
“I’m serious. Scoot over.”
I watch the debate play out on her face as clearly as if she were narrating it for me. But at last, she pushes herself down toward the bass end of the piano, making room.
The standard piano bench isn’t built for two. Sometimes they’ll bring in a special duet bench for performances like this, but here, at Marigold’s house, it’s just the usual thirty inches.
Her hip fits against mine, her thigh a hot pressure against my leg. This close, I can smell her perfume: something woodsy, like fresh-turned earth.
“Ready?” My voice comes out sounding low. Husky, like I’ve been smoking or drinking whiskey.
Her hands are already on the keys. Mine join hers, and draped against the ivory, my hands look massive in comparison. I imagine I could completely consume one of her hands in mine, obscuring it totally from view.
“Three breaths,” she says.
I close my eyes as we breathe in silence, the soft sound of Marigold’s exhale somehow warm even if I can’t feel it.
And then we play.
Whatever issues either of us might have—Marigold’s mistakes or my heartlessness—they disappear when we play together.
It’s like we cover for each other, almost. Marigold gives the piece heart.
And me, I don’t even notice her mistakes.
Maybe I’m just too distracted by the closeness of her, my gaze drifting from the sheet music occasionally to fixate on her hands, her teeth chewing on her lower lip the way she does when she’s extra focused.
I forget to turn the pages, and so she has to, leaning across my body to snag the corner of the score.
The fall of her saffron hair grazes the end of my nose.
Our hands cross each other’s, my wrist brushing her knuckles, her fingers dancing past mine. It’s good I have the piece mostly memorized. Otherwise, I’m not sure I could finish at all.
We close out the first movement, and Marigold lifts her hands from the piano, letting out a slow breath. I know how she feels. It’s like I just ran a race or went ten rounds with Shrishti in the ring. My heart feels like it’s about to beat out of my chest.
I swallow several times against the dry knot in my throat. The silence stretches out too long and thick; I can feel the memory of our last notes reverberating even if my ears hear nothing. At last, I manage to get out a few rough words: “That sounded good.”
“Really?” Marigold says, twisting around to look at me properly. “You think so?”
Of course, now our faces are far too close. She isn’t wearing makeup, but there’s a black smudge under one eye from where she rinsed off her mascara last night.
“Sorry,” my mouth says despite all my better instincts, “just, you have a thing—”
And my hand rises, my thumb swiping that mark away. Her skin is warm and alive against mine, and so, so soft.
Marigold’s wide eyes stare back at mine, her lips parted and her entire being gone perfectly still. I don’t think she’s even breathing.
“Sorry,” I say again, finally ripping my gaze away from hers to stare back at the score. “It was bugging me.”
We both look at the sheet music for several long moments. The black notes swim before my eyes.
“Anyway. You good? Did that help?”
“Yeah. I’m…thanks. That was great.”
I don’t know why my body is reacting like this. Traitorous thing. I need to put some kind of space between us before I do something I might regret, so I push off the bench and take a few steps back for good measure, stuffing my hands into my pockets.
“I messed up,” Marigold says, half-whispering, like it’s some great confession. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I hadn’t noticed. She sounded as incredible as she always does, like the music rose from some place deep and mysterious inside her.
“It sounded fine.”
She shakes her head, however minutely. “It didn’t feel fine. It felt…I felt distracted.”
Her cheeks color a deep rose at that. I’m no genius, but I have a feeling I know what was so damn distracting about that piece.
I was distracted, too.
That night I can’t stop thinking about her. Marigold’s sweet-smelling hair, the mascara on her cheek, how soft her skin felt as I wiped it away.
I’m falling hard.
And I don’t know what to do about it.
It’s an odd existence, trying to get ready for an international piano competition in close quarters with…
well, the competition. Celia does a couple of lessons with me over video, but it’s not the same—she can’t be there in the room with me and hear how the music actually sounds, or evaluate every iota of my posture the way she normally would.
Instead, it’s just me and Marigold. She’s the one who is always there to tell me when I’m missing the “point” of a piece, or if my andante is ever-so-slightly too allegro.
At first, I wondered—paranoid, I know—if maybe she was giving bad advice on purpose, trying to mess me up. But no, she was sincerely trying to help me. Believe it or not.
I’m lying on my bed reading some shitty pulp thriller and working my way through a family-sized box of Cheez-Its—or trying to, anyway.
Marigold is practicing in the other room, and my focus keeps sliding away from the words and toward her music instead.
I feel hyperaware of her presence all the time now, as if there’s a cord tying us together, one that tugs at my chest every time she moves.
That’s the music, I tell myself. Marigold’s just that good. It has nothing to do with her as a human.
Music isn’t just an auditory art. Yes, of course you could just listen to a recording and enjoy a piece—that’s how I consume 99.
9 percent of music, too. But there’s a reason people will pay out the ass for concert tickets.
Something about being there in person just hits different.
It’s like you feed off the energy of the performer, like they’re communing with you on some spiritual level that you can only access here, in this moment, in the flesh.
That gets magnified tenfold when it’s Marigold playing.