The Piano Player

His hands were pale and bony, and shook the keys with the sort of feverish nervous energy only the young possess. Thin knotted veins weaved between tendons straining from his knuckles. His fingernails were blunt and square-ish, stubborn.

He trembled, but was sure of himself.

The notes tickled onto the air, exploded like dropped crystalware, and tapped across our eardrums as we watched him. His shoulders hunched, his back braced into the rhythm and thin elbows jerked as his hands slid to and fro across the keyboard. He had the air of a man who was enacting his most guarded dream, the kind so deeply loved it bordered on nightmare - gripping, haunting, painful in its luminosity. Was he half afraid that reality could not compare, that the dream, unfolding now from the straining hands instead of the composed mind, would shatter, disintegrate and die?

His excitement transferred on us, and although we heard the music, he was the most important piece in the scene. As he pounded the penultimate notes, and caressed the final ones, we thought we leaned forward, though if we were to check, this would have proved not to be so. The music wavered and passed out of the air and we realized it was over.

He stood up and the room breathed again.

May 1, 2005.