THREE
BACK HOME THAT NIGHT, GRIFF WAS IN THE BATHROOM. LEO WAS summoning him to practice.
Da dun!
C-sharps. The call from the Knabe piano. Another gauntlet. Another contest. Griff had just finished showering. He could hear the key-strikes through the drywall. Leo must’ve heard the water turn off. He went to the mirror, thinking of Charity. How she’d walked off with Leo.
Griff wiped the condensation from the mirror and relaxed his features.
Let his brow drop. Lips fall naturally.
When he looked at himself this way—straight-on—he saw Leo.
It was a habit, making himself ugly. Griff sucked in his chin. Puckered his lips. Showed imperfect bottom teeth and a whale of a tongue, crinkled his nose until the reflection fit.
Da dun!
The sharps struck the door like thrown knives.
It was from one of the pieces they were meant to learn for the winter concert. Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Strikingly beautiful, playful, and equally challenging to play with four hands as with two. An extremely popular piece. So much so that at a four-hand-piano music camp, players summoned one another to the bench by playing the opening two C-sharps. Leo had grabbed right on to that.
Da dun!
There was no avoiding it.
The French doors to the piano room were open. Their instrument was a thing of beauty. An 1887 Knabe, chestnut wood, meticulously cared for, with lush golden pedals and a soundboard that made every note ring full and soulful.
Leo rose from the bench. Stepped back.
“Glad you could make it,” he said. “Ready?” They always played piano four hands. Their thing. Twenty fingers and eighty-eight keys. Their next show was incredibly ambitious. Stravinsky and Liszt. The Liszt should have been committed to minds and hands by August. Delayed due to a three-day survival camp in the Coastal Range, two bunker meetings per week, the Jams & Jellies Preservation Party, all Lost Coast Prepper commitments Leo attended with increasing frequency.
Together, they approached the bench. “I thought you didn’t have time for music,” Griff said. “Now you want to start a band?”
“I’ll start a band with Charity,” Leo said.
“You like Charity?” Griff asked.
“Who doesn’t?” Leo asked. “Have you heard her sing?”
Why would this be any different than Milena in eighth grade? Why any different than the mysterious Australian girl, Rhiannon, on the beach last summer?
Leo had the bench too close. Griff jerked it backward.
Bench position was incredibly important. Distance from arms to elbows to wrists to fingers to keys was a game of inches, and it started with the bench. Leo looked down, scooted the bench forward. Leaned on it, like he was trying to burrow a hole in the carpet.
A famous family story: Once, on a family kayaking trip to Alaska, the burly guide had asked their mother and father if they wanted individual kayaks or a two-person model. When they picked the two-person, he shouted into the storage shed—One divorce boat!
Two people, one instrument—the same:
Divorce Piano.
Leo sat, so the bench couldn’t be moved. “Let’s play.”
The first piece in the winter show would be a piano adaptation of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements. With a full orchestra, the overture came barreling at you with blood-rushing theatrics, a giant swell of fearsome sound that felt more like climax than introduction—to Griff, it sounded thin on a solo piano, but Leo had chosen the work for its wild, virtuosic key-slides, flying fingers, and elbow-jerking theatrics.
All the best pyrotechnics on the bass clef.
Griff was left dangling on the treble, pecking out notes here and there, filling in. He got to shine in the second movement—andante. Slower. Deeper. The part in the show when Grandpa fell asleep and people went home.
When Griff brought up the Sleepy Grandpa Issue, Leo reassured him:
“The scherzo, bro! We’ve got to make them earn it!”
The final act. The Italians call it scherzo—(pronounced scared-so): the joke, the dance. Here, the twins would trade sides on the bench, leapfrogging fluttering hands to pound octaves on opposite sides of the imaginary-mirror line that split them, giving the audience thrilling, if slightly contrived, twin-bending thrills!
Griff loved playing this way with his brother. Leo was fun, but lately, he’d worked only on the overture. A gnawing suspicion that Leo would never play the scherzo with him. Maybe he only intended to play the first movement, win Charity’s heart, and leave Griff dribbling out with his tinkle-tinkle andante. Even now, as Griff took his turn with a slow, measured section, Leo took one hand off his side of the piano and checked his phone.
“Seriously?” Griff said.
“Sorry!”
“Skip it,” Griff said. “Let’s do the scherzo. Or Liszt.”
“Let’s go rock star,” Leo said, confirming Griff’s suspicion about the scherzo.
Leo meant Franz Liszt—composer, pianist, the first rock star in the world. The man who pioneered playing in profile to the audience. Stunning hair. Jawline suitable for a minted coin. Apparently, women would pelt Liszt with medieval undergarments. Griff wondered if he’d been knocked over by ancient underwear—industrial belts, buckles, steel hoops.
“Just one bra,” Leo had said, choosing the piece. “That’s all I ask for.”
Again, Leo played the opening C-sharps:
Da dun!
This was the hardest possible engraving of the piece. Between bunker meetings and survival camps, Griff had spent comparatively more time on the keys. Secret practices. His goal, to leave Leo gobsmacked at the cadenza. They played slowly. Then faster. Their first time in over a week.
The piano bench shook beneath their weight.
Four-hands playing was like call-and-response:
Are you there, brother?
Right here, Leo.
Can you keep up, brother?
Damn right.
“Been playing a lot?” Leo asked, breathing hard.
“Maybe,” Griff said. He turned the page.
The stand, thick with duets—page turning was his job. Griff, who had the song committed to memory. And when he turned the page, Leo often whispered—good. That little breath. Infuriating.
“Good,” Leo said. “Slower.”
Not tonight. Leo pounded harder, trying to compensate for Griff’s superior finger-rolls. For once, Griff was playing better. They hadn’t even reached the cadenza—the optional improvisation at liberty, as you desire—which Griff had drilled for hours. Hands flying, pounding, Griff hit his hardest arpeggio, fingers blasting to the key block and back—Leo grabbed his wrist.
“Where’s your bracelet?” he asked.
“Hey!” Griff said, shaking free. “What was that? Let go!”
Griff leapt up from the bench.
“I can’t believe you grabbed me.”
“Sorry, I just noticed,” Leo said. “You should never take that off. That’s life or death.”
“Life or death at the piano?” Griff said.
“You never know when it’s coming.”
The bracelet was a gift from their father. Twin paracords. One white, one black. Woven in a clever way that mimicked piano keys.
“Plus, we should match,” Leo said.
Griff stared at Leo. Was this asshole serious?
Griff had learned he could not win a direct argument with Leo. He must be like water. Absorb impact. Flow away from conflict. Drip down through floorboard cracks in the sacred crawl space even Leo couldn’t see. There, Griff buried his minor, essential pieces of resistance.
He told himself: I will never wear that bracelet, brother.
Griff thought it deep into the dirt.
Leo looked at him, prying with his eyes.
“Dinner!” their mother called. “Special Corn.”
“Where have you been practicing?” Leo asked, standing.
“Your mom’s house,” Griff said, slapping him on the back of the head.
Leo punched him and then they crashed into the wall, headlocked—but the fight had somewhere to go. An old, ingrained tradition to race like human bumper cars to the table when there was Special Corn involved, pinging off the hallway walls as they raced to get there first.
So that’s what they did.