SIXTY-EIGHT
THE CROWD LOST THEIR MIND. UNGLUED FROM THE DUNE, THEY sprang up clapping. The world narrowed to the remaining steps to the instrument. Griff paid attention to his own breath. Hushed the audience into static.
Tune the dial. Focus.
Griff stood beside the bench and the man in burlap.
There are certain things you know about a player before they touch the keys. Bench position, hand position, the way they turn toward the audience. Set of their shoulders. Griff had seen the Bagman play two pieces. He was aggressive. Impatient. Trying to prove something.
DA DUN!
How would they proceed? There were three major varieties of four-hands literature for Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, but Bagman was only playing the two Cs, which meant the next set of notes belonged to Griff. This ruled out the Ricordi, or the simplified Bendel composition—no, this would be the Hand Smasher—the Potestani—the version he and Leo had chosen, with full-fingered pyrotechnics and unfettered dynamism—
DA DUN!
Griff exhaled his wild, fluttering panic. Inhaled—
Potestani.
Inflexible and mathematical in the portioning. The piano split straight down middle C, which meant the players must sit very close.
Bagman left Griff less than half the bench. Too far forward.
He sat. The crowd howled. Wooden legs creaked in the sand.
Bagman looked at him with damp brown eyes. Not pools. Not pits. Eyes. Pounding blood flexed fists in Griff’s temples. Did he know him? Heart valves and flaps, open and shut:
Boom boom
Thunder. Wind carried the Bagman’s scent. Sweet and sour like spoiled milk. Burlap brushed Griff’s arm. Itchy. Wanted to scratch—
DA DUN!
And this time—DUN! DUN!
Griff answered with his own two chords.
The audience erupted, and the piece began. Griff and Bagman played together. Slipped into the opening bars sloppy, Griff dropping notes. One. Another. He tried to stomp a pedal and the Bagman’s bare foot mashed his ankle—
Griff jerked to the side.
Bagman played impatiently. Snapped at the keys.
From the top of the dune he’d looked like a perfect devil, but up close—he made mistakes. Staccato when the piece called for legato. Hammering notes like nails into wood. Never a miss, exactly, but it was not exquisite piano, merely perfect piano. More Morse code than music.
They danced their way through the first half of the piece. The gentle lassan. Building toward the next chapter—the turbulent, cavorting, finger-blasting friska, which could crush any pianist on a bad night—their hands leapt and sprawled and pressed toward the piece’s second half, rumbling like a waterfall in the near distance—
Griff!
Friends shouting his name as he and Bagman tumble over the cliffside in a barrel together—the friska! Bagman leaps middle C, steals a note. An entire arpeggio!
The crowd screams and Griff hammers an octave on Bagman’s side of the keys they are moving 40,000 miles per hour and the cheering grows and it’s messy and wild, Bagman’s fingers knock his knuckles and the tempo snaps at their heels, metronome cleaving too close, they must KEEP PLAYING feet mashing pedals and the piano bench tips—
Backward, hits the sand and they’re standing now, side by side, this wild burlap creature, and he makes the mistake of glancing over, seeing him with eyes, no mouth—
Griff drops a chord.
Bagman is going too fast now, taking the wheel, hijacking the piece, of course Griff is behind, of course he loses, of course he’s LATE, hands are tired and Bagman knows Griff cannot win—
Then it’s coming.
He’s come this far and it’s coming like a highway on the downslope of an axle-breaking mountain road, no brakes and still coming—the off-ramp to improvisation, the exit to As You Desire, At Your Pleasure—
CADENZA—
As You Wish.
And as Bagman grips the piece to steer it safely to The End, Griff pulls the whole shaking, wild thing off the page. He will not stop. Will not quit. Must speak and his hands this time say YES and Bagman cannot stop him because the song belongs to whoever has the courage to take it and Griff leaves Liszt’s elegant notes with all the grace of tires trading asphalt for gravel—
His own cadenza—never done, but allowed by the music, and Griff hears himself in need of a lifetime of work, but the Bagman cannot know the notes because the song now belongs to Griff and the Bagman is standing. Stepping back and my god, Griff is playing! Bare wrists light and soaring over all eighty-eight keys, playing, playing, playing and it’s over—
Cheers. They come to him, his new friends.
And Charity. Mostly, Charity. Charity says I’m so proud of you, and has anyone ever been proud? The way she holds him, the crowd, the eyes and hands and bodies around him, telling him again, like they’ve told him from the start:
You are loved. You belong.
For a weightless moment, he believes them.