The Mechanical Muse

Chapter 5 (Part 2)

The fountain outside Thornberg Hall was the focal point of many campus traditions: the annual chicken toss (in recent years it had been replaced with a Costco rotisserie chicken), the chancellor's yearly Founding Day remarks, and most importantly: it was the place of new beginnings and endings, for those fortunate enough to not see Huntsman Hall as such. When one became a Lion, one was supposed to touch the water and swear an oath of fealty to the school, and when one left, one was supposed to do the same or else forever have unfinished business. On some nights, you could see fireflies cavorting in the spray.

Crickets chirped in the distance, but there were no fireflies tonight. Perhaps it was too early: 5:30 was a bit early for dinner, and I sat with my back to the fountain facing the path where Carmen would be walking from—if she were to show at all. My personal record with love had been, well, checkered. I couldn't speak much from experience. But what I did know, from what I had read and what I had been told, is that love—especially love from people like Carmen—was like cigarette smoke. Sweet as it rose into the sky, but too much became toxic. You could reach out and try and grab a fistful, but you'd capture nothing. Under ordinary circumstances it was too soon to talk of love, but I had learned the previous week that Project Narcissus had a talent for stoking flames, making them burn brightly but quickly.

I was checking my phone when at once I smelled something sweet, and there was Carmen standing over me. My eyes went first to the jade pendant nestled in the V of her top, and then to her. She seemed taller than she actually was, but of course: I was sitting down.

"Hey, how's it going? Ooh, nice shirt—so fashionable," she greeted me, sitting down next to me. I looked at my shirt, having forgotten what I was wearing. For Prof. Rubinowitz I saw an obligation to dress up more than I usually did, which meant wearing something with buttons and ditching the shorts that were suitable for SCU's perpetually temperate weather. Carmen showed more skin than I did, but not as much as Valdez did when he was feeling buff.

"Thanks, I like yours too. Shall we get going?"

"Lead the way, sir," she said with pomp. I slowed down my stride to accommodate her, and we walked side-by-side, as if we had known each other for days.

"So who's this old guy we're meeting? One of your professors?"

"No, not mine. Prof. Mikhail Rubinowitz," I said in the best Russian accent I could, "is a retired piano professor from here. He's a legend: he's taught for more years than I've been alive, and is the premier scholar of the Romantic piano repertoire."

"Ooh, romantic... like George Michael?" She laughed at her own joke.

"Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Brahms, I could go on and on."

"And I would listen all the way."

"Any of those names ring a bell?"

"Not at all. Did any of them compose Fur Elise? Because I took a year of piano lessons, and that's the one piece I remember learning. Can't play it anymore though. You could teach me though."

Carmen was so entirely sincere in her insincerity that I wanted to take her seriously, to take her flirting as more than words that could have been said to any other guy. I looked at her again and she looked back at me.

"No, that was Beethoven. One of the greatest composers of our time. He wrote Fur Elise, but he also wrote nine symphonies, a few concertos, many more sonatas. His sonatas are very interesting actually, like his Moonlight Sonata—do you know what a sonata is? It's a—"

"Next you're going to tell me that a piano is the one with the black and white keys. But OK, is this professor dude expecting me to be, like, some sort of music nerd? Because unless he wants to talk Broadway and sing showtunes, I'm not that gal."