Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

1058 Breakdown

Breakdown

I woke up the next morning in a vaguely familiar bed, with the glow of indirect sunlight on an eggshell white ceiling above me and the sound of a piano in my ears. It was pleasant and my hand stretched across the cool expanse of mattress beside me. A few high notes were tentatively played, then played again, like someone working out a melody.

Someone was working out a melody. I sat up suddenly with the vaguely dreadful feeling I was late for rehearsal...?

I was in the sublet and that had to be Ziggy playing around with the piano in the living room. I sat there listening to the notes and it was like each one made a ripple across the surface of my mind, like droplets in a pool. Each ripple crossed the others making a pattern of increasing complexity, spreading outward. (Time expands forward and back at the same time, unspooling from the moment that is now in both directions, you know that, right?) I could sense the boundaries, the edges of a song, like a bat sensing the walls around me by the echoes coming back. The outline of how it could sound from start to finish...

I forgot to breathe. And when I remembered to, the whole pattern in my head turned to dust. I pressed my hands to the side of my head like I could hold it together but whatever had been there was already gone.

I sat there listening. Ziggy didn't really play piano, but you don't have to be a musical genius to figure out how it works. The keys are the notes and the farther you go to the right the higher they are. He had come up with a string of notes he liked, that made a melody, and one or two harmony notes that suggested a mood. A kind of yearning mood. Or maybe that was just that it felt so unfinished.

Yeah, yeah. I'm sure I was projecting my own feelings into it.

I decided I should at least wash my face and put on pants before I was ready to face any angst, though. So I got out of bed. I couldn't tell if the pair of underwear I found on the floor was mine or Ziggy's, so I left them. I found a clean stash on top of the dresser, still couldn't tell whose they were, and put them on anyway. I pulled on a pair of jeans and padded into the bathroom.

When I turned on the water, the piano stopped. I splashed my face and dried it on a fluffy maroon towel that had come with the place. When I looked up, Ziggy was in the doorway. He was wearing just a short satin robe and without his hair or makeup done he looked smaller than usual.

This is when you're supposed to say something, my brain told me. You know, something like hey, what were you working on? Or, want to get brunch? Or anything really other than just staring at him like you are.

He was staring right back.

"What now?" I asked. "I mean, what's next?"

"I was going to ask you that. Or maybe I should ask your sister?"

"She leaves for the Cape tomorrow, or maybe the day after? I take Claire back to Tennessee tomorrow." I rubbed my forehead. "Assuming today is Tuesday."

"It is." He shooed me back from the sink and picked up his toothbrush.

I did the same and we brushed our teeth and then started packing up our toiletries. I didn't have much there, but Ziggy did. I went to stash my toothbrush in my duffel bag and put on a T-Shirt. Scruffy the Cat. I hadn't heard anything about them in a while.

Somewhere out there, I thought, someone is pulling on a Moondog Three T-shirt and thinking the same damn thing.

Ziggy came in and laid his toiletry bags on the bed, then unzipped his suitcase and put it next to them, partially propped open by one wrought iron bedpost. He'd put on a little eyeliner and gelled the front of his hair. He started emptying a drawer. Without looking at me he asked, "Are we about to have a fight?"