They're Playing Our Song

Clair de Lune

Author's Note: Hello everyone! This is the first draft of a book I recently wrote. I have no idea when it's coming out, but I thought it would be fun to post here in the meantime, one chapter a week until I finish. Will take the whole thing down when the editing process starts. 

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Nora dreamt of Mozart.

And it wasn't those incredibly random, 'oh now nice of you to show up and give me a warm hug,' kind of dream, no. In this dream, Mozart, buckled shoes, powdered wig and all, was dancing on top of her upright piano, kicking away the picture frames and the lace doily. And Mozart was laughing at her.

But there was no time to tell him to go away or flick him off, because Nora was too busy trying to catch up to the second piano in front of her, a second Nora playing the perfect allegro con spirito for Mozart's sonata. The other Nora was perfect, and happy and proud and confident, playing with such flair and grandness, while she was barely keeping up. She was lost in the circles the melody wove, confused in the winding of the music.

The dream ended when Mozart put his hand over hers and said, "just stop, liebling."

Just like that.

And now she was awake at two in the morning, glaring at the ocean and waiting for it to calm her down. The sonata weighed heavily on her heart, it always had. Sonata in D Major for Two Pianos, K. 488. Two pianos played in almost perfect sync with each other, playing chase and merry go round, melodies leaping and dancing around and over each other but still coming together in a singular piece of music.

Twelve years ago she'd fumbled that song in front of the biggest audience she would ever play. One would think that twelve years would be enough to get over the most humiliating moment of her life, but there she was.

Nora dug her feet into the sand, listening to the waves try to wash away the sonata with a symphony of its own. Eventually the tides rose up to her ankles, and her feet were totally submerged in the cool sand, the balmy breeze of the ocean soothed her from her nightmare.

Thanks, ocean, she thought, smiling against the wind. That part of her life was over, nobody expected her to play anymore. Now Nora was a lot more focused on other people, in particular the students of the youth orchestra she was supposed to be chaperoning on this trip to La Union.

The kids were in fine form earlier that evening, playing covers of local pop songs for a beachside music festival. They were in even finer form when Nora announced that ten among them had been invited to join the New York Symphony's summer program that June. It had been almost impossible to get them settled in to bed, but Nora was a professional, and now they were all (she was assuming) snug under their covers while she was looking out at the ocean.

At least the moon was here to keep her company. La Union was not the kind of place you went casually swimming in, but the waves and the water were irresistible, and with the moon watching from the other side, it felt a lot less lonely here.

Wrestling her feet free from the sand (she was ankle-deep in it by the time she finished her muni-muni), Nora Cantos washed her feet in the ocean and tucked her toes back in her tsinelas, making her way back to the Carlton Beach Hotel. Most of the hotel's facilities were closed, and there were only a few lamp lights on to guide her way back to her room. On her way back to her room to attempt to go back to sleep, Nora found herself stopping by the lounge, where a baby grand Yamaha gleamed in the lamplight.

I shouldn't, she thought, staring at it. Surely it would be locked. Surely attempting to play the piano after having a nightmare about playing the piano was a bad idea.

But here she was, walking in to the lounge anyway. Why again?

The Carlton Beach Hotel's lounge was a bit of an outlier in the strip of San Juan beach. Where most beachside places were single floor, quiet, almost-shack like in their simplicity, the Carlton went full on Balinese beach vibes with their hotel, and the lounge was a study in their chosen aesthetic—large, open picture windows that provided a view of the ocean, soft teakwood furnishings big enough to sleep in, elaborate decorations, and even the faint scent of plumerias in the air. In the darkness of two in the morning, with nothing but a single floor lamp to illuminate the room, it seemed foreboding, almost magical.

Not that Nora believed in that.

The Yamaha gleamed and stayed still as she approached, which made sense because it was a piano, and not a Sorting Hat. Nora slowly eased herself in front of it and tested the sound with quick little tap on the middle C. Eh. Not great, but right now, she didn't need greatness. She just needed music.

Someone had left sheet music on the piano. Nora thought it was a prop until she flipped through the pages, and realized it was honest to fondness sheet music for Debussy's Clair de Lune, the perfect piece for a night like this.

Flexing her fingers, Nora placed her hands on the piano, in the exact same starting position she had known since she was ten. Fingers lightly on the keys, right thumb hovering over the middle C, wrists light, elbows front, feet on the floor. Yes, her boobs were squashed together a bit, but she was used to that.

Then she began to play. Nora loved Clair de Lune after reading Twilight, but now she could separate the piece from the story and fall for the music in her own way. The piece always reminded her of a scene just like the one she just came from—the moon hovering over the water, watching the person watching her.

She was really getting into it too, building up the crescendo then dipping down to a pianissimo, back and forth. She was just about to get to the piece's most difficult part, gearing up for it when her hand slipped, her finger caught in the space between two keys, pinching the tip.

"Ow!" Nora gasped, snapping her hand back like the piano had taken a nip of her. Had that ever happened to her before? Did that ever happen to anyone? It's because you have fat fingers, the voice in her head taunted. Nora chose to ignore that thought and looked at her finger, confused.

"You're playing too fast," a voice from deeper in the room suddenly said, and Nora nearly fell off the bench in shock.

"Who's there?" She asked cautiously, looking around the lounge. It looked empty, but the standing lamp by the piano threw the couches in almost complete darkness. Then the couch pillows moved. A figure rose from the pillow mountain.

In the darkness, it looked half-man, half-beast, with long dark hair hair sticking up every direction like someone tried to tease it with tiny rakes. The moon caught just enough on the figure's face to show it was a man. A man with a sharp jawline, cheekbones that could cut glass and a body that might not be able to pull a tree stump apart, but could do very well in the attempt.

"You're playing too fast, so your fingers are trying to compensate, so you make mistakes," he repeated.

Nora liked his voice. It was rough and a little sleep-hewn, the kind of voice that could read out grocery lists and lull her to sleep.

"Take your time," he said, and it was gentle. Like a caress. She shuddered involuntarily.

"I don't usually take musical advice from monsters rising from the couch," Nora said, going on the defensive, which her mother always said was her least attractive quality. "Are you a monster?"

"If that's what you want me to be," he shrugged, shuffling out of his prone position to stand, dropping even more couch pillows and as he ran his hands through his hair. He stepped in to the moonlight.