They're Playing Our Song

L'Isle Joyeuse

It was still raining the next morning, making the day seem lazy and easy and slow. Leo sat in the stool in front of the kitchen island, reading a book about romantic era musicians while she had suman and latik with a cup of coffee. He'd found it in the guest house while Nora was in the shower (she'd told him in no uncertain terms that she still wasn't ready to have shower sex with him...yet), and had been reading since then.

"Wow, Johannes Brahms was quite the handsome boy," He held up a full color page where a sepia-tinted photo of a young Johannes Brahms was printed. Nora looked up from her food and narrowed her eyes at the picture.

"Oh god, you have the same hair," she observed, laughing as Leo made a valiant effort of copy his expression. "Read his letters to Clara, I've always liked them."

"Clara, dear Clara... I feel ever more happy and peaceful in my love for you. Every time I miss you more but I long for you almost with joy. That is how it is. And I knew the feeling already but never quite so warm as it is now," he read, tracing the words with his finger. Leo sighed and suddenly felt very woefully inadequate next to a famous composer. "I like the way he uses her name twice, just so Clara knows how much she means to him."

"Or maybe, it's just that he forgot to scratch out her name and sent the letter before he could self edit," Nora teased, leaning forward on the counter as she ate her suman.

"Nora," he said slowly. "Dearest Nora. I really don't think that's the case."

She stopped mid bite of her food and blinked at him, her cheeks flushed pink. "Read me something else?"

"I can do nothing but think of you..." he started, reading from the page. "What have you done to me? Can't you remove the spell you have cast over me?"

"Brahms wrote that?" She asked finally, clearing her throat.

"Clara did," he grinned, very much enjoying his reading.

"Let me see," Nora argued, taking the book from him. She had a determined look on her face, like she was planning to take some sort of revenge on him. "She did write it. Wow."

"You thought I was lying?" He asked, resting his elbow on Celie's kitchen island, watching Nora continue to read like she'd been the one to pick up the book in the first place. Leo took a sip of his coffee. He learned today that she liked her coffee as black as possible, while he preferred heaps of sugar and milk in his. He liked learning these little things about them, liked to think about how their lives fit into each other's.

"Read me something, please," he said.

It took her a moment, but she found something.

"There is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation," she read like she was a student being asked by a teacher to recite. "If only through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound."

Leo swallowed a lump that had formed in his throat. Leave it to a long dead single mother to seven and a concert pianist to boot, to chastise him for not writing.

"Maybe we should close the book for now," he said, taking the book from Nora again and putting it aside. "Do we really have to leave the lake house today?"

"Yes," she smiled, sipping her coffee. "The lake is as calm as ever."

"I don't want to."

"Neither does Celie," Nora sighed wistfully. Clearly, her mind was still occupied with her current dilemma—how to convince Celie to come to Manila to play the concerto. She'd carried the sheet music with her from the guest house to the kitchen, had flipped through it several times that he wouldn't be surprised if she already knew it by heart. Leo decided that maybe she needed a distraction. He was good at distraction.