Because Eve had stayed later than she intended at the nursing home – or hospital, or asylum, or whatever it was called – it was almost nine by the time she tramped into her apartment building. A few winos were already asleep against the front wall of the building, only spitting distance away. They didn't worry her, though. Indeed, they actually provided comfort: if they were sleeping peacefully it usually meant that things were quiet enough and safe enough that she would probably get home without getting mugged or raped. Which made it a good day, all things considered. Or at least what passed for a good day in her life.
She opened the front door, then turned sharp right and entered the coffin-like stairwell, the hollow echoes of her black boots on the treads immediately darkening her mood to a hue beyond black. She was only a few hundred feet away from her home, from her mother. She felt like a convict being transferred between prisons, leaving one place she knew as a particular circle of Hell for another one that might not be as bad... but then again could just as likely be worse. The only thing that kept her from wanting to just start screaming was a memory of eyes so blue they put the sky to shame; of a smile that crooked to one side as though being pulled by invisible sprites. Rocky was a stupid name, but stupid or not that guy had been gorgeous, and there had been something captivating about him. There was good-looking, and there was attractive. They were two different things, and very few people enjoyed both qualities. Rocky was one of them.
A moment later, thoughts of her mother, her home – even of the amazing-looking boy who had saved her from her asthma attack – all fled from her mind as she heard the sound again. The music, the velveteen sound of bow on strings, the notes that curled slowly around and over and under and through her.
Without thinking about it, Eve began running. Her boots, so heavy only a moment ago, now seemed light as they flitted up the stairs, around the single turn, then onto the second-story landing. She pushed the fire door open.
The music was louder in the hall. She followed it, thinking for a moment of old cartoons she had watched as a kid, stories of cats and mice that had been tempted out of hiding by food so delicious it cast a visible odor that caught them by the nose and led them to their doom. A part of her wondered if that was what was happening now; if she was following something best left alone. Then she was around the corner.
And she saw where the music was coming from.
It was apartment 214 again. The "2" was still missing, leaving only the "14" behind. Something about that pulled at her, seemed familiar. But she couldn't spare much thought for it, because most of her attention was focused on the person sitting in front of the apartment.
He was sitting on a folding metal chair, a cheap brown and black thing that looked like it might have been stolen from a local school or church. The chair was canted back on two legs, leaning against the wall of apartment 214, the guy who sat on it balancing as he played.
The violin itself was brown, but so dark it was almost black, and it gave Eve the impression of great age and value. She had heard of violins made by a man named Antonius Stradivarius that sold for millions of dollars, but standing here in the hall if she'd had a gun put to her head she would have guessed the one in the stranger's hands was older and worth more than any Strad might be.
As for the musician himself, he was a sight even stranger than that of a violin in the hall of an apartment building in South Central.
He was dressed all in black, with a long black coat that covered him from chin to shins, a billowing leather thing that could almost be called a cloak. He wore boots tough enough to put hers to shame: scuffed and soft-looking in a way that could not be faked, but only earned. They had clearly been used for more than walks to school and back.
The stranger looked like he was about Eve's age. He had long black hair, like she did. It hung in curling waves to his shoulders, and his eyes were dark as well, glittering obsidian pits that shone with intelligence and more than a little danger.
One side of his face was a mask of scars. They criss-crossed his right cheek and chin and brow without rhyme or reason, curling over and through each other and giving him an even more dangerous demeanor than that already provided by his dark garb and darker gaze.
Eve couldn't help but gasp when she saw him. It wasn't the scars. Well, maybe a little. They were massive, a huge feature that she couldn't help but be surprised by. But it was more than that. He was handsome in a dark, brooding way. Like a panther that had been marked and broken by hunters. Wary and wounded... and all the more dangerous for that fact.
The bow left the violin strings with a discordant clang when Eve gasped, and he rocked forward.
"No, please, don't stop," she said. The words came out without conscious thought. But if she had thought about them, if she had had a year to think and ponder and come up with exactly what she wanted to say, she figured she might still have said just that. The music was beautiful. So beautiful, so perfect, so out of place in this dingy hellhole, and she didn't want it to stop. Not now, not ever. "Please," she said again.
The teenager looked at her with a strange expression. She couldn't place it for a moment, and when she did it caused her to take a step back. It was raw hatred. The guy was looking at her like she was here to kill him. Only that wasn't it. He was looking at her like she was here to kill his family, to desecrate their corpses and then hang them above City Hall for the world to laugh at.
"I'm not here for you," he said. His voice was deep and smoky and it sent strange shivers of pleasure through Eve's stomach.
The stranger stood. He moved slowly, and Eve heard something creak as he did so. She looked down and saw his cloak part. The guy was clad from the waist down in a complicated getup of braces, pins, and rods that appeared to be supporting his legs. Eve had never seen anything like it, but she guessed from the way he was moving that he probably couldn't stand without it.
He turned toward the door to 214.
"Wait!" she half-shouted.
No, be honest. That was all shout. What's wrong with you, girl? Get a grip.
The stranger didn't stop. He kept moving toward the door, leaving the folding chair behind as though it belonged in the hall – or as though it was less important that he clean up after himself than that he get away from her.
Eve searched for something to say, something to get the guy to stop moving, to stay. She didn't know why it was so important that he do so, only that it was. She had to stop him, had to hear the music again. It was... it was....
"It was beautiful," she finally said. The words surprised her. They were honest. She wasn't used to that. She was used to couching her feelings in sarcasm, in wit, in skeptical derision. Those were the things that protected her. To speak the truth about anything – let alone to admit to the presence of beauty – was far too dangerous.
Still, it might have worked. The newcomer stopped. He half-turned, and Eve saw an expression on his face that she well knew. He was fighting with himself, trying to decide between what he perceived as two bad choices. Finally, he said, "An old tune."
Eve said nothing for an awkward moment. Then, another surprise, she said, "I'm Eve. I live on five." She stepped in front of the scarred stranger, her hand stuck out. She thought he wouldn't take it for a moment. He just stared at it for a long while, not moving a muscle. He was holding the dark violin with his left hand, and finally he tucked it under his right arm and took her hand with his now-free left hand. Eve cocked her head in surprise.
The stranger's lips curled in a smile. Half-smile: the scarred portion of his lips did not move. Still handsome, though. She didn't know why, exactly. Maybe the damaged part of her understood the damaged part of him on a subconscious level. Regardless, she felt that pleasure wave pulse through her again as he shook her hand with deliberate slowness.
"Forgive my rudeness in shaking with my left hand," he said. "I am afraid that I have but my left hand to shake."
He let go of her hand then and grabbed the violin bow which was still in his right hand. At least, Eve thought it was in his right hand, but he twisted the bow and it clicked and came away and she realized that he wasn't holding it at all. Rather, it was attached by some kind of complicated socket fitting to an arm that ended midway between elbow and wrist.
Eve realized she was staring at the stump of the stranger's right arm, and forced her gaze back to his face. Of course she then worried he might be thinking she was staring at his scars and started moving her gaze back to his arm, then back to his face, then got confused and ended up staring at her own boots.
Idiot. Moron. World-class bonehead.
Eve didn't know if he could hear her thoughts or not, but the stranger tucked the bow and its attachment under his right arm with the violin and began limping toward 214 once more.
"Wait!" Eve yelled. The stranger turned. "What's your name?" she said.
The guy smiled, a fuller smile this time. There was no malice in it, only a melancholy that managed somehow to both lift and break Eve's heart at once. Then he spoke in tones that were every bit as mellifluous and velvet as those that had issued from his violin. "Comme la vie est lente,/ Et comme l'espérance est violente/ Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure/ Les jours s'en vont je demeure./ Passent les jours et passent les/ semaines Ni temps passé/ Ni les amours reviennent...."
The words fell around her like the softest, thickest blanket on a cold day. She felt comforted and safe, warmer than she had ever been. It was poetry, she felt certain. And more than poetry. It was a spell, had to be magic of some kind. Because no mere words could make her feel this way.
She came to herself again, and realized that the stranger was still there. Still watching her with those dark eyes that seemed so sad and so alive at the same time. As though he had seen eternity and wept for the evil of humanity, but still somehow found the strength to hope.
"That... that was beautiful," she said. The words were whispered. A prayer in the hall of a graffiti-marked apartment corridor in a crime-ridden part of the city. "What does it mean?"
"It is a reminder, Eve," he said. "A reminder of care." He looked as if he meant to say something more, something that might be incredibly important. Then the moment passed and he withdrew a bit. He tipped an imaginary cap in a way that was old-fashioned but somehow endearing. "Sleep well tonight," he said. "Sleep safely. Leave a candle alight."
And then he wasgone. Gone, and Eve was alone in a hall that still seemed to ring withmusic unbowed and with words unsaid.