Living Space

It was a small ground floor flat with his name still on a piece of index card taped to the mailbox.
The door stood silent sentinel over a small concrete slab that could barely be called a porch. Along the edge, were flowers that had recently passed on from lack of attention.

The door granted entrance with little protest.

The air inside was dark and stale, smelling of stale coffee and abandoned ashtrays.

Just inside the door lay a carpet of the days mail, stranded where it had fallen when forced unceremoniously through the slot. Bills, junk mail, a royalty check from the occupant's publisher lay waiting for attention.

What little illumination there was came from a bare bulb with insufficient wattage to do the job suspended just off center in the main room. The walls were plaster painted in that beige that is reminiscent of hospitals or maybe a public school, a thick chalky kind of beige that might have seemed less dreary if more light could have found it's way into the room. To the right of the door stood a table supporting an answering machine with it's message light blinking an incessant prompt to anyone that might relieve it's burden of message.

The most prominent feature of the room was a table that, through it's pictures, recounted a life that , until recently had been more successful than most, and happier than the occupant thought was deserved. On the left corner was an ashtray bristling with spent cigarettes that the occupant intended to empty but kept forgetting. Next to that was a photograph of the occupant, the maestro , conducting his first premier in New York. . Behind that , the framed photograph from his debut recital at the Kennedy Center.
Central on the table was a photo of the his beautiful wife and son at the boys first piano recital. The boy played a short, simple children's song by Schumann, but the meastro would not have been more proud if it had been Rachmaninoff at Carnagie.

Along side this was a photo of the maestro and his wife on their last vacation together. She was tan and had a smile that would melt the heart of anyone who came within view.
They had taken the vacation to celebrate the fact that the maestro had reached that point in his career where success and notoriety afforded him the luxury of writing a piece that he wanted to write, and actually make a little money in the process.

In the darkest corner of the room, the piano sat, fallboard down. An unfinished score on top, unfinished cups of coffee on the side and a layer of dust indicated neglect and lack of use. The score was to be dedicated to the one with the heart-melting smile.

There were other pieces of furniture around the room. Bookshelves, another small table with a vase, a sofa with a blanket and pillow that had been used instead of the bed they shared.
A stack of letters lay half on and half off the table next to the piano. Although they were from different friends and acquaintances, they all apologized for the accident they had no part in, apologizing for that night. The night the music was pouring from his pen as it never had before. The night the call came.

The one with the smile and the boy had been returning from a recital in the city. She was dozing from being too many hours on the road. The road had become too slick with an early, unexpected snow. The curve had been too sharp, the shoulder too rough, the bank that led to the river too steep. The river had been too deep, the current too swift, the road too deserted, the ambulance too late, and death too soon to the boy and the one with the smile.

They had given his life focus, a sense of purpose, an anchor point. Now that was no more.

The maestro could bee seen in his chair, an overstuffed leather affair with heavy wooden feet that might have been pictured in an old- style English men's club.

He still wore the tuxedo that he had worn to the premier of a piece that the audience certainly felt was inspired by angst and remorse. However it was, in fact, mechanically written . The maestro new what the audience and his promoters would want and expect. This creative effort had left him hollow, there was no joy of completion, no satisfaction, only bitterness and confusion.

An unfinished scotch and yet another ashtray blooming with cigarette butts sat on a small table to his right. The scotch still a dark amber not yet diluted by the ice's melting.
The smoke from a dying cigarette fought to find a path to the ceiling through the heavy stale air that was in the room. Finding no such path, it remained suspended in the room, anxious for any slight disturbance that might aid in it's ascension.
He sat in a slump, his hair disheveled, tie laying limply on his chest. Next to one end of the tie was a dark stain, which was odd in that he was always so careful with his appearance when he was in his work clothes.

In his right hand was a picture of the boy and the one with the smile. This was the picture he carried with him to remind him of why it was he did what he did.
In a shadow, his left hand rested on the opposing arm of the chair, holding a dark shape whose heavy grips and dark gunmetal blue-grey color seemed out of place in the hands of an artist. The object lay where it had landed after briefly breaking the stillness.

His head sat on his shoulders at an awkward angle. His eyes seemed to stare blankly into infinity. There was an odd round, red, growing haloed stain at the maestro's temple.

Copyright © 1996

Paul Riffe,