Anming

This story was conceived and begun at the Hudson Naturalist Society's February 08 retreat. It was completed in Brooklyn.

At seven, 30 minutes before show time, there is a knock on the dressing room door. Anmíng sits sideways in the leather armchair, legs crooked over the arm rest, wine glass balanced on her silk-sheathed belly. Her shoulders pinch reflexively. This is a sacred ritual, her glass of Cabernet taken in meditative silence, alone with whatever warmed-over thoughts choose to float by. She treasures the lull before her veins flood with adrenaline, the fuzzy calm before her eyesight sharpens and her fingertips begin to tingle. For a concert pianist, whose art is one-quarter muscle memory, a Zen non-concentration, such centering rituals are vital.

“Come in.”

The door clicks, a bouquet appears in the vanity mirror and quivers like a flag of surrender. It is replaced by the head and shoulders of a young man in a fitted suit. The apple cheeks and curls, the apologetic smile, he might have been an intern for a hospitality service.

“David.” The name is drawn out, her tone is at once a welcome and rebuke. The smirking parent waves her finger. He smiles, free hand palm-out in defense.

“I know, I know. I shouldn’t be here. I just had to see you first.”

It’s been exactly twelve hours since she’s seen him, and their last glance also took place in a mirror: he smiling as he slips out the door, clad in bike shorts and a pullover, earphone cords dangling to his waist, the sunlight flooding her one-room studio, glancing off the silver-backed piano and leaving sunspots in her vision, she is half-asleep, eye-dazzled in her bright, damp bed.

Now, watching her in this smaller mirror, David moves into the room. He dips to kiss her cheek, a dry sexless peck, and she smells the fruity cologne she’s bought him. His athlete’s body takes to the suit like China wrapped in newspaper. He misses his shapeless pullover, the ratty thing he often does business in, his nouveau corporate bro look. She insists on formal attire for her concerts, and has resorted to threats when he attempts to offset Ralph Lauren slacks with a pair of trainers. Now it is not yet eight and the silk tie already hangs at his collar bone. She’s no snob, but doesn’t a debut at Carnegie Hall deserve a little extra effort?

“You look beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

He rests the roses on the floor – they’re only a token, his ticket into the room. He kneels at her side, taking her hand in his. He is tender with her hands. There is no need; they are calloused and large, secured to thick wrists and arms as powerful as a dancer’s legs. There is delicacy in her work, but it requires great strength. He kisses her fingertips, following each one down to the palm. She’s already removed her engagement band and set it in the silver pill case on the vanity. He kisses the ring’s special place, and she flinches. He mistakes this for arousal and moves on to her wrist.

“You’ll give me the shivers.”

“So?”

“My Schubert will sound like a music box.”

He returns her hand to the wine glass, a resigned smile cast at the floor. In life he is a prize fighter, a light weight in the board room, quick and unstoppable, a heavy weight in the bedroom, delivering slow, delicious blows. But here, in her room, he becomes a rookie, too eager at the medicine bag, a fumbler, in need of constant instruction.

“Go get your seat. They’ll be dimming the lights soon.”

He wants to protest, but does not. He is the renegade entrepreneur, she is the beautiful young artist. They will make a perfect life together among the spires of Manhattan. In exchange, he must occasionally submit to being the trophy husband, ushered from the room when there is important artistic business at hand. He nods and rises. The roses find a home on the vanity table. She hears the door open and close again.

Alone, her frustration takes the form of a long, heavy breath. What did he expect? That they’d make love on the floor of her dressing room? The silk dressed hiked up to her hips, the dust and grit pressing themselves into her shoulders, her hair? And then with the kissing her fingers, her ring finger. As if this place on her body, so newly marked as his territory, had developed an extra sensitivity. Trying to assert himself, as always. Even here, in her room, in her house with its acoustically impeccable vaults, built to celebrate her gifts.

As soon as the wine touches her lips there is another knock at the door. There is no hope of privacy tonight, apparently.

“Come in.” Her focus is on the glass. She traces the rim with her finger as he enters. “Did you forget something?”

She feels a hand on her shoulder and smells the tart musk of cigars. Her eyes rise to the mirror and find him there, towering over her in the dark blue folds of his suit. It’s an old-fashioned family portrait, the patriarch lays a proprietary hand on his child bride. She stands, nearly toppling her glass.

“Alan.”

His face, an expectant smile, blurs momentarily. She’s stood too fast with only wine in an otherwise empty stomach.

“Songbird.” This is his nickname for her. They touch cheeks, and she smells something beneath the cigars, something elderly, antiseptic. His skin is soft like an infant’s and covered in a fine down. He takes her hands in his own, pressing them around the glass. Whether this is too familiar for a benefactor and his protégé seems unimportant. Alan is an old man and rich, she is young and beautiful, and dependent on his support. Who is she to deny him a grandfatherly kiss on the cheek, or a hand on her bare shoulder? It seems natural, an old arrangement.

“Did you receive my flowers?”

She has, hours before, just as she was stepping out of the shower. The messenger delivered two demure little lilies in a turquoise vase, with a note, “Yours, Alan.”

“I did. They’re lovely.”

“They reminded me of your Andante. Shimmering and simple.”

This is something they share, a conspiracy of taste. The joyless business which has brought him his fortune is coupled with decades of philanthropy. Art is his business too, and music his guarded passion. They can talk for hours in a code that mystifies their partners, a language that crosses a generation as simply as fingers skipping from one note to the next.

“Where is Enid?” His brittle companion never attends her performances.

At the mention of his wife’s name the sharp eyes drift. He waves a hand in exasperation. “Oh, probably asleep already.” Anmíng pictures their high bed, a walker positioned at the ready, orthopedic pillows littering the floor, the smell of vinyl sheets. This is all speculation; she’s never seen his bedroom.

“And so, my darling, how are you feeling?” His hand is on her shoulder again, and though her instinct is to retract she takes a step forward.

“Oh lovely,” she says. “It’s all so exciting. Actually, I’m a little heady.”

“Too much wine.”

“Too much everything.” Something occurs to her. “Did you pass David in the hall?” She doesn’t know why the thought of David meeting her aging benefactor on his way to her room should trouble her, but it does.

His smile is apish, knowing. “No. We meet in secret.”

She laughs, a childish trill which David has pointed out she only releases in Alan’s company. It’s false, of course. She doesn’t know what to do with his flirting. She can’t possibly take it seriously, but if it’s a joke, it’s not very funny either. As if her thoughts were a prompt, Alan removes the wine glass from her hand and sets it on the table. It’s an invasive gesture, somehow more intimate than physical contact. “Enough of this,” it seems to say. “Hold me tightly, instead. Take sips from me. Let me make you swoon.”

The apish smile has faded, and it occurs to her that soon she will no longer need his support. She has David now, and David’s future millions, and her connection to Alan, while not severed, has become ambiguous. The question of money, rather than an uncomfortable reality, has been a ballast in their relationship, balancing their interactions, drawing a line under her fake, girlish laugh, his feathery, wet kisses. As with the removal of the wine glass, the absence of his patronage leaves a gap between them, a gap which must grow larger or be collapsed.

They are now holding hands. Is this how he seduced women when he was young? Enid was a dancer. Did he visit her in her dressing room before the overture? Did he put aside her wine (white for Enid, a Chablis) and frown in that serious, masculine way that now seemed so dated, like something out of Gone With the Wind? How many young women have been drawn to his money, his taste in fine wine, in classical music, in flowers? She is not his first protégé.

Now is the moment, he thinks, before she slips his hold on her, now would be the time, on the night of her debut at this prestigious hall, when her mind is alive with sun spots. Now, if ever. And if ever she would, now would be the moment. But no.

“Alan...”

The door opens. David knocks as he enters, exploding into the room. Their eyes meet over Alan’s sloping shoulder. There is something victorious in David’s grin. “So,” she thinks, “he did see him coming down the hall.”

“Sorry, Angel. They want to know if you’re ready.”

Alan, at the sound of David’s voice, turns towards the intruder, still grasping one of her hands in his own. He is unperturbed at being caught, a veteran philanderer. For a moment, she admires how he greets her fiancé with a smile, refusing to release her hand, refusing to explain himself. The men shake hands. It is time for the artist to take the stage. She receives a kiss on the cheek, first from her lover, then from her benefactor. The kisses are indistinguishable except for the faint scents these men leave in the air. Like signatures. The room is now theirs, a place for the men to talk. She has been given the bum’s rush. She is through the door, down the hall. She had not even finished her Cabernet.

Intruded upon, then invaded, then interrupted. Always upon. Never left alone. She feels the heat in her limbs and knows her cheeks are flush. Now everything moves quickly, there is no time to think, to reflect on her future with these men. The moments after her performance is finished, the night ahead, the years to follow.

An attendant in black is ushering her onto the stage, an inviolable space. The piano lies waiting, waiting to sing at her touch, to give thundering, shivering voice to the songs in her mind. And the audience, invisible beyond the footlights, applaud politely, ready to be filled.

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