— No wait what are you…
— All the spirit deeply dawning in, is this what you’re working on?
— It’s no it’s nothing! he pulled the pages from the rack — it’s just, it’s nothing… and left her standing, the strings patterning their descent in the slope of her shoulders to remain there, as she bent to close the keyboard, in the remnant of a shrug.
— They told me you’ve been teaching Edward, is it…
— Well I’m not! he’d dropped the pages in a chair behind him, sat on its arm clutching the beer can — I was but I’m not I, something just happened something as stupid as this, this breaking in here… he withdrew his foot abruptly, raised his eyes to her ankles’ approaching amble, turn and pass toward a bull’s eyed door beyond the fireplace.
— What’s in there… she found the switch and snapped it, peering through.
— Nothing just, just papers, programs old scores what’s…
— Uncle James’? he worked over here?
— Well he, of course he did yes I, because it’s one place it’s the one place an idea can be left here you can walk out and close the door and leave it here unfinished the most, the wildest secret fantasy and it stays on here by itself in that balance between, the balance between destruction and and realization until…
— He said this? Uncle James?
— What?
— From him, it just sounds quite romantic… she’d snapped the room beyond back into darkness and came from behind him with that ease of drift that brought his eyes up once she’d passed, — his music’s always so…
— Well why why shouldn’t he have said that something like that he, that he could come back the next day a week a month later he could open the door and find it here this same unfinished vision here just like he’d left it, this same awful balance waiting undisturbed just like he’d left it here to, to tip it and, the gray days I’ve come in here and built a fire to shut it all out so I could work those summers I, I haven’t even seen you since those summers…
— You can’t stay here though can you… she turned from the empty black of the fireplace — working? You couldn’t stay anyhow…
— What?
— With no heat here?
— With, here? I, I don’t know I…
— And if you’ve…
— I said I don’t know! he was up, took the steps after her she’d turned toward the stairs as counterpoint wove the strings toward extinction, — Stella…
— What happened.
— That you, just that you’re really standing right here in…
— No your music… she turned her head, caught his breath on her cheek — what happened to…
— No that’s what I was trying to find something like the, like Beethoven took Egmont his incidental music for Egmont I tried to, I found that long poem of Tennyson’s Locksley Hall of Tennyson’s I remembered it from school and I’ve been trying to work out something like, it’s something like an operatic suite that part you picked up there that line, those lines that open trust me cousin, the whole current of my being sets to, is that what you…
— No just that record, I thought something had happened to it.
— What the, that? that record?
— What happened. It just stopped.
— That it’s nothing it’s just a practice record it’s, that’s where the solo comes in the D-minor concerto without the piano part I thought you meant my, what I’m working on I…
— I didn’t think you wanted to talk about it.
— Well why shouldn’t I! what’s, why shouldn’t I talk about it…
— I don’t really know, Edward. What’s up there.
— The what?
— Up there, upstairs…
— Up, what! did you hear something?
— No, no I just meant what’s up there… she nodded up to shadows where the strings lurked again in ambush for their solo antagonist — up on that balcony…
— Nothing just, just the same things papers, old letters scores piano rolls wait… he came after her, after the mounting insinuation of her thighs’ rise, rest, and rise in the ravening ease of her climb caught that suddenly off balance where she stopped half turned on the landing and he caught at the rail, at her waist where he’d run head on and a hand of hers caught his with the beer can and steadied him, held him off there with no way to know if her glance had missed the knotted length of rubber stretched like a dead thing on the stair. — Wait! wait if, if somebody’s up there… he stooped to snatch the thing up and force it into the beer can’s cleft crowding her on, — if they just did it…
— Did what Edward, if who…
— No no broke in I mean if, if they just broke in and they’re still up here, hiding…
— Don’t be silly there’s no one… she paused at the top, thrust aside with her foot a packet of letters tied with a shoelace to push the door opening off the balcony, — it would be hopeless wouldn’t it…
— No what’s, what…
— All these papers, to start looking for any they need for this estate in all this… she passed through without pausing her glance at the bed’s faded coverlet ripped half to the floor, turning up to the skylight — do you sleep up here too?
— Too…? the can quivered at her back, — sometimes yes I, all the times I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like but I, it’s still like you’re not really here all the times I’ve been working when I’ve thought about you when I, even when I try not to I do Stella what you saw on the piano down there in the dark of, those lines I even thought I’d play that how she turned her, her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs…
— Edward… her turn that close dropped his eyes to the sighing fall of her breast against his wrist there, — I don’t…
— All the spirit deeply dawning in the, the dark of hazel eyes that’s why I, what I’ve always remembered your eyes when you smiled I’ve always remembered your smile but your, how sad your eyes are when you smile that’s why I, what I’m working on that’s why it’s…
— You’ll let me hear it won’t you, when it’s finished? She brushed past him for the door where the strings rose again, gaily framing an empty trap in the eaves beyond, — it sounds charming…
— Charming is that all you, old-fashioned is that what you mean old-fashioned? Is…
— Oh a bit perhaps, but…
— It doesn’t matter no I just said you wouldn’t understand anyhow if you couldn’t even…
— But I’ve never heard it, how could…
— I said it doesn’t matter! he plunged after her jamming the bubbled knot into the beer can as she gained the stairs, — that’s why you laughed isn’t it why you’re laughing at me you’re not even laughing, you…
— Edward please, you’re not being…
— What I’m not being what, I said you wouldn’t understand it anyhow that’s why I, what it’s about that’s what this is about if you’ll listen…
— I can’t stay now Edward, my…
— Why not because you don’t want to hear it, because that’s what it’s about that, when you married that…
— But… she paused as he broke from the foot of the stairs behind her — you, you’ve never met him Edward, what ever could have given you the…
— What given me the what I, those summers when we…
— But Edward really what ever could have given you the idea that I…
— Why couldn’t it! he came on as the strings sounded now in gashes from the eaves above them — that’s why you, why you’re smiling you just smiled it’s not even a smile it’s just, that last summer once when we all went swimming up on the mountain that stream with the deep pool where we, where you went to the one above it you went up there alone to wash your hair I thought you’d just, I came up to bring you something a towel or something you were taking off your bathing suit and I, I can still, that night I couldn’t sleep that night and I can still…