In front of the door both hesitated. How to keep playing that song? Allegro? Andante? Moderato? Much easier to read the thousands of notes of a score of Rachmaninoff or Chopin. But the expected pleasures are different.
They enterd the short and narrow hallway. Made narrower still by the little synchronized dance of both so they could take out the heavy coats and hang them by a mahogany wine rack attached to the wall behind the door. Secretly however, they thanked the Gods for small spaces and tight spots. Arms that rub, hands, back, hair, mouths touching inadvertently. The easy smile thanking a help to release a sleeve that does not come out, trapped by the clock.
And they come inside, to the main room. Dark green walls, gray sofa, old and frayed patchwork cushions. "My grandmother made them", sounding almost like an excuse. And a huge grand piano in the bottom right corner. No dining table.
The easy way out for the short silence is obvious: the scores. Not that he needed them, but the result and control their executions brought, even if he just follow them by heart.
They sat side by side on the piano bench. Again small and tight spaces! Again brush of arms, thighs and legs. No hands now. These were placed on the keyboard (his) and start the movement. Beethoven, the musician rock star. Infallible, perhaps. It was exactly this feeling that he sought: infallibility. Both of them Would happen, yes. And it would be masterful. And unforgettable and overwhelming and perhaps deadly. Yup!
At least five minutes of magical suspension, some five minutes where nothing would go wrong, and she would remain by his side and would look admiringly to him at least, and would receive him, even with Beethoven in the middle, without restrictions. Magic. Magistral.
And he could feel her large eyes glued on his hands first, but soon landed on his face. She was studying his features! More: mercilessly exploiting his emotions, because at that moment he was transparent and she could actually see the collection of feelings that formed his soul.
A new moment of fear aroused within him. And in it, an overwhelming feeling of falling. Weightlessness, no gravity, of longing. She had enjoyed, since the beginning, those heavy glasses with dark rims, have always loved the strong nose, his mouth with thick lips, and his voice speaking firmly about all his thoughts. And now she had fell in love with the dark and disheveled hair, his tongue stuck between his teeth with the effort of playing, physical and mental, the sweat that was forming on his forehead. And his eyes! Almost always closed, but that furtively looked for her at least once in the middle of the song. She had no fear or anxiety after all. Allegro!
And the song ends. And before that silence occurs, he lands his right hand, until then suspended in the air, over her left leg, hers leaning so far close to his right leg (the miracle of small spaces and proximity again). He turns his body and face directly onto body and face of her, and a big smile comes. More intimate, stronger than any word, than a yes or I agree, I want you.
Her hands rise from resting on her lap and carefully remove his glasses, and before the real final apotheosis of that small and already masterful concert, the tip of their noses touches, no more icy cold from the outside.
