Never a Hero

sorry you left?”
    “I’m sorry I let myself get carried away like I did.”
    Not what I wanted to hear, and I still had no idea exactly why he’d chosen to leave me with a bad case of blue balls.
    “Are you mad?” he asked.
    “Not mad so much as confused.”
    “I don’t blame you.” But still, he didn’t offer an explanation. He smiled weakly at me. “Friends, right?”
    Is that my only option? But what I said was, “Of course.” I wondered if he could hear the disappointment in my voice.
    He gestured toward June. “I’m sorry about this, too. I managed to talk her out of the conjoined twins Halloween costume, but she had her heart set on learning piano.”
    “The lessons are one thing. It’s the recital that has me scared to death.”
    “You’ll do great.” The doorbell rang, and June went running into the living room to answer it. Nick gestured toward the kitchen. “I’m just starting to make dinner. Will you stay? Maybe we can watch the Monday night football game?”
    I didn’t know the first thing about football, but I had nothing better to do, and no matter what had happened between us, he was still the only friend I had. “I’d like that.”

    “I’ll admit, I’ve never taught students jointly like this before,” Amelia said to June and I at the beginning of the lesson. She was in her early fifties, and wore her slate gray hair in a tight knot on top of her head. Her speech was as careful and proper as her hair. “The fact that you’ve both studied music before, however briefly, will be a great help. Learning rhythm can be one of the greatest obstacles for adults, but you already know the basics. The notes will be easy as well. The challenge will be learning to work together. Even the most advanced students sometimes struggle with tempo, especially when they reach a difficult passage in the music, but the two of you will also have to worry about matching each other’s tempo.”
    June and I sat side by side on the piano bench. Amelia sat next to us on a chair Nick had dragged in from the kitchen. “Can it be done?” I asked. “Or are we kidding ourselves?”
    For the first time, she smiled, and the effect was extraordinary. In the blink of an eye, she went from unforgiving school marm to some kind of nurturing great aunt. “It can certainly be done. Every musician who’s ever played a duet has struggled with it, and that’s really what we’re talking about here, isn’t it? You’ll be playing as a duet. But it will require patience and practice.”
    Her little speech inspired me. All along, I’d been thinking of us as two broken people trying to play piano together, trying to pretend we were one whole pianist, but her view of it was far more practical. Duets were common.
    Normal, even.
    The first lesson mostly consisted of review—counting time, key signatures, notes. She left us each with a deck of flash cards and a primer book for adults, which was radically different from the “beginner” books we’d found in the bench. She also showed us a few different pieces we could play in the recital.
    “You’re not ready to play any of these today, of course, but you may as well pick a song. That way, you can start to become familiar with the fingering, and we’ll know what to concentrate on.”
    In the end, June and I selected Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” “A good choice,” Amelia said. “A standard for beginning students. It has a nice, simple tempo, but a bright, uplifting sound.”
    Finally, it ended, and we were advised to practice daily. I had Nick’s piano, and June assured him she’d buy an electronic keyboard, but we’d also have to arrange to practice together on occasion.
    “Just think of it,” June said when Amelia was gone. “Today, ‘Ode to Joy.’ Tomorrow, Carnegie Hall.”

    I spent a great deal of time at Nick’s apartment over the next couple of weeks. I practiced relentlessly until I began to worry I’d drive Nick insane.
    “Don’t be silly,” he said when I mentioned it. “I like listening to you.”
    “How can you like it? I can barely even play songs.” Mostly it was finger exercises and scales, and even those I stumbled on more often than not.
    “Maybe I like having you here,” he said, his gaze flirtatious and direct.
    I blushed furiously, but I loved hearing it.
    He gave me a key and told me I could practice during the day while he was at work, but I rarely did. I chose to spend those hours attending to my own day job.