Never a Hero

imagined a life with her, I’d made her my age, but I was reminded now of the fact that she was actually more than ten years my senior, although she looked damn good for her age. “I’m leaving it. It wasn’t mine to begin with. It belonged to whoever lived here before me, and anyway, it’d be a pain in the ass to move.”
    “Will you buy a new one?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe eventually. But mostly it takes up space and gathers dust, you know?”
    She’d played almost every night. Certainly she loved it. I’d made myself believe she loved it. How else could I possibly love her?
    “Anyway,” she said, suddenly awkward. “Take care.”
    Take care.
    Then she turned around and walked away. Down the sidewalk to the truck. Away from the imaginary life she’d unknowingly starred in.
    Away from me.

    Two days later, the scene was repeated in reverse. A Tahoe and a pickup truck filled with furniture and boxes parked in front of the house. A total of four men got out and walked through the bright autumn leaves littering the lawn to the side of the house, out of my line of sight.
    I should introduce myself. Find out who exactly was moving in and give him the spare key.
    That’s what I told myself, but I knew I wouldn’t do it. Not until I was forced to.
    I heard laughter downstairs, then piano notes. Not a real song like Regina had played. Not the practiced music of a pianist, but the inexpert jangle of random tones as somebody tested the instrument. I pictured one of the men leaning against Regina’s piano, hitting the keys, laughing with his friends at his own lack of skill.
    “Don’t quit your day job!” one of them said.
    The house I lived in had been built as a split-level in the seventies, but had been broken up into two separate apartments. Mine consisted of what had once been the main floor, which meant my door opened onto the front porch. The lower apartment was reached via a stairway at the side of the house. The setup was unusual in that the house was built on a hill and had a walk-out basement, making the downstairs living space far more tolerable than most basement apartments. I listened to the men below as they wandered through the apartment, looking in closets and kitchen cabinets, opening the sliding glass door to look at our shared backyard. Most times, their words were indistinguishable, but I could hear their laughter clearly through the vents. It had been a long time since I’d shared that kind of easy laughter with anybody.
    For the first time, I regretted having an apartment below me.
    Luckily, the torture didn’t last long. Soon enough, the laughter stopped and the moving began. I watched for a few minutes through my window. Like before, two of the men were clearly a couple. They were happy and stupidly in love, one of them tall and thin and dark, the other shorter and blond. I immediately hated them for their easy, open affection. I hoped they weren’t the ones moving in.
    I turned my attention to the other two. Neither was a big as The Hero had been, although one of them in particular was obviously well acquainted with the gym. His arms bulged under the short sleeves of his shirt. Dark blond hair and bright, laughing eyes. I couldn’t decide if he and the fourth man, whose arms were covered with tattoos, were lovers or not. Friends certainly, but if they were more, they at least didn’t glow with the bright, electric giddiness of the other two.
    Four able-bodied men. Not a missing limb among them.
    I didn’t even think about offering to help.
    Instead, I went to my computer and worked. After all, there were bills to pay. A teacher in high school had shown me how to type one-handed, using home row as my base, keeping my index finger on the F and my pinky on the J. I’d always been a stellar student, and typing was no different. I’d practiced with relentless determination and could now type one-handed as well as many people could with two, and missing my left hand didn’t diminish my ability to use a mouse. I put on my headphones and lost the afternoon to work, designing newsletters and brochures for a local marketing company. It wasn’t necessarily a job I loved, but it was one I was good at and it allowed me the luxury of working from home. My music drowned out the sound of the men bumping down the outside steps with boxes and furniture.
    It wasn’t until long after I’d quit working for the day that the knock came, not from the front door where one might expect it, but