Giddy in anticipation of seeing you, I derail the rehearsal in the Music Department lobby by putting down my trumpet to howl nonsense lyrics in falsetto. Soon we’re all in hysterics, mocking the world and its people, releasing our pent-up longing for all we missed during months of Covid isolation. For me, it was you.
When everyone starts arriving through the vaulted entry for the welcome-back reception, I jump up to scan the masked faces. You must be here. I’ve been manifesting this moment for months. I even shaved my legs. Brownies and coffee from the tables jack up the squall in my belly.
Catching your eyes, I rush over, nearly slipping on the marble.
“Professor Böhm!” I squeeze your hand, finally experiencing the tangible you, not the one lodged in my mind during lockdown. You’re buff, bearded and tan, blond hair falling over your eyes, in a Clash t-shirt under a leather jacket, knocking me over with your physical presence.
“Oh. Hello,” you say, like my name escapes you. Your voice, muffled by your mask, falls flat. Maybe it’s your accent. Or maybe you can’t look cozy with a student. That never bothered you during my Independent Study in Composition, when we’d jam down in the synth lab, creating Pink Floydian reverberations while chomping on your home-grown yellow cherries, violating the prescriptions of Classical music.
“Thom Yorke was amazing,” I gush.
“Hm?” you ask, like you’ve forgotten my one contribution to your knowledgebase after all you taught me. I spent the entire concert looking for you, the mere thought of your gaze inoculating me from the virus. Now, your frosty eyes block me from your psyche. Could you have heard us jamming? I never actually spoke your name.
Everyone stands back, hushed, for the first performance. I trudge away to crumple and toss my cup. How rude, pretending you don’t know me, betraying the trust you took three years to wrench from me. You inched ever closer until demonstrating how to press the synthesizer buttons, long piano fingers over mine, arguing for me to consider a future writing movie scores, not TV commercials.
During the applause, Professor Marigold whispers to you, stern, with glances in my direction. All I did was shake your hand; I wasn’t making a move. My heart’s pounding. Screw this. After graduation, I’ll never see you again.
My lips are stiff, so I quietly buzz them until it’s my turn to play. I tune my trumpet to the flutes and violins for our performance of Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question. In the silence before we start, I listen for your nose-breathing, a gentle wave into which the lush, opening strings slither, until my trumpet’s jarring “question” prompts you to stride across the room and out the door.
Oh. Hurting me isn’t a by-product of some other intention. I am the kill.
But why? That day before the Covid exodus, when we lounged in the synth lab, zoning out to requiems, you asked what I’d do with ten hours left to live. The cherry you hung into my mouth was meaty and sweet, your grainy voice barely a whisper. Afterwards, the question stuck, and in quarantine, I had nothing to do but trip out on daydreams less nebulous than our reality. An unanswered question can be relished, boundless with possibility. We never emailed, but you must’ve had your own answer.
During the flutes’ agitated response, my mind spins. What did I do? Even if you overheard us earlier, my singing could’ve been about anyone.
When the strings recede, I race upstairs to knock on your office door until my knuckles sting. Whatever I did was unintentional. You don’t send someone to the chair for involuntary manslaughter.
“Why do you hate me?” I cry.
Your cigar smoke swirls under the door. I jiggle the handle, but it’s locked. The real you, unlike the one kicking around my mind during lockdown, exists outside my control.
Melodies from the piano rooms clash, competing for sovereignty. Turning to escape the cacophony, I’m cornered by Professor Marigold, who says, “I saw the video.”
“What video?”
“Those musical spoofs earlier today. Professor’s piano fingers on my instrument—”
“Who posted that?” I didn’t know anyone was recording us, or I wouldn’t have drawn a musical note onto my exposed belly like the one I once spotted as you reached for a cherry.
“It was emailed—anonymously—to me and Professor Böhm.”
“We were just messing around,” I say.
“This is serious.”
“It’s not real. I was joking.”
“Don’t worry. You’re not the one in trouble.”
Acrid smoke sneaking under the doorway constricts my breath.
What have I done?
This is my fault, not thinking of you while thinking of you.
Heavy feet land me downstairs in the synth lab. My stomach is hollow. I turn off the lights, plop into a corner and scrunch into a ball under my jacket, like a crab in the sand. This sound-insulated room, warming me with your mountain scent, is safe and dark. Silent. It was here that you taught me to compose, drawing from my imagination, the music elevating us to the clouds, floating out of reach.
Void of sensory clutter, my mind runs free. If you came in, I’d crawl out of hiding and give my new answer your question: With just ten hours to live, I’d sit here at this synthesizer, improvising a twist on The Unanswered Question. Peaceful harmony without the jarring flutes. My creation would be nothing more or less than a ten-hour apology to resolve this grating dissonance, a plea to get you to say that you don’t hate me. That you could never hate me.
The door bangs open, firing a shot of adrenaline in my stomach. I turn, but it’s not you. It’s the band bounding in with pizza and onion-laden cheesesteaks, their raucous laughter poisoning the space with the smell of stale beer as they flick on lights and open windows to a blast of autumn air.