“I’d offer you milk, but it looks like we’re all out.”
“I would imagine it’s very difficult indeed to get milk in a place as remote as this. Surely you don’t keep cows?”
“No, we don’t,” Michael said. “You’re right about that.” He handed her the mug and asked if she’d like to sit down.
“Not yet, thank you.” With her coffee mug in hand, she moved slowly around the perimeter of the rec hall, taking in everything from the Ping-Pong table—where she stopped to bounce a ball once or twice—to the plasma-screen TV—which she studied, without asking what in the world it was; thank God it wasn’t turned on. There was no way Michael was going to get into all that just now. There were framed posters on the wall—provided, no doubt, by some governmental agency—since every one of them commemorated a national triumph. One was the United States Olympic hockey team celebrating in 1980, another was Chuck Yeager standing, helmet in his hand, next to the X-1 research plane, and the last, before which Eleanor lingered, showed Neil Armstrong in a space suit planting the American flag on the moon. Please no, Michael thought. She’ll never believe me.
“He is in the desert,” she inquired, “at night?”
“Sort of. Sure.”
“He’s dressed almost the way we do here.” She put the cup down on top of the TV, then took her down coat off, and laid it on the worn-out Naugahyde sofa. She was wearing her own clothes again, freshly cleaned and laundered, and looked to Michael like a figure from a painting. The dress was a dark blue, with white cuffs and collar, and billowy sleeves; on her breast, she wore the white ivory brooch. Her shoes were black leather, buttoned up well above her ankle, and her hair was drawn back from her face and fastened behind with an amber comb he’d never noticed before.
She glanced over at the table where he’d been sitting, and asked, “Have I interrupted your work?”
“No, no problem.” The pages from Ackerley were the last things he’d ever want her to see, and he quickly went back and gathered them into a neat stack, with the Sam Adams Lager ad showing on top.
“You’re anxious,” she said.
“I am?”
“You keep looking toward the door. Are you really so afraid that I’ll be discovered?”
She didn’t miss a thing, he thought. “It’s not for my sake,” he said. “It’s for yours.”
“People are always doing things for my sake,” she said, ruminatively. “And strangely enough, I’m the one who suffers for it.”
She went to the piano and ran her fingertips lightly across the keys.
“You can play it if you like.”
“Not while the orchestra…” she said, indicating the ambient music with a wave of the hand. Her voice was sweet, and with the English accent she sounded to Michael like someone from one of those Jane Austen movies.
He flicked off the CD player—she looked at him as if he were a magician who had suddenly waved his wand—and pulled out the piano bench for her.
“Be my guest,” he said, and he could tell, even though she held back, that she was eager to play. “In for a penny, in for a pound.” That was one expression he felt she’d recognize.
She smiled, and blinked. Slowly. More like the shutter of an old-fashioned camera opening and closing. Michael stood stock-still. Had everything, as Ackerley had put it, suddenly assumed a “washed-out” appearance to her? And was she now “refreshing the image”?
Impulsively, she swept her skirt up behind her and slid onto the piano bench. Her fingers, slender and pale, extended over the keys but without touching them. Michael glanced toward the door again, then heard the first notes of a traditional old song, “Barbara Allen” he remembered it from an old black-and-white version of A Christmas Carol. He looked down at Eleanor, whose head was tilted toward the keyboard, but whose eyes were closed again. Once or twice she hit wrong notes, stopped, and picked up again where she had left off. She looked…transported. As if, after a very long time, she was finally going somewhere she’d dreamt of.
He stood behind her, one eye on the door, until, finally, he stopped doing duty as a sentinel and simply listened to the music. She played well, despite the occasional missed note. There was a wealth of feeling and expression, and he could well imagine how long, and how tightly, it had all been bottled up inside her.
After the piece was ended, she sat very still, eyes closed. And when she opened them again—and how green and alive they were, Michael thought—she said, “I’m afraid I’m a bit out of practice.”
“You’ve got a good excuse.”
She nodded and smiled, pensively. “Do you play?” she asked.
“Just Chopsticks.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a very difficult piece, reserved for concert pianists only.”