*****
I woke up before Annie. I did the usual things, squeezed some toothpaste on my finger and rubbed it on my teeth, and ran fingers through my hair to coax it into a semblance of order. I was wearing trousers, my feet bare. She lived in a cottage behind a house in the older part of the city, a square clapboard relic with no insulation and no central heating, and I was shivering when I left the bathroom.
Annie, wearing a robe with ruffles, and also wearing glasses, which she hadn’t the night before, slipped into the bathroom as I left. She said, “I put on the coffee; it’ll be down in a minute.” I found my shoes and socks and my shirt and finished dressing. I followed the smell of drip coffee into the kitchen.
Back in the living room I studied her bookshelf. I hoped to find out more about the woman I'd spent the night with. The top shelf held a collection of cookbooks: Italian, Mexican, French cuisine, and then a few devoted to breads, desserts and old-fashioned American standards, like Betty Crocker and Fanny Farmer. I could appreciate a woman who appreciated food.
I expected to find lots of books on music but, besides a Fake Book, I only found two. One I riffled through as I sipped coffee, a book on the rudiments of music. There was another with the librettos of famous operas. That was it. A smattering of novels, some I recognized, a few I owned, nothing deep or heavy, running to mysteries and series like the Hornblower novels.
I sat on her piano bench drinking coffee and studying her piano. A very ornate upright, it had carvings and filigrees everywhere, the keyboard supported by elaborately turned legs. I wanted to think of it being a bit like Annie, worn but not worn out, but somehow the sight of it depressed me. It was fancy wood—I guessed walnut burl—but it hadn’t been oiled or polished for a long time. It looked as if it would crack if it were moved.
“The landlord had to put braces under the flooring, this old thing is so heavy. I got it at an estate sale for about half what it’s worth. Hadn’t been tuned in decades.”
She had come up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. I put my opposite hand on hers and glanced back. She’d showered; hair wrapped in a towel, turban style, face shiny, make-up none at all. She was a lot like the piano.
“Want to take a shower?” she asked. “I have a big hot water tank, there’s plenty left.”
“I can manage till I get home,” I said, suddenly wanting to leave.
“Breakfast, then.”
I shook my head.
“My day job is librarian. I'm the reference librarian at the Hillsdale Library.” Her hand left my shoulder
“Do you like it?” I asked, turning and trying to smile.
“It’s less interesting since the internet came along. I've been at it a long time, you see.”
“I'm a budget analyst,” I said, inwardly cringing at the tedium that title implied. “I work for the DMV.”
“Do you like it?” she asked, sitting next to me on the piano bench. She radiated heat from her shower. It must have been very hot.
I sighed. “I was banished to the DMV years ago. When I was in the Office of Financial Management, I left something in the state budget that was meant as a joke. I thought for sure my boss would catch it, or surely his boss; they both had a sense of humor. But no, it got all the way to the governor’s office, and he had no sense of humor.”
“That’s so sad,” Annie said. “That’s like playing the piano bar in a Roadside Inn because you got fired by Tony Bennett.”
“You got fired by Tony Bennett?”
“By his manager. But that’s another story.”
It was time to go. I wanted there to be more music together, but I'd exhausted my repertoire and this wasn’t the place to learn more. I found my overcoat in her hall closet. I noticed she was wearing mules with fluffy ornaments on them. Her toenails were painted burgundy.
“If I call the library will they put me through to you?” I asked in the doorway.
“Sure,” she said. “But I have a feeling you won’t.”
“We had such a good time.”
She said, “I don’t mean to be crude, but it really was a one night stand—in the musical sense, if not the sexual. Or maybe both; I don’t know.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
I walked out to my car. Overnight rain had plastered brown leaves all over it. I brushed them off the windshield and shook the water off my hands before reaching for my keys.
It was crude, Annie. Why did you have to say that?
The starter motor sounded angry and the windshield wipers were out of tune. I drove away.
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