░ Spring, 2024 ░
Ambition (or, A Piano Trio)
She had always told him if he started learning the piano, he wouldn't get past his first scale. He was simply the 'head in the clouds' type, always dreaming, different dreams that never came to fruition. Nevertheless, one bright evening in November, the familiar flash of light drenched the hallway, matched by the violent thunk of the brass door handle denting the wall. In he walked, struggling to push his new toy up the step, adorned with his usual sheepish smile that mirrored the canary yellow keys and gaps of deep black flats and sharps below.
She was right. The dust that had been meticulously polished off the top of the piano all returned home after a short vacation to the air. The gilded key forgotten on a nearby bookshelf, and the borrowed cushion stayed plump. Typical. Another weekend trip they couldn't afford.
This was a flaw she accepted, however, and still she adored his company. Hence, when her outstretched hand didn't meet his cold hairy gut at 3:41AM, she bolted up from half-sleep. He was not a sleep-walker. He never tiptoed over to the bathroom to get water, or even relieve himself. She often referred to him as a big woolly mammoth, and so at night when the 'Ice Age' struck, he would freeze for the night, until dawn's sunlight thawed him off and his consciousness returned. Lazy sod.
She lay jackknife clutching the sheets paralysed in thought. The smell of smoke began to curl up inside her nose, and her first erratic thought was that she was having a stroke. No, she was not that old yet - you can't have a stroke until at least five years after menopause. 'Oh god', was her second.
Skipping two stairs at once, she felt like she did at the age of seven, on the same carpeted steps, gently careering herself down to feel the rush of a 'bump'. But the momentum propelling her was no longer excitement, but fear. Through corridors she slammed about, not yet awake enough to judge space, before reaching the living room, where the smoke originated.
There sat the instigator, perfectly cross-legged, with a pack of cook's matches in his lap. The man she loved, gazing up at licking tendrils of flame and soot. The centrepiece of the bonfire - the unused piano. Just as she began to scream, the gentle 'kshh' of a fire extinguisher muted her and the blaze was reduced to nothing but embers. She closed her mouth. Her Superman had come to save the day from a fate of his own doing.
In the remnants of ash, her eye picked out what made up the kindling. A smashed up easel, from when he tried painting for a week. A Remington rifle. A hockey stick. A Rubik's cube. A picture of him as a child. The gilded key. Dead, rotting dreams, now just cadavers caught up in the crossfire.
She paused for a moment, and considered breaking the heavy silence that now fell, aside from light crackling cinders. He spoke:
"Darlin', I've got us a weekend away to Paris for Valentine's Day."