The Last Solos

“Play.”

The word travelled through the half-open door without enough volume to determine whom it addressed.

Beverly came into the dining room. Her lipstick had worn away from the middle of the lower lip. She held the empty water glass and looked at Glenn, then at the open score.

“He thinks there’s a piano.”

Glenn looked toward the bedroom.

“Sometimes he thinks we’re on the boat,” she said. “Sometimes he knows exactly what George is doing.”

Grant called for more water. Beverly went to the kitchen. The tap ran, coughed once in the pipe and steadied.

Flynn said the word again.

Glenn carried the score into the hall.

There was no piano in Grant’s apartment. In the sitting room stood a radio cabinet, a small table and a bookcase whose upper shelf bowed under medical texts. Against one wall a sewing machine had been covered with a patterned cloth. The machine’s treadle and iron frame gave it the shape of an instrument waiting beneath concealment.

Flynn’s eyes were open.

The room had darkened. Grant had turned on the bedside lamp, but the shade directed light downward onto the sheet and left the face above it in shadow. Beverly held the water glass near Flynn’s chest. The red tie had been moved from the chair to the dresser, where it crossed a registry photograph left beside the water carafe.

“You asked for a piano,” Glenn said from the door. Flynn looked toward his hands, empty except for the folded score.

“Did I? We ought to find you one.” He tried to turn toward Grant as the doctor checked his neck, but the movement shortened the next breath.

“Lie still a moment,” Grant said. “I want to see how you’re breathing.”

Flynn closed his eyes until his chest settled. “You’ve seen enough of that.”

Glenn remained beside the door.

Beverly asked whether he could play the radio. The cabinet received two stations clearly and a third beneath static. Neither clear station carried music. One broadcast traffic conditions at the Lions Gate Bridge. The other described a hockey practice.

“Not the radio,” Flynn said.

The hand outside the blanket opened. The fingers moved as though locating an object on a table.