I had a dream once, but dreamers must eat.

Caged in this grand salon of marble and chandeliers, the air is warm and cloying with a hint of petunias, and the palm tree fronds shine a deep, verdant green. I should be outside to feel the caress of a summer breeze under the evening sun. Walking on concrete, I would hurry between tables and bring food to hungry customers.

My pert ass sits on cushioned velour, and my foot rests on a plush vermillion carpet. The other presses a pedal to dampen these notes. My long flaxen-coloured hair is up, my demeanour severe, and this collar is too tight, rubbing my exposed neck. They put me in this uniform to androgenise me. Tailored to my frame, it is an impossible demand when my best attributes suit a fuller figure.

In contempt of their rules, Parisian Red adorns my lips.

Glancing at the pages of sheet music, they rest unwanted at the music desk. They are Marcel’s choice and his strict instruction; such is my fall from grace. I know them by heart as crowd pleasers, but familiarity pleases no one. Unchallenged, muscle memory makes my fingers skip with adequate weight and timing. It flows to the casual ear, but there is no virtuosity. That requires emotion, and mine remain under lock and key.

The foot pedal mutes when it should sustain because I must not entertain our patrons. It will not soar or inspire. I am a background muzak, flanked by grey-streaked marble pillars and placed in a corner.

This is a place of decorum where affluence is a disease, and these people are the afflicted. Genteel and devoid of excitement, the young lovers in this city of romance stay elsewhere. Irony curls my lips; do not confuse that with amusement. It is mid-week, and most of our guests are on business. They are bored and want to go home to their loved ones. It is a travesty to this opulent Art Deco palace with its history of wilder times.

I share two things with them: a sense of obligation - Paris is my home. Their hearts ache, and so does mine.

The difference is they will see their loved ones again, and I will not.

-=-

Taking a break, I sit at the bar, grateful for the solidarity of my flatmate, Celine.

“You are playing well.”

I do not want to hear his voice now or ever. The rich timbre is as masculine as the sandalwood that piques my nostrils. I will make him wait, sipping my sparkling water. Turning, I said enough to him months ago. He should not be here, and I will not acknowledge his handsome, lean features and piercing eyes. He wears a jacket, a crisp shirt, and chinos, filling them well; these are not his everyday clothes. Sunkissed and rugged-looking, he is not a man of culture but a brute.

“What are you doing here, Yves?”

My question provokes his masculine charm, and I will not smile.

“Simone. I have a request.”

“We do not take requests.”

A casual hand on my forearm implores me, but I am cold inside. 

“Rachmaninoff.”

“No.”

“Piano Concerto Number Two.”

“No.”

His eyes plead, “Adagio Sostenuto.”

I gasp at his request. “As a solo piano arrangement?”

How many films? How many pieces of music has this movement inspired? The most famous is a lament to youth and lost love, and Yves knows… I know. Once, there was rhapsody, and ours was never a brief encounter. I am not May, he is not September, and it was never an affair. He knows it requires virtuoso skill and the contents of my heart.

Nevertheless, he understands my wilfulness, and I will never shy from a challenge. 

“Show them what you can do, Simone. They are wrong.” He diverts his eyes, then fixes them firmly back on mine. “I believe in you.”

Rachmaninoff is my nemesis. Yves knows I have failed before but does not know how afraid I am now. Marcel will not approve. For this, I do not care. 

“You had better return to your seat.” Blank-faced, there is not a hint of emotion.

Chastised, he drags his fingers over my forearm in a parting caress.

What is extinguished should be.

To play this is the equivalent of smashing every pane of glass in the salon windows; it will ring out and has to. I will need sheet music and will break into Marcel’s office if necessary.

-=-

Addressing the piano, mine is a lamentable sigh. The last time I played this was for my mother, and only the vital cadenza, her favourite passage of any concerto. It is Rachmaninoff’s masterpiece, his remarkable comeback, and loved the world over. He wrote it to reveal an intense personal agony, and the parallels sent a chill of foreboding through my body.

The Adagio starts simply, and the first appearance of its fabled cadenza is mournfully played. There should be a solitary flute in accompaniment. I must improvise and provide the emotion without it. It halts a couple in conversation, and in my mind, the strings of the orchestra swirl. It must sound lonely and brittle – like my heart.

My father is a collection of faded Polaroids. I never knew him, and my mother never spoke ill of him. It tortures me if I take after him or not. After what has happened, I think I do. These notes bear what grieves my soul. Is he a role model I never had or a curse I have to bear? I need to use the pain, playing sorrowfully as a funeral procession. My personal story is unremarkable, yet I understand desolation. 

Hope comes from despair, and I must repeat the tentative cadenza. I struggle to find inspiration, and reluctantly, I must latch onto a powerful memory of Yves and me. Amidst the scent of wildflowers, we lie on a blanket in an unfurrowed field under the kisses of sunbeams. He never looked more earnest. This lump of a man revealed his soul to me for the first time. Our nascent relationship was a chaste romance of half-glances and nervous smiles. There was purity, not vice. When a boy meets a girl, not in conquest, but struck dumb together by the majesty of an unknown emotion.

As he dared to wonder, I revealed my final secret, wanting to swim in his eyes and much more. Rising to meet his lips, he conveyed a tenderness his hewn body should not possess. It fuelled a bloom of heat that I yearned for him to quench. A sweep of his hand latched a lock of my hair around my ear. His lips met mine again, and we soared together. We were merely eighteen, and already, I knew… I knew I had found him. 

I play with a nostalgia for a simpler time, without cynicism, in a world of opportunity. The piano keys are struck with meaning, harder and harder, repeating the hopeful melody. The urgency demands more volume and force, surging with a rising confidence. It must quickly fall away, fearful and shy.

From its nervous passion to the reverence of Yves’ caress, it lit a fire that burned brightly. Our hot blood of anxiety transformed into a novel, potent desire. The warmth of skin against skin, savouring the strength of his muscular body, flexing with mine as one. We sought to fulfil our spiritual, emotional, and physical needs. To feel him inside me for the first time. The sweeping fill of muscle enveloped by my body, and my limbs wrapped tight around his powerful frame. A touch like feathers along his flexing spine, I clasped his behind, needing more, and our gasps mixed with birdsong.

The sustain pedal drives my recollection into the high ceiling, each key separately struck, rapid as lyrical Cupid with chords for the missing instruments. I have roused some guests from the foyer who linger at the periphery. 

As water meanders in a babbling stream, I pluck the notes from my mind, and instinct powers my nimble fingers. Yves undid me, one measured thrust at a time. He awakened a part of me that never wanted to sleep again. We cavorted, rolled, giggled, and groaned. I would arch, and he would let me. Naked and draped over his body, I wore him as my most precious garment. Clutching me with a defiant tenderness, he seized me so I could not escape. My whimpers soared into climatic yelps, seizing on his thick impalement. Peppering him with kisses, I took his gift inside me with pride.

Yves lacked the words to describe what I was to him, but his sweet nature and body were capable of breathtaking poetry. The cadenza rises again, still hesitant, but conveys that vivid emotion, a glimpse of what might be.

Gazing at him, he sits on the edge of his seat and offers a faint smile.

I have nothing in reply.

-=-

Now, I find gentility as its juxtaposition, the lingering naïveté of a fragile heart conveyed by the thoughtful caress of each key, excerpts of the introverted cadenza roll through it. Repeated again, sounding more confident.

Yves was in my thoughts every waking hour, as a wistful sigh, and in my sparkling eyes. 

“I love you.”

In a café a year later, he was always taciturn with his emotions. He lacked the timing of the moment, but I never doubted his sincerity. He stole my breath as I saw this unseen depth and the child in those vulnerable eyes. I understood the immense courage he needed to say this. 

“I love you, too.”

We were a meeting of equals and more than the sum of our parts. From the joy of waking next to him to that sleepy contentment at night in his arms, I needed Yves as I needed air to breathe. Time spent with him always passed quickly, from the hinterland of our teenage years into our twenties. There were many firsts: our love, our apartment, his career, and my acceptance into the Conservatoire.

This drip-drip of emotion must trickle and then flow. The cadenza washes through the solitary bright notes hammered into the piano for our happiness together. The cadenza appears again as a bright, shining beacon but fades quickly. 

The spark of desire between us inspired and terrified me. A random glance had the potency to make me bay for Yves; a hint of his hewn body made me burn with need.  Many times, I took him, riding hard, thrashing with my hips to conquer him. I would exhaust myself to feel his power and might exalt me. To cry out, to seize him in my clenched hands, cross my ankles to trap him, and convulse as my climax took me. Blood pulsated, my tight lungs eager for air, and my hungry eyes wanted more. 

The full range of the keys provides ever colourful flourishes, dancing and singing. A hint of triumph can be heard for the first time. The cadenza is optimistic and does not diminish so quickly. The truth is too ugly to face. I should strike all the keys and storm off in disgust. Yet, Rachmaninoff taunts me, and the pedal that drives these notes is the same for a race car to accelerate. If this is a duel, it is to the death. 

As lovers, there was tenderness, and we were animals in those passionate moments. Hauling my body from its perch and still trembling with the remnants of my little death, he introduced me to a world of delirium. He ploughed me against the wall as his conquest, and I scoured his back until I croaked and shuddered. Taken from behind, holding my arms back by their delicate wrists, he fucked the lust from my stricken body. Clattering my ass with his loins, he drove the heft of his shaft in deep, and I felt every sliding thrust until I howled our apartment down.

Staccato notes like whipcracks rise into the high ceiling. Complex notes played with industrious hands at breakneck speed, and I am nothing but intense concentration. My fingers gallop across the entire piano, striking the deep bass keys, contradicted by the percussive high notes that sustain. 

Yves fulfilled me as a woman; I often smiled and let the world wonder why. From pensive silence, the romantic rendezvous, to the moments we would tear our clothes from each other, they will hear it all. From our chaste first kiss to understanding my need with a glance into his eyes. That muscular, unyielding, kind and gentle leviathan of a man. A fiendish lover made of so many contractions. I loved him as a kindred spirit and soulmate, a complete love that poets, authors and composers have sought to describe for centuries.

I had this, mine, and no one else’s.

The notes must pulse as wave after wave of arpeggio. There is conflict from the deep notes, and the light notes pitch up, tinkling faster and faster, struck like the pinpricks of the starry sky. Split-second nuances fold into another, and this is a race downhill. There is a sudden chord inversion coming. It is always the brick wall I hit, and…  I breech it for the first time ever. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and a burst of joy emerges as I chase the keys, but I must not let them run away from me. 

He will know what I achieved. I wish my mother could hear this. She approved of Yves as a man who could temper the force of nature within me. 

Old words have a startling new meaning. Everything must halt, and this pause is not just for dramatic effect.

-=-

Played quietly, I find the serenity needed for this transition. The bass replies, deep and echoing. With one last defiant cry, the light notes respond. Wary of hubris, there is no gratifying smile of pleasure. I have made it this far, but I must face a precious ghost that haunts me and lay them to rest. Violins would play with this soulful piano, and they are missing as a fitting tribute to my mother. The slower cadenza describes her kind smile, grace and beauty. It is too easy to suffuse this with sadness, and I will provide tragedy. 

I can feel the pain expressed by Rachmaninoff, and in tribute, I mimic the sublime violins. My eyes close to remember eating ice cream with her as a child. Sat on a pedestal, she encouraged me as I stared at the white and black keys for the first time. The touch of her soft hand around mine, looking up to see her smiling down on me when we walked through the park.

When I curtailed my ambition to nurse her through her final months, I did not complain. The Conservatoire did not understand nor care, and my feelings towards them are mutual. My mother was brave and undaunted to her last breath, and I was with her at the end. Bereaved, I am an adult orphan. All my pain, guilt, and grief are public property, and my fingers stab the daggers from my heart into the keys. 

I glance at Yves. He is concerned and crouched forward, his hands clasped over his lips as if in prayer.

Say one for her and me.

Methodical, slow bass and alto keys revere what is to come, and chords provide the swooping string section, flowing like the inevitable flood of tears. I miss her every day, and I know what I did. I hid my sorrow from Yves and sold him short. He never left my side as a tower of strength and lost in a pit of bottomless anguish, I pushed him away.

My crime is debilitating. My brow is hot. I know people are watching me. I have to repeat this stanza again and again, which is an inadequate punishment. Trembling at my core, a fog in my mind is closing in, the notes from the old pages waver, changing position and tempting an error. My head is down, and my fingers ache; they cannot describe an entire orchestra. I know I am fading.

A hand on my shoulder consoles with a delicate grip, and I know it is him. Yves is by my side again. He never asked for anything in his unconditional love for me. He never left me; he was always here. He does not need to use words; he never did. Keeping his distance, I have missed him so much and can feel his forgiveness.

My heart swells; this is the tumult, and I will endure as the flourishes gather strength. Higher and higher now, winding as a spiral staircase to the summit. This is the ascent to salvation; I can feel it.

Life is what happened to me with its cruel episodes, and I will no longer be their victim. For just one more day with my mother, I would give up my dreams a thousand times over. She always told me: seize life; do not waste it. Yves is here, and we can do this together. I take a deep breath as if it were my last. I glance up, and the audience knows what is coming. Some smile in joy, others reflect on a precious memory, and a few hold up their phones to record this.

My arms shake, my fingers are electricity, and the entire cadenza bursts free in all its liberating, exuberant glory. Tears well in my eyes, blurring my vision. Its beauty befits this cathedral of levity, lofted through the marbled salon as a tribute to us all. Full of spirit, it alternates between low and high notes. I am there before my mother, and I can see her beaming smile of pride. Lightning charges my ecstasy, swelling as the apogee of emotion flows through me. The contrasts between light and dark are loud and sustained, signalling how I feel and who I want to be.

For everyone who has experienced the deepest sorrow, they know the happiness that follows tastes so much sweeter. Yves, take me home and make love to me; the curse of chaste grief is broken. The notes plead and soar like I want to, and this cry of elation reverberates through the air. I do not want to be all by myself. This is who I am. I have the capacity for so much more joy and love – you can hear it. I do not need words, either.

Legato now… so quiet, and not a soul is speaking; so many people are listening. If there was an orchestra, its sweetest sounds would peel away, leaving the piano’s brittle and tremulous notes. Softer, softer still, the notes diminish in complexity, and the last one rings out through the silent salon. 

Head down, tears fall as my shoulders shake. Around me, the audience applauds, not just politely, but for a long time, warm and appreciative. I hope that I have touched their hearts as I have touched mine. Maybe I brought them closer to their loved ones for ten minutes, just as I did with mine. The Conservatoire told me I could not do it, but I have proven them wrong. Yves, you were right, and I will perform at the Philharmonie de Paris one day and dedicate my first performance to you.

I can hear women gasp, and as I turn, Yves kneels beside me.

I cannot see his face. I am peering through rain-streaked glass. Wiping my eyes, he offers a solitary diamond in a delicate ring resting on a bed of midnight velvet.

“Simone, will you marry me?” All I see is hope from the young, earnest Yves I met years ago. 

I am overwhelmed. As a child, I yearned for a prince, and he is on his knees for me.

“Yes.” As a whisper, I am humbled. I understand now, Yves, my mother, and Rachmaninoff.

“Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.” These words hold true, and I will dedicate my life to Yves because there can be no music without him. As he slides the ring onto my finger, my hand trembles. I look into his eyes, and he rises with a smile, offering his hand. I am enveloped in his embrace, feeling loved and at peace. At this moment, there is no one else but us. Holding him tight, I vow to never let him go.

I am safe.

I am saved.