Chapter 4: The Hall in Daylight

The hall smelled of floor polish and the damp wool of coats hung somewhere out of sight. Daylight lay across the piano keys, showing a gray seam of dust behind them. Ada Mercer set her gloves on the bench and waited while Eli Finch lowered the bag.

They had left their neighboring apartments after school, walked downstairs together, and caught the bus with little conversation beyond where to get off. Tuesday had arrived without making the kitchen conversation easier to remember. At the hall, a woman stacking cups had shown them the piano and asked them to pull the outside door shut when they left. Now the woman’s footsteps had stopped, though Ada Mercer had not heard a door close.

The piano stood against an interior wall, beneath a noticeboard with empty pinholes along its lower edge. She moved the bench and opened the instrument. Behind her, Eli Finch unfastened the bag, then stood with his hands clear of it.

“The lever, please.”

He passed it to her wrapped in its cloth. The handle was exposed, just as he had left it at her table. She took the cloth off without catching it on the rough place.

She began by playing across the keyboard. Some notes arrived plainly; others seemed to stop at a distance from her. The hall gave back a blurred remainder after she lifted her hands. She waited for it, looking at the rows of stacked chairs along the opposite wall.

Eli Finch pulled a chair toward her.

“Is that where you want it?” he asked.

She had been about to tell him to bring it closer. Instead she considered the room.

“Over here. Where I can see you.”

He shifted it. Its rubber foot caught against the floor, and she heard the short squeal with an unpleasant sharpness.

“Not everything needs to be loud,” she said, then wished she had not said anything.

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know. The chair.”

He sat. She arranged the mutes beside her and sounded the first notes she wanted to compare. There was work here, enough to occupy her hands without any need to search for it. She tested, waited, adjusted. The pin resisted her with a familiar firmness. Her wrist knew the small difference between holding pressure and adding it.

For a while, Eli Finch watched without speaking. She could feel the attention resting on the side of her face. At her kitchen table she had wanted him to stop asking; now she found herself waiting for a report she had not requested.

She took her hand off the keys.