Joplin's Ghost (58 page)

Carlos sounded breathless too. He had bounded from bed, still naked. His eyes were so wide, he must have been afraid she had vanished into the air. And it was almost true. Almost.

“I’m getting rid of this,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to set the building on fire. People might get hurt. The piano would like that.”

For a moment, Carlos’s face stayed frozen, as if he hadn’t heard her. Then he understood, shaking his head as if he was trying to clear his ears. “You want to
burn
it? Wait. Stop.” He disappeared into her bedroom, and when he came back he was climbing into his jeans. He sounded groggier than she did, gently taking her arm to pull her toward him. “Hon, wait…You’re hurting yourself, Phee.”

“I have to burn it, Carlos.
Tonight
.”

This was another reason she had left him sleeping, she remembered. Carlos had a convincing way about him. Already, his soothing voice was plying her, making her want to rest. “
Shhhhh.
Yes,
linda, si,
I agree with you, the piano should be burned. Fine. We’ll get movers to take it to a dump somewhere and—”

“It has to be tonight. It has to be me.”

“Why?”

“Because
this
is the day, Carlos.
This
is the day I die. I should be dead already.”

Carlos’s face moved closer to hers, fully illuminated by the light from the bathroom. His eyes were so tired they were red, but they were alert on her. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

Carlos’s jaw clenched, hardening. He did know.

“Why do
you
have to do burn it? Let me do it,” Carlos said quietly.

“Because Scott told me to. He gave me permission, and I’m the one who has to do it. He asked Lottie to, but she couldn’t understand him. Anyway, you know Lottie—she didn’t have the heart. She donated it to the hospital and kept the Steinway—she’d never liked the Rosenkranz in her house, even if she never said so—but she could never destroy anything of Scott’s. It wasn’t in her. Everything was lost
after
Lottie died.”

Phoenix realized she was babbling when she saw the look on Carlos’s face. There was a lot more she wanted to tell him about Scott and Lottie, but she could rescue the present, not the past. Carlos’s eyes were retreating, she realized. He was pulling away. He didn’t want to know.

“We should take the piano to the alley, so no one will get hurt,” Phoenix said. “Scott found it in an alley. Remember? That’s where it belongs.”

“Why would I remember that? Hon, let me find your doctor. If you’ll just stay right here, I can go look—”

“There isn’t anyone here tonight, Carlos. You already know that, and you know what it means. Don’t pretend you’re anyplace you’ve ever been.”

Carlos’s face grew stony. “What I
really
know is that you’ve suffered a trauma. You have to appreciate that, Phee. A trauma like this can trigger strange ideas. Strange thoughts.”

“You, of all people, know I’m not crazy.” She pitied Carlos for his fear.

Carlos raised his palm. “I’m not using that word—that’s an ugly word. But you might be confused. I’m willing to listen to you if you’re willing to listen to me.”

She closed her eyes, praying for patience. It was bothersome to have to explain things. “If
you’re
right and I’m just confused, then worst-case scenario is, we drag this piano out to an alley and I light it on fire and burn it to Hell. If
I’m
right, worst-case scenario is, I go back to sleep like nothing is up and I never open my eyes again. If you were me, which one would you choose?”

Carlos blinked. He didn’t have to answer.

“That’s what I thought,” Phoenix said. “So are you going to help me move this or not? If we don’t hurry, it’ll be gone. We might not find it again.”

Carlos stared down at the piano, and his repulsion was naked on his face. He didn’t move.

“It scares you,” she said. “Even if you don’t know what to call it.”

Carlos nodded. Slowly, his fingers became fists. “It scares the
shit
out of me, Phee.”

How could she explain? Scott was very bitter, at the end, and bitterness had a long life. All curses began with bitterness, with fear just underneath. She might be able to capture it in music if she wrote a song about it, but for now she didn’t have the language, either.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said. His face told her he loved her enough to stay with her although he was afraid. He was steadfast in his devotion, like always.

“
Shhhhh.
Grab your end,” Carlos said. He surveyed the piano, then squeezed past it to the other side of the doorway, to the hall. “You push, I’ll pull.”

His plan sounded like a miracle in the making.

W
hen Carlos touched the piano, he felt something slither beneath his palm, an aberration the size of a goldfish scurrying inside the wood that made his hand jerk away. Carlos somehow stifled his cry, plugging his throat just as he was about to vomit.

Phoenix was right. He knew what the piano was. He was the Catholic-slash-Baptist boy who’d stopped believing in God only because he wanted to stop believing in Hell, and tonight some shard of Hell was at his fingertips, beyond recantation.
You’re both already dead, so what’s the rush? Somewhere, two or three centuries have passed. No one remembers you ever were.

Carlos’s heart beat a flood through his veins as he grasped the piano hard—one hand hooked around its jutting back corner, the other behind its trunklike, carved leg.

“On three,” he said to Phoenix. “One…two…”

Before he reached three, the piano bucked up half an inch, scooting toward him with enough force to land on the tips of his shoes, pinching his toes. Carlos pulled free, shutting off valves in his brain to ward off the panic looking for a way to escape in him. Phoenix wasn’t strong enough to lift the piano that high from the floor! Perspiration drenched his palms.

“That wasn’t me,” Phoenix said. “But keep pulling. At least it’s going the right way.”

Carlos envied Phoenix for wherever she’d been, because the peace she had brought back with her was astonishing. He no longer knew her, because she had outgrown him already. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t afraid. On the plane with Phoenix to New York, he’d remembered the Musicians’ Plane Crash Club, wondering if he would spend his last moment of life staring out of an oval airplane window while the world came crashing in, a victim of Phoenix’s providence. The
idea
had flipped his stomach. He’d landed safely, but her tragedy had been waiting all the same.

“Ready?” Phoenix said. He realized she had waited to give him time to steel himself.

Wood flaked off the piano against Carlos’s palms, damp and scaly, but he held on. “Yes,” he said, tightening his hands, a chokehold. “On three again. One…two…
three
…”

Carlos pulled. This time, with coordinated effort, the piano slid forward, compelled. Carlos thought he heard a fleshy slapping sound as something writhed beneath his hands again, but his mind locked, never wavering:
One…two…three
. His world collapsed into numbers.
One, two, three.
The order never changed. Numbers were his prayer.

Carlos and Phoenix repeated their exercise twenty-four times without resting, until they reached the elevators at the end of the hall. The piano plowed a wide wake on the carpet, but on the marble floor near the elevator, the piano moved as if it were weightless before coasting still. The chandelier in the hall cast delicate, dancing sparks on the piano’s leathery case.

Phoenix pushed the
DOWN
button for the cargo elevator, and the button filled with promising light.
I hope these elevators are working now,
Carlos thought. The maintenance men who had helped the movers were long gone like everyone else. He didn’t want to know that, but he did. Gloria’s last-minute flight, the psychics’ exhaustion, the movers’ hurry to leave. Everyone had a reason for not being here tonight. Tonight was Phoenix’s alone, and his.

“What’s your plan?” Carlos said, wiping perspiration from his face with his arm. His arms and back burned from the strain. He wished the movers had left their hand truck.

Phoenix spoke through heaving breaths. “We get it into an elevator. We t-take it out of the building to the alley. I light it up.”

“What are you planning to burn it with?”

Phoenix reached into her pocket and brought out a lighter, then gave him three bottles. Nail polish remover, alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. Carlos frowned. “This isn’t enough, not to destroy it the way you want. This’ll only put it in a bad mood.”

“What, then?”

“Let me find a storeroom. Some kind of cleanser might work.”

“OK, but hurry,” Phoenix said, and he saw her hug herself tight, swaddling herself.

“What’s wrong?” Carlos said, but he knew when he touched her shoulder. Her skin was ice again, so cold that it had cooled the fabric of her gown. “
Shit,
Phoenix. When did this start?” He hugged her, wrapping his body against her in every place they could touch.

“As s-soon as we got out of my room. This must be how it happened before, when I was d-dying.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, so her chattering teeth were from the cold, not fear. If she had to die, she wouldn’t mind. But
he
did.
He
minded.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he said.

She shrugged. “We’re already going as fast as we can. Get what you need.”

“Forget it. We’ll use what we have,” he said, taking his place at the piano’s helm again, ready to help steer it onto the elevator when it arrived. “Always tell me when you’re sick, Phee.”

Only the elevator’s
ding
made him realize he had almost called her Freddie.

T
he elevator lurched down, in fits and starts. When Phoenix felt her mind drifting, the elevator slowed, then stopped, swinging from its cables. When she snapped to alertness again, reminding herself of her mission—
We have to take this piano outside so I can burn it
—the elevator whirred its descent. She might be weak, but the Rosenkranz was weaker, exiled. She hoped so, anyway. For her family’s sake. For Carlos’s sake.

Second floor. First floor. Finally, the basement. The doors opened an inch and stopped.

Carlos cursed and went to the doors, prying. He pulled at the doors with all his strength, groaning loudly, as if the building was burning above them. The Rosenkranz would love to take the building with it, where prized possessions were strewn everywhere; and the building next door, where families were sleeping. The Rosenkranz wanted blood on its keys again.

We have to take this piano outside so I can burn it.

Suddenly, the elevator doors gave, nearly stealing Carlos’s balance when they fell open. He shoved the piano forward to hold the doors open on one end, then he slipped out of the elevator. Phoenix wanted to leave the elevator, too, but she was too enamored of the feeling of the wall behind her, a support. She needed to rest. Maybe she could curl on the floor for a minute. No more than two.

“
Dios mio,
you’re kidding me,” Carlos said, as soon as he stepped out and surveyed the basement. She hoped his voice was glad, but she couldn’t tell. All she could see was the stained concrete of the basement floor. They didn’t have time to start again or go somewhere else. Next time, the elevator would not obey her.

“A fucking hand truck,” Carlos said. He vanished for a moment, then he produced a red dolly with working wheels that rattled across the floor while he pulled it. “Our lives just got easier, Phee. Hold on. We’re almost there.”

The dolly helped, but not as much as she had hoped. Even with the hand truck, the piano’s weight still needed two sets of arms. Phoenix’s bare feet were so cold, she could no longer feel them. Her fingers were nearly useless, claws like Scott’s. She was forgetting her skin.

“Do you see that bay door over there? That’s where we’re going,” Carlos said. “I’ll figure out how to open it once we get there.”

Phoenix didn’t see the bay door, in truth—the lights Carlos had turned on were too bright—but she heaved her shoulder against the piano, her head lolling with exhaustion. She didn’t need to see where she was going. She would get there, by and by.

What’s your name?
She couldn’t remember how to answer the question, until the scent of gasoline woke her up.

“Carlos…” she began.

“I smell it,” he said, grunting. “There are oil spots on the floor, so people park down here. There may not be any gas cans, but I’ll find something. Don’t worry. Let’s get to the alley. Hold on, Phee. We’re almost there.”