Two

George Botkin didn’t answer his telephone. When he was working, which was most of his waking hours, he turned on his answering machine (the kind that was so old it used those tiny tape cassettes). Sometimes he was inspired by the mechanical noises of the answering machine. The outgoing message was an unfinished waltz melody of his own, and though he had the ringer and the sound switched off so he couldn’t hear the outgoing recording or the voice messages people left, if he wasn’t working out something new at the piano or listening to a playback or a CD or some strange recording of something that interested him, or solving a counterpoint problem by tapping out the interlocking rhythms on his practice pad or on one of his African drums, then it would be quiet enough for him to hear the tiny sounds of the answering machine taking a call.

Just hearing the machine clicking and whirring made George think of his unfinished composition being played, which often inspired him to turn from the work at hand, no matter how complex and involved, and jot a few more notes toward the completion of the waltz on the crumpled, coffee-stained sheet of music paper assigned to this piece. Somehow, that perverse interruption—the urge to add a little more to the tune just because he knew that the waltz melody was being played, though he couldn’t hear it—didn’t distract him the way that speaking to another person, dealing with another person’s voice and mood and wants, even for the briefest moment, could ruin the entire day, composition-wise.

So perhaps every time Rebecca called—and this was the sixth attempt in three hours—it had provided a little creative tickle. If he was there. But she was eager to hear his voice right now, not the damned waltz. She needed to tell him about her grandmother, and she wanted George to say something surprising yet soothing, the way he usually did when she was upset about something. The first notes of the musical signature that heralded his message began yet again, rendered in a pretty little flute solo. (George claimed he couldn’t really play the flute and was only fooling around with the flute he had found sticking out of a trash barrel on Horatio Street one night, and his fingering was just whatever clumsy, made-up guess at the right placement had come into his head, though his playing sounded very sweet and pure to Rebecca’s untrained ear.) Though she usually liked to hear it, Rebecca hung up rather than leave yet another message. She had been trying him all afternoon, and now it was almost evening. The nursing home had called about her grandmother at three, and she desperately needed to talk with George—her lover of twenty years, her partner, the man in her life, her mate, her consort, her significant other, whatever the hell you want to call what he was to her—both for real comfort, just for the steadying sound of his voice, and for the practical necessities of planning.