Chapter 19: Sound Check

At three o'clock on Friday, the Garden was empty and enormous, and my footsteps came back to me from the top row.

Forty thousand seats, all folded up, waiting.

I stood at the edge of the stage in my gray coat with the cassette in my hand.

I could not make myself step onto it.

"You can walk on," Declan said. "It's not hot."

"It's bigger than I remembered."

"It's bigger than I remember too, and I've played it nine hundred times."

"You've played it twenty."

"It feels like nine hundred."

A stagehand rolled out a black grand piano and locked its wheels at center stage.

It was not the Baldwin, and it was not the burned upright.

It was a concert instrument, polished so bright I could see my own face in the lid.

"Tuned this morning," the tour manager said from the soundboard, arms crossed.

"Why this one?"

"He wanted a lid without a cigarette burn."

"I'm sentimental about the burn," Declan said.

"I know you are."

I put my hand on the lid.

It was cold.

I walked around the bench, sat down, and rested my fingers on the keys without pressing them.

My hands were steady.

Declan stood behind me, close enough that I felt the warmth of him through my coat.

"Just play," he said. "Nobody's here."

"That's the problem."

"The roof is."

I played the first chord, and it went up into the rafters and came back softly after.

I sang the opening line, and my voice went out across the empty seats.

It hit the far wall and came back to me, larger than when I sent it.

I stopped.

"Again," Declan said, from behind me.

"It's strange."

"Again."

I sang the verse.

I sang the chorus.

By the bridge I had forgotten the seats.

I stood up from the bench and let my voice climb into the dark.

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