And We Think We Know Better

Genre: General
Word Count: 440

“I hate them all,” he told me quietly as he passed by. “I’ll tell you at dinner. They’re all so shallow!”

And he was gone, stalking off into the distance. It took me a moment before I recovered from his onslaught, though, intense words piercing me with his anguish and longing.

---

That night, he smashed his violin, all forty-thousand dollars of it. “It’s been through enough humiliation,” he told me. He stomped on the body a few times, and then fell down crying, picking up the pieces and stroking them. I attended the funeral and put roses on the grave.

---

The next week, he wore earplugs. I didn’t ask why, but he wrote me an answer on the board he carried around anyway. It’s too painful, the shaky letters said. He wouldn’t speak at all. I listened to Rachmaninoff. He pretended not to notice.

---

Yesterday, he refused to get out of bed. I found him there in the afternoon after visiting my boyfriend. He wouldn’t even shake his head until I poured ice water all over him. Then I dragged him down the stairs and across the street. We took the bus into the city, to the slums of Edmont Street, where my mother still lived.

We didn’t talk. Words wouldn’t have worked.

I took him by the hand and led him to the apartment, number four, room two. The lock didn’t work.

I opened the door a crack and made him peek in as I removed the earplugs. He didn’t protest.

I knew my mother didn’t work Sundays, and I knew the old piano was out of tune. When she started playing it was almost painful to me, but he didn’t move, just as I thought. My mother wasn’t very good, and the dripping water from the leaking pipes was almost as loud, but I left him there anyway and went back down the corrugated stairs and past the overgrown alley. I had a paper to write.

---

This morning he woke me up with his crying. Thank you, thank you, he seemed to say, but I kicked him away. My roommate was sounding an alarm, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“I fixed my violin,” he said, and showed me a twisted monstrosity of an instrument.

“That’s nice,” I told him, and showed him out. He was arrested and booked, but not charged. He would return to a gaily wrapped parcel, all colorful ribbons and lace.

---

I know I’m going to need to take another job, but tonight I still hear the musicians laughing at me, and the phones are ringing Holden Caulfield.

(Written: 1/26/09. This one really wasn't written because I wanted to write a good story. This minimal work actually probably played a pretty important role in my development as a human being, although it might be hard to tell. I wonder what you guys make of it.)