Rhapsody on a Theme

by Matthew J. Metzger

  “Put him on then.”

  “What?”

  “If he’s normal, put him on.”

  “Um,” Jayden said, then mentally shrugged. What harm could it do? Darren was fine today—a bit caustic, because Rachel had been teasing him and threatening to cut his hair, but that was fairly average—so he padded into the living room, tapped Darren on the shoulder, and held out the phone. “It’s Paul,” he said.

  “Oh,” Darren said, getting up from the piano. Stiffly. “You,” he said to Rachel, jabbing finger at her, “scales.”

  She pouted; Darren ignored her and took the phone back into the kitchen. Jayden followed, and Darren put it on speakerphone before sinking into a chair and letting Jayden massage his left shoulder. The knots were back—and huge—and Jayden scowled at the side of his head. Idiot. He ought to know better!

  “What do you want, then?” Darren asked the phone.

  “Fuck you too,” the phone replied, and Jayden shook his head at their way of greeting each other. Darren had a strange idea of friendship—and so did Paul, really. “Heard you’re not mad anymore.” Jayden rolled his eyes.

  “Still mad, just suppressed,” Darren said and followed up with, “Ow!” when Jayden punched him in the shoulder.

  “You’re not crazy, stop it both of you,” Jayden snapped. “That’s not on.”

  “Don’t he sound like his mother, Daz?”

  “Yes,” Darren agreed and got punched again. “Ow! Seriously, what are you doing—helping with that or not?”

  “Helping correct your erroneous thought processes,” Jayden said snottily. Paul made a low ooh noise, and announced he would need popcorn if this escalated.

  “It won’t, I’m not that stupid,” Darren said, and Jayden started massaging his shoulder again grudgingly. “So, why the call?”

  “Stag do!” Paul announced. “Right before the wedding.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “Nope,” Paul said. “Thursday night in Soho!”

  “You’re shitting me,” Darren repeated emphatically, and Paul laughed.

  “Nope!” he insisted. “So, Thursday after next, you got that Thursday off?”

  “No, but I can swap a shift,” Darren mused. “Couple of the lads are after leave for the derby match next month, so I can probably talk Trev or Jamie into switching. And I’m off Friday. Wedding still on Saturday?”

  “Yep. So. Do it,” Paul commanded. “Thursday night we’re going out on the lash. Bunch of posh boys and a whole lot of vodka.”

  “Jesus,” Darren said.

  “You okay to drink on your happy pills?”

  “They’re not happy pills, they’re stoner pills,” Darren corrected.

  “Whatever. Can you drink?”

  “Er, technically,” Darren said slowly. “It makes them stronger, but the doctor said I can drink some.”

  “I don’t, though,” Jayden said tartly.

  “But I might not be allowed anyway,” Darren admitted, and Paul laughed.

  “Well, tell you what. Whatever you can drink, I’ll do it too,” he bargained, and Jayden raised his eyebrows. “Can’t have one man sober at this thing, so we’ll tough it out together. Means we might get him home in time for his wedding too. Maybe.”

  “Yeah right,” Darren said in a sour tone, but something in his face had softened, and Jayden kissed the top of his shoulder through the cotton T-shirt gently. “Cheers, mate. Hopefully I’ll talk this one round, but either way…I can’t get plastered.”

  “Fair enough,” Paul said briskly. “I’ll match you then.”

  “Which means you’ll be drunk, and I’ll be a bit tipsy.”

  “Shut your face,” Paul commanded; Darren snorted. “Yeah, can tell you’re feeling better, you little bitch.”

  “Do I need a hotel room?”

  “Nah, crash at mine.”

  “In which case, get off my fucking phone, and I’ll see you Thursday after next,” Darren sniped and hung up. Within ten seconds, his mobile informed him that they were both whores, and Jayden laughed.

  “He’s been worried about you,” he confessed lowly, and Darren half-smiled.

  “I know.”

  Jayden paused, then decided that it needing saying, and said it. “They both love you, as much as I do. Not the same way, but just as much.”

  Darren hummed, resting his cheek on his hand as Jayden continued working at the knotted left shoulder. After a moment, he said, “I know I’m lucky, Jayden.”

  Jayden flicked his eyes up to watch Darren’s face silently.

  “I know I don’t…have something to be depressed about, not with…”

  “It’s chemical,” Jayden said softly. “It’s just chemical. It’s not you being stupid, it’s your brain not quite hitting all the targets. It’s nothing to do with…with everything else. With me and Paul and Rach and everyone.” He privately thought it was a bit to do with Darren’s parents and his upbringing, but kept that to himself. And anyway, that wouldn’t be stupid either, because Jayden was pretty sure anyone who had to put up with Darren’s parents for too long would be depressed. They hadn’t even sent a Christmas card. And the birthday card his mother sent last year had been in the wrong month entirely.

  “Mm,” Darren hummed, still watching him. He looked…open. Thoughtful, maybe, and that wasn’t a look he wore much. Shrewd and calculating, or calm and faintly amused. Pensive wasn’t really his thing, and Jayden prodded his forehead.

  “What’s going on in there?”

  “Appreciating,” Darren said and shrugged. “Feel like I can actually see the bigger picture now. This stuff’s doing its thing.”

  “The drugs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.” Jayden kissed the place where Darren’s shoulder met his neck and squeezed the loosened shoulder. “Okay. Lunch?”

  * * * *

  That evening, Rachel went out with some of her girlfriends (another had been dumped too, and they decided to drown their sorrows and curse men together) and Jayden retreated to the bathroom for a hedonistic, two-hour soak in scented bubble bath and generally be a bit of a tart for the night.

  Darren sat down at the piano.

  The music had been twisting and turning in his head ever since Rachel’s first lesson, and he had missed it in a weird way. Stroking the smooth coolness of the keys, he could feel nearly twenty years of education flooding back, from the very first music sheets he’d learned to read over the top of a recorder with a private tutor before he’d even started school, through the first cool ivory touches of the family piano and the first high shriek of a violin, and right out the other side: to criticising poor songs on the radio, and shying away from string instrumentals, and silence.

  Now it was bubbling up again, and whilst he was wary—the violin, after all, had been disastrous in the end and had left its mental scars—he also felt vaguely as though he were coming home, or fitting back into himself a little tighter than he had been before. He was a musician, through and through, and that had never quite faded away. He had never lost that. It, however, had briefly lost him.

  In the quiet of the living room, the memory flooded back hard enough that Darren’s fingers fell into the opening arrangement without conscious effort, and he straightened as though performing to an audience. There was a hush, just like a stage. There was a twitch in his fingertips, just like the anxiety of the opening bars in a concert. There was a buzz in the back of his mind, just like…

  Just like the pleasure he had once gotten from this.

  Because he had enjoyed music, at first. Learning the piano—Chopsticks and Clocks, the opening pattern of Für Elise, and the first complex movements in classical compositions—had been fun. He had enjoyed it, obtaining that power to copy and create such moving work. To generate reaction and emotion. The skill of it, the easy grace with which he played and the way it all fitted so naturally in his mind. Instinctive, almost. It had been like a drug, and he had loved it.

  He simply…had no
t loved the pressure that came with it. Brilliance was one thing, but the need to be brilliant…

  Here, though, in the tiny living room shared (right now) with a cat and nothing else…there was no pressure. Jayden would hear, in the bathroom, but Jayden had no musical skill at all and wouldn’t know brilliance from barbarity. He didn’t know classical music either; he wouldn’t know if it were right or wrong, once Darren began. There was nobody to judge but Darren himself, and nobody to please but…but the anticipation in his own head, and the sudden desire to play, like something itching to get out.

  He pressed into the first chord and took a breath as though it were the first. As though he had been drowning, and had been lifted free. The chord boomed around the tiny house, slapping the windows and demanding their attention. It wrapped itself into Darren’s hair and pulled, correcting his posture and his poise, insisting that he looked the part as well as played it. The air in his lungs felt crisp and cold, like waking from a long sleep.

  The world sharpened around him.

  From memory—and memory alone—he began to play. The notes were rusty and disjointed, pieced together rather than flowing, and he skipped over the parts he could not remember. Because it had been a long time since he had played this composition, and it was not a short piece. Twenty-four pieces, in truth, variations on Paganini. Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. One of the best pieces he had ever been challenged with as a student. He had always liked Paganini, and the concentration and speed for much of Rachmaninov’s works was a welcome challenge and to mix the two…

  Poor as it sounded, bouncing off the walls and sinking into the furniture like an welcome but lazy houseguest, it was also a demanding and beautiful song, hammer-blows and whispered steel, the strings inside the piano humming and bellowing in time with his hands and the groan of rusty pedals.

  He played Rhapsody on a Theme and felt something sealing in the centre of his chest.

  When, perhaps twenty minutes into the balm, Jayden’s arms wrapped around him from behind and damp hair rested on his shoulder, Darren closed his eyes entirely and let the music die away, his fingers stilling on the keys and the last shuddering chords fading under his shivering left hand.

  Here, he was home.

  Chapter 21

  Sunday had been lined up to be quiet. Darren liked quiet. Work had been hectic lately (everyone who was anyone was stabbing people these days, it seemed) and now that he was finally feeling normal instead of drifting inside his own skin, he wanted some bloody quiet. Just a break from it all. And it started off fine—sleeping in until half ten, getting a fry-up and a rare coffee with his pill, settling on the sofa with Rachel’s purring cat and watching TV while Jayden finished off something for work. They sat in silence—between them, anyway—but a comfortable one.

  It probably would have been a good morning, if not for…well. The doorbell at noon, and Jayden—in the middle of getting ready to go food shopping by then—calling for Darren to get it, and Darren opening it and…

  “Hello, Darren.”

  Darren blinked, his brain not quite sure what to do with this. His visitor shuffled his feet, looking oddly uncertain—and oddly short, some part of Darren’s mind piped up spitefully—and he cleared his throat. “Uh. Father.”

  “I was hoping you would join me for lunch,” Father said.

  Darren frowned. “Er.”

  “Darren, who is it?”

  Darren didn’t know what to say—to Father or to Jayden. Father looked uncomfortable, which was unsurprising. Darren hadn’t seen him since…he turned it over in his head…Christ, since the divorce was finalised. Nearly two years ago now. He and Scott had gone to sit in on the final hearing, when custody of Misha was decided, and he’d seen Father briefly then. And that had been the last time. Hell, Darren wasn’t even aware Father knew where he lived.

  Jayden appeared at his elbow and stopped dead. “Mr. Peace.” His voice was like a layer of frost forming on the doorframe. His fingers touched Darren’s elbow very lightly, and he was suddenly radiating tension.

  Father nodded at him, obviously unsure of his name—yet again—and Darren clutched at the spark of irritation. He was usually irritated with Father. That was normal, at least. “What are you doing here?” he asked finally.

  “I would like to speak with you,” Father returned, calmly and oh-so-formally. “And I feel that such a discussion would be easiest in a neutral, public setting. Unfortunately I do not have your phone number, so…”

  Jayden clutched Darren’s elbow harder, and Darren shook his head. “You go shopping,” he said quietly, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw that pale face crease in a frown. “Go on, it’s fine. I’ll text you where we go, you can come and join me later. Or after.”

  Jayden’s hand around his elbow tightened, then he nodded. “All right,” he murmured lowly, sliding past Darren to leave. On the step, he twisted back for a light kiss, barely touching and entirely, Darren was sure, to make a point to Father. “Love you,” Jayden murmured and pressed another kiss to his cheek. “Call if you need me.”

  Father shifted uncomfortably again, and Jayden glowered at him before turning on his heel and heading for the bus stop at the end of the street. Darren rolled his eyes fondly, the bitchy show of support shoring him up against whatever this was, before saying, “Come in, then. Let me grab my shoes and coat.”

  Father stood awkwardly on the mat to wait and peered around their little ground floor with marginal curiosity. Darren left him to it: their house was rather nondescript, and even Father would struggle to find something snide to say—apart from possibly a comment on how small it was. Jayden was quite house-proud, and usually cleaned Saturday mornings before Darren got up, so this morning the place was already fairly pristine, cat aside. The only mark for Father to dislike, perhaps, was Jayden’s graduation photo on the wall, and that was hardly them necking on a flat surface.

  “You, uh,” Father said awkwardly. “You’re still working with the police, then?”

  He was eyeing Darren’s black work boots, and Darren nodded.

  “Right,” Father said.

  There was a short pause while Darren laced his shoes, and Father cleared his throat again.

  “Er, enjoying it?”

  “Come on,” Darren said, taking a moment of pity. Father had never really talked to him—not unless it was about why he wasn’t practising or studying hard enough—and the meagre attempts at small talk were painful at best. “Where did you have in mind?”

  Father had brought his car—an Audi, which Darren grudgingly admired—and drove them to a quayside restaurant in Portsmouth with prices that Darren would never have paid himself. He asked for a Stella when Father asked, and that spiteful train of thought sparked up again with delighted glee at the slightly pained look he received and the awkward way that Father asked for it. Even the barman smirked, for an instant.

  “So what did you want to talk about?” Darren asked, after they had settled at a table overlooking the murky quays, seagulls screaming at the boats bobbing in choppy water, and Father frowned into his glass of water.

  “I suppose,” he said, “I want to talk about you.”

  Darren raised his eyebrows. Father looked tired, he realised. Tired and old. He wasn’t that old, really, but he looked it, with lines drawn around his eyes and nose and a sagging mouth that had once been firm. He had lost weight (and hair) and something close to pity stirred in Darren’s gut for him. Mother had been ruthless, and Father had taken the divorce badly.

  “I suppose your mo—Alison—told you about the circumstances of our, ah…”

  “Divorce, yes.”

  “…What did she…?”

  “That she was moving on with another man,” Darren said carefully. She had actually outright said she was sleeping with someone else, but he rather thought saying that would be a mistake.

  Father swallowed. “She requested it.”

  “I know, Father, I attended the final hearing.”

  “
She, uh…she had grown tired of me, I suppose.”

  “You mean she found somebody else,” Darren said flatly. Mother had a modus operandi. She stayed as long as the man was useful, or her best option. Scott’s father had been sacrificed to that, and now Darren’s. On the plus side, he supposed, Mother was likely too old now to have more children. She certainly lacked the inclination.

  “Yes,” Father said slowly.

  “What’s that got to do with me?” Darren prompted when nothing more was forthcoming.

  “I suppose I always left communication with the children up to Alison,” Father said eventually. “When I moved out, I realised I had none of your details and would struggle to contact you.”

  “You never contact me anyway,” Darren pointed out, and Father’s mouth tightened.

  “And I…regret that.”

  “It’s been two years since the hearing. Why now?”

  “I have…been putting my life back in order.”

  “That’s fair enough, but why show up now?”

  “You are my son, Darren.”

  “Why are you here?” Darren insisted. “It’s not like we’re close.”

  “I…regret that as well.”

  Darren frowned, eyeing that unfamiliar face. He didn’t look like his father—he was the spitting image of his mother, in fact—and once-a-year (at most) visits to the family home since he was eighteen had meant his father’s face had been largely abandoned. Forgotten, even. And two years had not been kind to Jeffrey Peace.

  “With Michelle growing up—and remaining permanently with her mother—I suppose I have realised that I have two children and…very little relationship with either one of them. And that…doesn’t sit well with me.”

  Darren sipped at his lager. “Yeah, well.”

  “So, uh…” Father swallowed and shifted awkwardly. “You’re still with…”

  Darren waited.

  “…that…boy,” Father finished eventually.