by Lindsey Hart
“I can’t go. I’m sorry.” It was the first time he could remember apologizing to anyone in a very long time.
“I’m not asking you to go.” Minnie swallowed hard. Her hands clasped in front of her waist. She was wearing a black dress and matching Mary Janes. On her, it looked nothing short of professional. She was glaringly perfect, not a wrinkle in her clothing or a hair out of place on her head. It almost hurt Dallas to look at her. “She’s not going to be prepared when she comes back here tomorrow. I’ve done the best I can to fill in gaps for her, but this is going to be a shock.”
“I’m going to be a shock.” His voice was so gravelly it was a wonder Minnie understood anything he was saying.
She blinked and took another small step into the room. She was still a good forty odd feet away, only two or three from the door, as though she wanted to flee instead of stand there trying to talk to him. As if he was some monster locked away in the dungeon of his room and if she entered he might breathe fire at her.
“I don’t have anything for you,” Dallas sighed. He turned away because he couldn’t bear to see the disappointment in Minnie’s eyes. “She never talked to me about her family.”
“How many years ago did you meet her?”
Dallas didn’t have to do a calculation. The number was there. It was easy to remember, because Hannah had been there. He’d started teaching her when she was fifteen.
“Fifteen.” The word reverberated around the room.
“Fifteen?” Minnie repeated, shocked.
Dallas was glad he wasn’t looking at her. “Yes. Fifteen. I was teaching her best friend. She was just… there. Her friend died when she was twenty. Leena didn’t stop coming. She- she kept me sane. A year later she- she wrote something for me. She sang. It was the first time I realized that she had a gift. She had this idea about a theatre. It took two years to get the plans together. She needed access to my accounts. I couldn’t be bothered. I married her because I thought it was the easiest way. She understood what it was, the marriage. It was an agreement. I got- I got what I wanted and so did she. She wanted to be on stage. She wanted to use her voice to move people. Two years later the renovations were done. We moved in. You know the rest, you were hired soon after.”
“I’ve been here for four years. I know Leena is thirty. I just didn’t realize…”
“What? That she knew me so young? That she ruined her life with someone like me?”
“I’m not judging you, Dallas.” Minnie’s voice was patient and controlled. “In a way, you’re my boss. I won’t pretend to understand how you live your life, but I also won’t pretend to have any idea what you’re going through. What Leena did with her life is her own business. She seemed happy enough, before the accident. I’m just here now because she’s confused and afraid. She’s coming back here, back to her home, with no prior experience or feelings or memory.”
“So please, be kind to her? Keep away from her? What is it you want me to do?”
“That’s for you to decide,” Minnie said gently. “I know you’ve been kind to her, in your way, or she would never have stayed. I know there is something about you that- well, that she thinks is incredible. It’s more than just your talent. The impression I got before was that…”
“What?” Dallas spun. He regretted the motion immediately, considering how it sent shards or light ripping through his foggy, exhausted brain.
“Nothing,” Minnie shook her head. “I’ll leave you alone now. I just- just hoped that you’d be ready to welcome her home tomorrow. She’s getting out at noon.”
He nodded. With one hand he reached out to steady himself against the piano. He needed to sleep. His exhausted body cried out in relief. He wished Minnie would just leave so he could drag himself to bed.
A memory, no, countless memories, of Leena taking his arm, guiding him away from the piano, tucking him into bed, bringing him food, even helping him into the shower, shaving him and brushing his hair when he couldn’t, flashed through his mind. It was like a video with images he couldn’t block out. He was ashamed of them, of himself, but most of all, he wished Leena was there, her gentle touch soothing his aching body, her kind words and sweet patience bringing him back from the precipice that always loomed so large inside of him.
“I’ll be on my best behavior,” Dallas ground out. “That’s what you want me to say isn’t it?”
Minnie’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t want you to say anything. Just clean yourself up. Or don’t. I’m sure she’ll see it sooner or later. Just try being nice for a change. Try thinking of someone other than yourself, if you can manage.” She didn’t wait for a response. Minnie turned and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Dallas was left, once again, in silence. He closed his eyes, willing himself to have the strength to make it to his room, to his bed, to find the healing power of sleep. He couldn’t make it. He felt the darkness closing in, the darkness of oblivion. He surrendered, falling right there, beside the piano, down, down to the cool hardwood floor. His eyes closed and behind them, he saw Leena’s face, beautiful in a way he’d never truly noticed before. It was her eyes, those eyes so filled with emotion and secrets that haunted him right before he surrendered to the abyss of healing rest.
CHAPTER 5
Leena
The world had gone from being one she was once at home in, to a confusing, cold, stark one at the hospital, to a mysterious world in which she felt like a stranger, desperately out of place.
After being released from the hospital, Minnie patiently drove them back to the theatre. It was just as she described, a large, three-story brick warehouse. The bottom displayed bright posters in the windows and even had a huge neon sign on the front, just like in the movies, which she wasn’t sure how she remembered, advertising their upcoming production.
The theatre was marvelous on the inside. Everything was new and fresh, reds and blacks. The actual theatre was huge, with three rows of seats that extended from the back all the way towards the stage. The stage was glorious with red velvet curtains peeled back to the side of a stage that was worthy of staring at for days. There were lights and boxes and red velvet carpet in the aisles. It looked like something classy enough to be straight out of the forties or fifties.
Again, Leena wasn’t sure how she knew that. She just did, like she knew what objects were. It was just that there was no association with them. For example, when she was shown into her own apartment on the second floor and she saw her kitchen, the living room with the antique settee, her neatly made up bedroom with antique dresser and brass headboard, she had no memory of purchasing the things or of sleeping in the bed or of anything else. She knew it was a bed and that it was for resting, but that was it.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” Minnie gripped her hand just inside the bedroom as Leena stared around blankly. “It will feel like home soon enough. I know it’s too early to talk about these things, but we do have a production coming up and coming up fast. You were playing the lead role. We had someone else playing the male lead. He was- uh- fired. And now your part… I’m sure you won’t be up to it. We’ll have to find two others. We have time, but only if we act fast. I can call in some favors.”
Leena blinked, the thick fog in her brain sliced like someone shone a flashlight beam through it and there was a fleeting instant where she saw herself on stage.
“No,” she whispered, not at all certain. “I want to play the lead. I- this one is special isn’t it?”
Minnie hesitated. “Yes, I think so. It’s a play that you and Dallas wrote together. You told me that it took you years to decide to make it public. You just said that it was time.”
“And Dallas and I- we don’t normally write together?”
“No, I don’t think so. Not that you ever mentioned.”
Leena nodded slowly. “Get everyone together. We’ll have a meeting this afternoon about the production. I’ll get everything sorted out.”
“We’ll get everything sort
ed out,” Minnie corrected softly. “You don’t have to do it by yourself.”
“Thank you.” Leena felt the burn of tears behind her eyes. It wasn’t the first time that morning she’d just about broken down. “I guess I had better see Dallas. He’s across the hall?” Minnie had pointed to the door when they’d walked up.
“Yes,” Minnie said. There was something in her voice, a warning. “I would just- tread carefully. Dallas can be- well, he sometimes gets lost in his music. That’s what you used to tell me. It can be pretty shocking if you’re not used to it. He can be moody, so just be prepared. If he yells at you, don’t take it personally. Don’t stand for it either. You can leave or you can hold your ground. I just don’t want you to be unhappy. Before, you used to have years of experience dealing with him. Now, it would be a little like jumping into scalding water.”
“I’ll take care not to get burned,” Leena said, but her words lacked conviction.
“I’ll be downstairs in my office if you need me.”
“Thanks.” Leena knew exactly where that was because Minnie had shown her right before they came up to the second floor. She’d received the full tour of her own establishment. She knew she was going to feel like a stranger in her own home, but now it was official.
Leena watched as Minnie left. She felt a moment of panic when she was alone. Minnie was like her safety net. Not having her there, even though she was in her own bedroom, made Leena feel like she was floating away.
She shook her head gently, refusing to give in to her fears. This was her life now. Maybe her memory would come back. Maybe it wouldn’t. She’d just have to make the best of it either way. She knew that if she put off meeting Dallas, it would only give her worse anxiety.
It took Leena a moment to work up the nerve to leave her small apartment. She stepped across the hall. The floor was hardwood, probably original. She’d seen, when she came up a stairwell that was so narrow it was also likely original to the building, that there was a radiator near the large wooden door that separated the stairs from the hall. There were a few smaller windows that lined the hall. She figured the living quarters were built during the renovation. The kitchen in her place looked far too new to have just been there. The warehouse was used for offices, Minnie told her, before they bought it.
She came to a broad wood door, scarred from use. It was one of those doors that was thick, solid wood, the kind of thing that belonged to another time and place, another world. She raised her hand and knocked slowly.
Leena wasn’t sure what she expected. There was no answer. The door wasn’t magically pulled open. The man she was married to wasn’t there to greet her, to ask if she was well, to welcome her back into a life they apparently shared together.
The door handle was cool when she wrapped her hand around it. She turned, half expecting it to be locked, but it wasn’t. She pushed the door open and stepped over the threshold.
It made perfect sense that the door seemed to belong to another world because that’s what she stepped into. The large studio was full of instruments of all shapes and sizes. There was a small green antique couch on one side. Underneath was a woven red Persian rug. The hardwood floor was the same as that what was in the hallway. The walls were raw exposed brick. The room was lined with radiators. It looked like a true studio.
The room was dark, so much darker than she expected. The window coverings were pulled down. It took her eyes a second to adjust. When they did, she blinked quickly. There, hunched over a huge, impressive black piano, was the man who was her husband. A stranger. She wore a gold wedding band on her finger, marking her as his, but she knew nothing about him.
He turned slowly, as she closed the door. He didn’t rise. He made no effort to come and see her.
Leena kept staring, frozen in place, the situation made that much more awkward by the fact that she knew she looked like she’d just been run over by a bus. Or more aptly, hit by a car. She knew she was bruised and scraped, the cuts on her face and jaw still not healed. Her hands were a mess of bruises and cuts. At least her clothing covered the rest.
Dallas slowly stood. He wore jeans and a red and black plaid shirt. Not at all what she expected. She wasn’t sure what she’d envisioned him in, but it wasn’t that. His clothes were rumpled like they’d been slept in. His long, sandy blonde hair lay tussled about his shoulders. It was snarled and matted in places like it hadn’t seen a good brushing in a few days.
Despite the fact that there were deep black smudges under his eyes and that lips that looked like they would have been beautiful if they smiled were pulled into a thin, hard line, he had the impressive physique of a man who took care of himself. By all accounts, he didn’t. She did that for him, which meant he must have been blessed with an amazing set of genetics.
His shoulders filled out his shirt well. They were surprisingly broad and powerful. His broad chest tapered to a narrow waist. Powerful, long legs held him upright. He stared at her, his cold grey eyes biting into her, assessing her in a way that made her more than a little uncomfortable.
Since he wasn’t about to speak, she finally decided to break the silence. She let her hand fall away from the door and stepped into the dark room. It felt closed in, the lack of light and the dank smell of dust and hopelessness thick in the air.
“You never came.” It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but the words squeezed out of her throat.
Dallas never blinked. His hard, flat expression never altered. “No.”
“Why not? You’re my husband, aren’t you?”
He laughed coldly, a sound that wasn’t truly a laugh at all, just a calculated sneer of derision. “You can cut the act now. If you’re doing it for attention, you’re not going to get any sympathy from me.”
Leena’s mouth literally dropped open. “Are you insane?” she hissed. “Look at me!” She jabbed her index finger upwards. “I have stitches on my face. I am bruised all over my entire body. That car ran me over! There is a guy going to court right away for leaving the scene. I’ve spent the last week in a hospital with doctors telling me that I might never recover my memory and you think it’s an act!” She couldn’t believe his nerve. This man was her husband and she could see absolutely no emotion at all in his eyes.
“You always were a good actress, Leena. You might have everyone fooled, but not me.”
“This is not an act!” She wanted to scream in frustration. Instead, she balled her hand into a fist and let the sting of her nails biting into her palm take away some of the anger.
He shrugged. “Either way, I didn’t come because we both know that I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t? Can’t or won’t?”
“That is just a matter of semantics.” Those cold grey eyes finally blinked.
“Convenience? That’s what you call our marriage? By all accounts, I do everything for you. I look after you all day and after most of this place too.”
“Is that what people told you? That you’re some kind of saint looking after the monster that I am?”
“No. Of course not. They just made it seem like… like if we were married, then the convenience was definitely on your side.”
That bitter laugh sounded again. She didn’t like the acoustics of the room, the way the sound bounced around and came back at her. “Well, seeing as you say you don’t remember, I’ll give you a bit of a refresher. Yes, our marriage is an arrangement. One in which I continue to hide away from the world since it is what I need and one in which you get what you want, namely my millions of dollars to build this place and make yourself the actress you always dreamed you could be.”
“What? I’ve never… I would never-”
“Squander my money?” He shrugged. His eyes flicked away, back to the piano off to the side. They were maybe twenty feet away, but she felt the distance growing, the gap yawning, widening. How could she ever have married this man? “Maybe you didn’t. Anyway, you got what you wanted. You sing, and you act out there, or whatever you would call
it and my money made it possible, so I’m telling you that on the side of the arrangement, maybe you came out on top.”
He stalked forward his height growing as he neared. His shoulders seemed broader, his size that much larger and looming up close. Leena wanted to take a step back, but she held her ground. Dallas stopped. His eyes swept over her body, assessing. “I wouldn’t worry about the stitches and the bruises. They’ll go away in time. You never were anything but a sub-par actress anyway. People don’t come just to see you.”
She didn’t mean for it to happen, but her anger got the best of her. She had the strangest feeling he was trying to goad her into being angry, like he wanted her to hurl words at him that she didn’t even mean. Despite her resolve to hold back, the words spilled out anyway. “Damn you to hell, Dallas.”
His lips curled into a thin smile. “That, we both know, will never happen.”
Leena balled her other hand into a fist. She was so rigid her shoulder muscles began to ache. “Let me ask you this. Did I hate you before? I can’t remember?” She knew, in her heart, that she didn’t. This man infuriated her. He said horrible, mean, spiteful things. But she could not shake the feeling he didn’t mean it. That he was trying to keep her at bay, drive a spike through a heart that was softening as the minutes ticked by. She’d only felt tenderness before when she heard his name. Why? What had he ever done to endear himself to her?
He shrugged. “I have no idea. It doesn’t matter to me either way. We might not love each other. I might not even be capable of love. None of that matters. The only thing that meant anything is the music. My work. There was an opera I was writing, between lovers. It was a tragedy. She dies in the end and leaves him alone and he is nothing but a pathetic wretch. I wrote it in a day and I couldn’t stand to look at it after. I crumpled it up and threw it away. You found it and over the weeks, you rewrote it. One morning I came, and it was sitting at the piano, the pages ironed out, the fresh ones, where you’d replaced the ending, evident. You gave them a happy ending. Instead of death, you gave her life. You gave him a heart and a soul. It was then that you went from being a student to being a partner and I knew that this would work. I suppose that’s why I tolerate you. It’s why I allowed this building, the shows, the musicals, the plays, my work on parade for everyone to criticize or love as they see fit. That’s why this works. Because as much as I love music, you love it too.”