The Pianoplayer: A lesbian love story

by Rosalie Sommer

  Adolé's heart was racing. Stunned, he gazed again and again at these two meaningless, short sentences, at this naked piece of paper, which put the last magical night in a completely different light. Not a word of regret about this abrupt end to the day they had spent together, not a syllable about when they would see each other again. Was she imagining the whole thing? Had she been fooled? Was Michelle just another one of those women she considered a trophy?

  Or was she just painting the devil on the wall? Adolé forced himself to remain calm. She thought about it feverishly, searching for a plausible explanation. She reached for her mobile phone and tried to reach Michelle. Even if she had to leave unexpectedly, she was certainly available for a short conversation and comprehensible questions. But it only went to voicemail.

  Where was Michelle? What was that about? Why did she leave the house in such a hurry? Why had she apparently fled the house in such a hurry and thus had eluded a common awakening and harmonious morning after this wonderful night? Adolé racked her brain, tigressing up and down like a caged predator in this strange kitchen, without even considering touching the breakfast the refrigerator had prepared for her.

  Again and again she propped herself up stunned with both arms on the kitchen sideboard, looked out at the perfectly trimmed boxwoods, then looked down in her mind at the kitchen worktop and shook her head.

  She had hoped that the time of riddles would be over, that Michelle would trust her bit by bit and that at least now they would have the chance to get to know each other a bit better.

  But it seemed as if last night had been nothing more than a beautiful dream, a short intermezzo and nothing of this familiar common ground could be saved into reality.

  Adolé's doubts gave way to a frightening certainty. Finally she gathered the rest of her clothes and left the house, restless and torn apart, where she had spent those wonderful hours with this fantastic woman, where they had become so close and had slept so intimately together. Apparently none of this meant anything. Michelle had found her unpredictable and unsympathetic side again.

  Adolé couldn't make sense of it and desperately dropped into the first best taxi she found and drove back to her hotel. Arriving there, she sat motionless on her hotel bed in street clothes for a long time and recalled the last brilliant night over and over again, comparing it with the meaningless news of the morning after and came to no comprehensible conclusion. Again and again she looked expectantly at her mobile phone, but the display showed no new messages.

  At some point, Adolé lay on her bed with her knees tucked up, only apathetically lying on her side, trying to calm herself with speculative explanations. Surely her management had called her for a short-term appointment, she would still get in touch with her - but why hadn't she done exactly that before? Was she still so unimportant? What could be so urgent that she couldn't even do one or two sentences via WhatsApp?

  Suddenly Adolé was struck by a hot flash of lightning. What if it was all a ruse, an ambush to prove her sexual orientation beyond all doubt? Could Michelle have been collecting evidence or secretly taking pictures? Recorded audio recordings? Adolé was dizzy. The press would get a kick out of such hard evidence.

  Adolé jumped up. Her eyes wandered aimlessly through the room. She became hot and cold. She paced restlessly up and down in her hotel room and tried again and again to reach Michelle by phone. But all she could hear was the private voicemail that she kept receiving: "Hi, it's me, Michelle. I can't come to the phone right now, please leave a message."

  Her provocative and charming French accent almost drove Adolé out of her mind!

  She compulsively continued to spend the rest of Friday racking her brain for what might have happened, especially because she had assumed that Michelle had also sensed this special connection between them. She didn't leave the room, nor did she order anything to eat, just kept to the few peanuts from the minibar. She pondered and brooded.

  When she still hadn't received any news from Michelle towards evening, she ran out of explanations. She curled up on her hotel bed and gave up. She cried desperately. Once again she had fallen for an attractive charlatan, and surely the leading tabloid newspaper would present a corresponding headline next weekend.

  She did a great job of that again. Bravo!

  Roswitha would be delighted.

  15.

  Eventually exhaustion set in. After staring motionlessly at the ceiling of her room for hours, she fell exhausted into a restless sleep. There was no thought of rest. She rolled dreamlessly from side to side. Her cell phone was silent persistently. This was not a good sign.

  In the early hours of Sunday morning, Adolé awoke without feeling even a little rested. At first she remained sitting on the edge of the bed, but after a while she rose. After a long shower, she at least felt like a human being again.

  She had put it off long enough, but now she had to inform Roswitha, who was on a concert tour in Berlin with one of her other protégés. Undecided, she grabbed her cell phone and dialed Roswitha's number, which answered after the second ringing.

  "Good morning honey - up so early? What's wrong? "Adolé felt miserable and didn't bother to hide it from Roswitha for even a second. She came straight to the point for her circumstances and briefly outlined the events of the decisive night and at the same time formulated her suspicions for the press landscape of the coming weekend in a relatively neutral manner.

  Roswitha, who had already experienced everything, was surprised, but quite composed. She called on Adolé to calm down and warned her not to act rashly. It would be better to wait for the weekend and prepare for next Monday, when she would meet the French pianist regularly in the studio. Then she could address the incident unobtrusively and react accordingly.

  And under no circumstances should she fuel any speculation or answer tricky questions to the press. Keeping calm and showing coolness was the method of choice, even if it was extremely difficult to keep it up. A storm was raging in Adolé!

  When she hung up, she was at least a little more reassured than before. It proved once again that Roswitha was very experienced in dealing with stars as well as the press and that she always had good advice at hand.

  She was right. She had to stay calm and wait. She had no choice. Sooner or later she would see Michelle again anyway, even if it would happen differently than she had imagined a few hours earlier. But maybe there was a conclusive explanation for all this and all the excitement was for nothing.

  Adolé tried to pull himself together. She looked at her mobile phone from time to time without anything decisive happening there. She spent the rest of the weekend with lonely walks along the Alster, completely absorbed, and a glass or two of wine in front of the flickering television without really looking. In her mind she was always in the night that had begun so unexpectedly and ended so familiarly. It took far too long until this extended free weekend was finally over. Adolé spent the last night almost sleepless and with innumerable thoughts of this unforgettable night, the days before in the studio, this enigmatic woman and the questions what had probably happened in the meantime.

  16.

  Monday morning Adolé entered the recording studio very early as usual and as usual with a coffee cup in his hand. She felt bad, was restless and unrested. Her thoughts still circled around the events of the past days and were still looking for a comprehensible explanation. She simply could not switch off these thoughts that were constantly taking on a life of their own. Her heart was pounding, for today she certainly met Michelle again, whom she longed for so much, but whom she had dumped so brusquely after her fairytale night.

  In the meantime, she no longer deluded herself into thinking that business matters had prevented her from spending Friday morning with her. Even so, no obligation could be so pressing as to leave any opportunity for a loving WhatsApp message. But she should have thought about it and wanted to. But since she hadn't received a single piece of information so far, she knew that this was intentional and that M
ichelle had only taken advantage of the situation. She had had a nice evening with her - as if there were not millions of other women for such adventures. One option was to buy ladies, the other was simply the classic groupie just waiting to finally be acknowledged by a star and taken to a hotel room.

  So why was she after her, a woman who attracted far more attention and for whom the stakes were as high when her affair was discovered as they were for herself? That could have been much easier for her and has certainly happened more than once in this form. Certainly Ella, like Roswitha, had already had to resolve a crisis or two here, now that Adolé knew that Michelle was receptive to female charms and that she certainly lived them out here and there, although they were not conducive to her career.

  Or was that just the appeal, her drive? Poor Ella - but at least that explained why she and Roswitha got along so well and why they short-circuited from time to time, no matter where in the world they were. Apparently their protégés were more alike than first thought and therefore their problems and job descriptions were more or less the same. Surely the bond between them was similarly short and Ella already knew from Roswitha what had happened between them.

  Adolé sighed, and she realized that both managers had accepted a thankless task, even though they never had to worry about their bank balance again. But the press and public were adamant. They were constantly exposed to new situations, had to constantly reject curious advances or protect the private interests of their artists.

  And when it came to such an explosive issue as this, they had no choice. They had to deny it, no matter what. Better safe than sorry. It would be much easier for everyone if there was nothing to deny or if both would just say with full conviction "Yes, my musician is lesbian - so what?! It's 2019! It's 2019! Get over it!"

  But this was hardly possible even in the present day. The Schlager cosmos was too conservative for that and the target group of Schlager friends was too narrow-minded and uptight. Homosexuality did not occur at all in their world. Who wants to sit next to two gay Bavarian thoroughbred yodelers in the hit parade of hit music? Or to jovially overlook the fact that the main attraction and the German overstar is not interested in the strapping Upper Bavarian boys and is more interested in busty girls?

  Can you imagine how the local pop universe would flinch if it ever came out that Adolé Varell's glamorous showpiece relationship with his dashing pop colleague Julius Gruber was nothing more than a carefully planned hoax and clever diversionary tactic to keep Adolé out of dubious headlines once and for all, so effectively covering up who she really was?

  In Roswitha's opinion, one could not assume that Adolé's audience was able to differentiate between what was a private person and what was a public pop star. An outing was altogether too delicate for her, they were all too dependent on the sales figures of their recordings and concert tickets, regardless of the fact that they had all actually already taken care of after all these years.

  And because Roswitha Adolé had always been well managed, lovingly cared for her, and success spoke for her, Adolé had so far always managed more or less without resistance. Of course, sometimes the whole spectacle had gotten on her nerves, especially when Julius had apparently promised more than had been agreed at the beginning of their arrangement. But in the end this arrangement was for the best of everyone. Her audience, as much as she liked it, did not need to know every detail of her private life. Somewhere there were limits.

  Adolé would have loved to have been inspired by a role model, by a great German star, be it from film, sport, journalism, music, news or theatre, whatever! It would have been much easier to follow a woman who was in the public eye and who publicly admitted that her attention and love was directed towards other women, no matter what reprisals she was threatened with.

  But this has not yet been seen in the entire German media landscape, although it was difficult but possible in other countries, for example the USA. Women such as Ellen DeGeneres, Martina Navratilova, Jodie Foster, Ellen Page or Wanda Sykes went ahead there, and even though a stiff headwind blew in their faces from time to time, they were generally happy with their decision and on the whole, even professionally, had no significant disadvantages due to their honesty. Even better - through their common interests and their common proud approach they had created a bond that richly rewarded them for living a different life concept. Their community went far beyond a simple network. They had a real community, were popular and role models for all those who had a similar situation.

  Such a thing was unthinkable in Germany!

  ...a circumstance of which Adolé became painfully aware again and again and which she regularly cursed, for it weighed on her soul like a burden of a hundredweight.

  Scattered thoughts. Adolé pushed them aside. She forced herself to concentrate on the current studio session. Although she couldn't deny her nervousness, because Michelle wasn't in the studio yet, but would surely arrive there sooner or later, she took a new track together with the musicians and started to record it with all attention. This also made a good impression, no matter who was watching her and sooner or later joined the recordings.

  And as expected, it didn't take long before she noticed Michelle behind the darkened studio glass that separated the mixing console area from the room with the microphones.

  As if in defiance, she set out to achieve musical excellence and decided not to expose herself, ignoring the Frenchwoman at first and pretending that nothing had happened - what she could do, Adolé could do three times!

  The song demanded all their attention and skill anyway. It took her a little over an hour before she could deal with doing something else than singing for the first time. There was a short pause, which Adolé wanted to use for a short visit to the toilet.

  While she was still concentrating on singing this song, in the hallway in front of the studio she walked indirectly directly into Michelle, who had lowered her head and was wearing dark sunglasses.

  "Oh sorry! "Adolé came out automatically, when she - still busy with her song - unintentionally ran into Michelle. "Don't worry," it came back succinctly from the pianist. While she tried to escape the situation, Adolé seized the brief opportunity, grabbed Michelle by the sleeve and pulled her into a corner of the aisle.

  Uncertain as to what she should say, she struggled for words and finally said, without apparent excitement, "What are you doing here? Where have you been? Why didn't you contact me?!"

  As Michelle tried to free herself from the persistent grip, she wriggled back and forth and finally fought her way free. She glanced angrily at her wrinkled sleeve and finally squeezed out a short "I had work to do!" before turning and grudgingly walking down the corridor towards her own recording room. What remained was a confused, wounded and stunned Adolé.

  17.

  Adolé awoke again from a viscous sleep. She ran out of possible reasons for a valid reason for Michelle's impossible behaviour.

  In the meantime she doubted herself. Had she only imagined this night full of love, familiarity, tenderness and wordless harmony?

  A lot had already happened to her, at least until she decided to actively withdraw from the world of women. But this phenomenon of an unexpected, but dreamlike night of love, which was followed by complete ignorance, she just couldn't figure out.

  How could all this have happened? How could she let herself be taken by surprise like that? After all, she didn't even know Michelle. Why hadn't she just been careful and stood firm? And what had gone wrong in the end that Michelle actually believed that she could simply wipe away this night of multiple highlights as if it had never happened...

  All this was still a mystery to Adolé. Secretly, she knew very well that even before Michelle's love affair had begun, she had wanted more than just a decent working relationship. Of course - this was also desirable, since it was mainly up to her to drive the "joint" project. But beyond that, and Adolé knew this very well, she had had her eye on the pianist since the first meeting - she didn't kno
w why herself. Apparently, she was attracted by the difficult and extraordinary. Sometimes she was a mystery to herself, also the fact that she obviously did not think with her head but with her heart.

  But there was something about Michelle from the beginning that fascinated Adolé.

  Thank God she was not twenty anymore and had experienced similar situations before, even if the intensity and closeness with which she had spent this one night with Michelle was not so familiar. At least she was able to distract herself with her varied work and thus ensure that this nonsensical reaction of Michelle did not affect her so much and at least was not very effective.

  Nevertheless, sooner or later a solution was needed. For their CD project alone, which was actually the focus of attention. After all they were not in kindergarten here. And she hadn't imagined this passion and devotion on this decisive night.

  She was at a loss.

  There was no escape. Alone she found no way out of the situation, no matter how hard she tried and weighed the facts against each other again and again. So Adolé decided to confront Michelle at the appropriate time. But first she had to get hold of hers. Up to now she escaped the situation again and again, in which she stayed away from the studio and therefore from her work, contrary to every agreement and also signed contracts. How unprofessional!