A few hours later in the foyer, gaping floor-to-ceiling windows allowed ample sunset hues to fill the space. I rubbed my bloodshot eyes and glanced a fake but wide smile at Mr. Fields.
“Same time next week?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Mr. Fields said firmly.
My chest started heaving, I went white. I knew something happened…
“The last two checks bounced Miss King.”
I looked down, embarrassed and irritated with my parents for not being transparent. I stuttered my way into, “I’m sorry Mr. Fields, I mean Sir…”
He crouches down to my eye line, “we will work it out. You are so…SO…close…”
Just then the words slipped off my tongue, I couldn’t help but ask, “Sir, did the woman in the video reach her highest self?” He smiled smugly, “She did.”
————————
After a walk through Mr. Fields’ gated community, the kind I dream about while listening to Mozart in the shower, I pouted by the bus stop near a homeless man staring at me.
I couldn’t get the pink-haired maven out of my head. Maybe I could find her on Facebook…I held my viola case tight and sifted in my skirt pocket for my cell. It’s not there. I adjusted my viola case strap and went into my other pocket…nope, not there either. The homeless man smiled at me, with two teeth, when I looked up. He licked his lips and stood up.
An older woman in a wheelchair turned to me and flashed some sort of makeshift weapon my way, it didn’t ease my fear but I knew the bus would arrive shortly…
I moved to the other side of the bus stop’s flat roof enclosure. He was no longer in my line of vision but I noticed a missing person’s flier taped to the bus stop side. It was a young Hispanic girl about twelve years old. I was flooded with a bleak memory at that moment…from being at the bus stop years ago, a missing person’s flier of a young woman with pink hair. It rocked me for a few moments until I talked myself out of the story I was about to create in my mind. Could it have been the same woman from the video? No…No…way I thought.
I watched the bus pull up and then leave. I couldn’t wait another week for my next lesson but I also wouldn’t dare show up the following day in my dad’s broken-down Nissan.
Back down the road, I went…
It was dark and windy now. The street was empty.
I make it back to the daunting walk up and with overwhelming trepidation, I knock on the door.
It SWINGS OPEN into the dark, vacant foyer.
I murmured, “Mr. Fields?”
No answer…I move further, yet ever so slowly, into the home.
“Mr. Fields? Hello? Mr. Fields, it’s Lyla. I left my phone, Sir.”
My gut told me to go back, getting my phone wasn’t worth the wrath or awkwardness that may come if he finds me here unannounced. I slowly inched backward, back to the front doorway but just then…
Car tires skid past me in the gravel driveway. Mr. Fields peels off in his Benz, Italian opera blaring from the car sound system, without noticing my presence.
Without thinking, I move through the home…lurking into every room and taking in this unknown forbidden territory.
Each room felt fragile and strikingly opulent. After glancing at the photo wall of Mr. Fields with previous presidents, several people I didn’t know but assumed were of importance, and Maggie Poolin, renowned for her virtuosity, expansive interpretations…Grammy winner, and my ultimate icon. I rested my finger on the photo of her face as if her brilliance would rub off on me.
My sneaky quest through Mr. Fields’ home was over, I found my cell under one of the sofas in the study before moving to the kitchen to splash some cold water on my face. I turned to head out and THERE IT WAS.
Amongst the modern, cold, clean edges of the space was this maddening aesthetic eye sore…
I moved my fingers along the alabaster granite door in the corner of the room. Small holes, various sized and shaped pits, down the front, like some sort of intricate keyhole I had never seen before. My fingers made a “U” shape at the last pocked in the door and it dawned on me.
I scurried over to the glass display in the entryway and grabbed the small viola. It felt like fire in my hand, Mr. Field’s most prized possession, and paused. “I shouldn’t be here,” I said, trying to stop myself but my unshakeable curiosity took over.
_______
Back in the kitchen, I shove…as gently as possible, the viola (on its side) into the door pits.
CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. IT WORKS and the door pops open into a dark abyss.
I looked out the window in the kitchen one more time to make sure the coast was still clear.
I step down and must have motioned a light, with each step, another light illuminated the staircase to a beautiful yet minacious hallway. Alabaster marble, floor to ceiling, the hallway was claustrophobic.
A cold chill ran through my body, the kind of gut feeling I get when I know I’m about to do something I will be grounded for. Still, I pushed forward and moved further into the hallway.
There was an instrument at the dead-end of the hallway. A glass case display case is canopied around IT. What could it be? I wondered…was IT some kind of magic instrument? Some kind of tool to his and all the previous success stories? Was I about to put my finger on IT?
I crept closer slowly, looking back down the opposite side of the hallway to the door I entered through…the coast was still clear but I needed to hurry.
AT THIS MOMENT…I SAW…IT.
My body went numb.
I steadied myself on the cold glass display case with sheer terror.
IT was HER.
The human viola was the pink-haired maven’s spinal cord, clean, porcelain white, bones leading down to the pelvis, covered in human skin. THE TREBLE CLEF TATTOO with a small heart next to it…right there at the “lower bout” of the “instrument.”
My throat tightened and my knees were buckling.
I grabbed my cell from my pocket and dialed 911 but my hands were so jittery, it slipped from my palm onto the floor. I reached down…
RED LIGHTS flooded the hallway. I heard the DOOR CLOSE from down the hallway.
My heart was racing so fast, that I thought I was going to have a heart attack right there. I could hear the 911 operator, “911, what’s your emergency?”
I heard his JERKY BREATHING.
My adrenaline kicked in and I turned.
Mr. Fields was standing there. His blank stare was horrifying.
My body was so tense I couldn’t even muster up a word. We just stared at each other.
“She felt the music inside her,” he said.
I hear the 911 operator, “Hello? Is anyone there?”
We both ignore it.
“I want to feel it too,” I said.
His jerky breathing stopped with a smile.