The Noted Palace
By Jem Morgenstern
She walked onto the stage. The audience remained completely silent and listened to the click of her heels, as she sauntered to the cello that stood waiting for her in the center of the stage. John watched, like a dog presented with a plate of pulled pork, intently and excitedly with a heart readying itself for impending joy. John listened, as if her heels knocking against the stage were the music they had been waiting to hear. Although she hadn’t started playing, he could already feel the vibrations of the music that he had become so familiar with in the weeks and months of listening to her practice. He was as excited to see her perform, as she was to play. The clicking of her heels stopped, she sat on the chair, and she looked out into the audience for what seemed to her like many seconds, but it was really just a few. She felt nervous, but she wasn’t. She knew she could do this and she had no worry that she might make a mistake. The auditorium was completely silent, except for the echo of stillness and quiet. The walls anticipated the long, deep bellows of her cello.
The Philadelphus Lewisii Music Hall was built to stage massive musical performances with hundreds of people playing on the stage at once. Structurally, it was very unique. Instead of being built with depth, so that musicians could be placed row behind row behind row, it was built so that one-thousand musicians would fit on the stage with only two very wide rows and enough space between the individuals for each player to be comfortable in their skin and have the space for the instruments themselves and the movements required to play them. The architects paid no mind to the effect the arrangement would have on the sound emanating from the orchestra’s instruments; their goal was to design the most aesthetically intriguing display within the city, rather than the most technically profound orchestral stage. Because of its width, the music would always sound less harmonized and synchronous than it would on a regular stage. After the construction was complete, the architects realized this and advertised the less-than-perfect stage as a modern artwork with supposed commentary on how a person’s physical location affects the way they perceive events and time, how one person will experience an event one way and another the other way, and how a person could experience something once and then return to experience it again from a slightly different perspective and find themselves witnessing something that is completely different to what they had experienced before (this would help drive their argument that everyone should come see each performance at least twice, which would greatly increase their monetary gain for some time). Their brilliance in marketing their ineptitude as exceptional intellect paved the way for a few of these architects to move to careers in advertising.
The length of the stage made the woman’s walk to the center more exciting than it would have been, if she had walked across a regular stage. She didn’t want to seem rushed, nor did she want to take up too much time with her walking, so she practiced for hours to find the perfect measure between a brisk walk and an elegant saunter. The walk was as much of a performance as the music she would play. Her walk would preemptively define her character and personality, affecting the way her music would touch the audience’s ears. If her walk radiated confidence, it would be beautiful and subtly erotic, which is what she had hoped for (she had caught a glimpse of the audience beforehand and hoped her gentle sashay would land a few dozen scraps of paper in her dressing room, leading to more scraps of paper, plastic, and rubber in the coming nights of the week, which would be disposed of pridefully in each of the following mornings). If she reverted back to her most well-known form, a delicate arch, her music would only result in mediocre reviews and sympathetic thank-yous from women in their mid-forties, who would be reminded of themselves by the gentle innocence of a gifted and unconfident young woman (who they all feel they once were).
Still, the walls anticipated the bellowing voice of her cello. She was still sitting and in three seconds, the lights flood the stage, as had been rehearsed. She could feel the heat and the eyes latching onto her, now unobstructed by a wall of shadows. His eyes pierced her skin and she felt that, too. She barricaded herself with a deep breath, clutched the neck of her cello, and took the bow across the strings - a heavy moan. This wasn’t the song that he had heard her play before. The same notes, order, length, and tempo, but the intent had changed. It didn’t exist for him, as he felt it did while listening to her practice. She consciously made the decision to ignore his presence, which resulted in the creation of a miniscule, yet soul-altering void in his chest. Like a rash that ate away his positivity, it spread upwards and downwards, slaughtering the energetic tingling that came with his excitement to see her play her song in front of a begging audience for the first time and replacing it with an aching pulsation of worry, anxiety, and a hollow hopelessness. With the decision to disinvite his gaze, she radiated a confidence that warmed the room.
Fours hours later - no intermission between them, no pauses, and no interruptions - the music finally ended. Originally, the performance had only been set to go for two hours, but she was so pleased with how well she had been playing that she made an independent decision to extend the performance’s time by two hours. The audience, of course, was confused, but they sat still and graciously endured the additional two hours of singular-cello orchestral music because they didn’t want to seem rude. Not once during the performance did anyone leave their seat, out of respect for the confident young musician on stage. Anyone who needed to pee held it in, no matter how badly they needed to. Considering that at least half of the attendees went to the performance directly after attending the Kamen Drinking Water Convention, during which they drank a grand multitude of the booths’ samples, and that another large portion came directly from the grand opening event of the Archimedes Artisanal Water Bar next door, there was an understandable amount of uncomfortable shuffling that started about one hour into the performance and lasted for the entirety of the remaining three hours. The only audience members who didn’t seem to be in dire need of urinating were those who came directly from the event at the Bravo Watersports Arena across town. After five minutes of heavy applause, the audience shuffled their way towards the rows’ ends, into the aisles, and out the doors. She stood at the center of the stage until the last person turned their back, and then she made her exit.
She stood in the connecting hallway and buried her lungs in a deep breath. In her mind, she was rapidly pacing back and forth but - although beginning to wilt - her figure was still. Her confidence was beginning to dim and bleed into the air, but she vacuumed it all back in through her wide nostrils and pushed it back into her body, letting it spread into each corner of her body, like cotton filling the deflated skin of a stuffed animal.
She used this moment to say to herself, “Anne, it’s not going to work,” a sentence she had been hiding from herself. She knew this moment of self-honesty would dissipate and that she had to take advantage of it. It took four seconds longer than it should have for her to find her coat and bag. Luckily, her phone was lying dormant in the first pocket she checked, which saved her an indeterminate (because of the multitude of possible search-and-not-find scenarios) amount of time. It had grown cold in the hours it spent without the heat of her body keeping it warm, but it wouldn’t take long for it and her hand to rekindle their friendly bond. With only fifteen swipes of her finger, her life had changed for the undeniable better and her mood had sprouted from a horrific seed into a flourishing bouquet. A pleasant smile grew from the corners of her lips and her eyes rose from sunken pits. The string connecting him and her was cut.
A small paper - only two inches wide and one inch tall - laid on the rug; like a primitive business card, it displayed a handwritten name and phone number. Its surface was unscathed by anything but the pristinely black ink in which the letters and numbers were written. The handwriting was nearly perfect: pronounced curves, sharp angles, and calculated length, yet it was uniquely human. It caught her attention the same way a particularly attractive ghost might. She picked it up from the floor and slipped it into the pocket of her coat, along with her phone. She left her dressing room, and The Philadelphus Lewisii Music Hall, and returned to The Property. Pushed by her excitement and general impatience, the fourteen minute drive only took her eight.
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