First Cool Night of the Year

The heat broke on a Monday. By seven in the evening the air in the courtyard had gone from soup to something you could actually breathe. Every window in the building opened within about ten minutes, as if on a schedule.

That was when I learned how much of the building I’d been living next to without hearing.

The third floor was frying garlic. Someone above me was watching a quiz show and answering half a second after the contestants, always correctly. A dog walked the length of a hallway and back, tags jingling, then did it again, as if measuring for carpet. Across the courtyard a kettle began to whistle and was taken off just before it got interesting.

And somewhere on the fourth floor, someone was practicing the piano.

It was the same eight bars, over and over. It was a small, polite piece, the kind that sounds easy until the left hand joins in. Every time, the player reached the sixth bar, stumbled on the same chord, stopped, and went back to the beginning.

By eight o’clock I knew the first five bars well enough to hum them while washing a pan. By half past eight, so did the quiz-show neighbor, who hummed them during the ad breaks.

The garlic turned into something with tomatoes. The dog gave up measuring. The sixth bar kept losing.

Around nine, a child on the second floor asked, at full volume, whether the piano person was allowed to stop. A grown-up voice said something too quiet to carry. The child said, “But do they know that?” The piano started again from the top.

I closed my window halfway, decided that was worse, and opened it again. By then I needed to know how it ended.

At nine forty, the player got through it. The chord landed, the seventh bar arrived on time, and the eighth ended where it was supposed to. For a second, nobody in the courtyard moved a fork.

Then, from a window I couldn’t see, one person clapped. Twice. Not loudly.

The piano waited. Then it played the eight bars again, all the way through and slower, as if checking they were still there.

After that the windows began to close, one at a time. By ten it was properly cold, and nobody had found their sweaters yet.

At seven the next morning, I heard the first bar start again from the top.

I put the kettle on and waited for the sixth.

Cover photo: Unsplash.