Sempre con Tenerezza
After dinner, they went up to the solarium. She sat down at the piano and he stepped out to the balcony to enjoy a brandy and the cigar one of the lawyers had given him at the meeting. He liked a good cigar, but he hated the smell of smoke in the room when it had gone stale, so he didn't indulge himself very often, and when he did, it was outside. He heard Dorothy begin a piece and then stop, and then move on to something else, and apparently dissatisfied with that too, begin yet another. A short while after that the music stopped and she joined him out on the balcony.
"Not in the mood to play?" he asked, taking a satisfying puff of the cigar.
"I'm having trouble getting the music to sound the way I want," she said. For a wonder, she didn't move away from him or make any comment about the smoke. Maybe the skin protected her from that, too.
"You aren't immune to fatigue or tension," he said. "You should give it a break and try again tomorrow."
"I think I understand what's wrong now," she said, and went back to the piano.
"That's pleasing," she said, carefully examining the frame of the hourglass he was preparing to fill with sand. "The shape is harmonious."
Roger bit back the chuckle provoked by her solemn assessment. Lately it seemed she was just full of opinions, and to his surprise, they were generally positive, for all that she phrased them awkwardly. "It's very well balanced," he said, equally solemnly.
"The sand matches well," she offered.
The laugh escaped him despite his best efforts. "It's kind of you to say so," he said. "I won't be offended if you find my hobby tedious, though."
"It seems tedious to me, but you obviously enjoy it," she said. "I am trying to see it as you do."
He almost dropped the packet of sand. To try to put herself into his shoes was a leap indeed. "Are you succeeding?" he said to cover his astonishment.
"I'm not sure," she said. "It still seems rather pointless."
"It may well be pointless," he said. "The enjoyment I get out of it is justification enough."
She played scales for a few minutes, warming up, he decided. Scales were tedious to the listener, but before they'd gone on long enough to irritate him, she launched into the piece she'd been playing that morning.
He closed his eyes and let the sound flow through him.
"I can always tell when you're trying not to laugh, Roger Smith," she said to him, her voice stern. "Your mouth looks serious but your eyes always crinkle up in the corners."
"I thought I was doing better than that," he said, chagrined.
"You aren't," she said. "I don't understand why you feel the necessity for such a charade."
"I don't want you to think I'm laughing at your mistakes out of cruelty, or that I'm mocking you" he said. "Sometimes you are very funny when you don't mean to be, and I don't want to hurt your feelings by making you think I'm not taking you seriously."
"It hurts my feelings that you think that I'm incapable of understanding that," she said.
The melody swept into a theme that seemed somehow familiar. It took him a minute to identify it as the piece she'd created when Pero was with them, the one that she hadn't played since his death. She repeated the theme, this time much more slowly, and in a minor key. She missed Pero still, and sometimes the sadness overwhelmed all the good memories. The soft, mournful notes somehow communicated this more clearly than if she'd said the words out loud.
She's playing the things she feels, the things she doesn't know how to say.
By the time the music came to an end, his cigar was long gone, and the brandy glass emptied. He stayed where he was, wanting time to absorb the things he'd learned from her song.
Some time later, she came back out to the balcony and returned to her favorite spot. He stood up and joined her at the rail. "That was lovely," he said.
"Thank you." She looked out towards the setting sun.
"Had you been working on it for very long?" he asked.
"For my entire life," she said with unexpected humor.
"Dorothy," he said after another long pause.
She turned to face him, a silent question in her eyes.
"I think I understand now." He hadn't intended this just yet, but... He put his arms around her and kissed her gently.
She melted into his embrace, allowing the kiss to deepen. After a long, sweet, moment, they moved apart. "Maybe I'll start a new song," she murmured, resting her head comfortably against his shoulder.
"I'd like that," he said, pulling her in close.
They remained there in companionable silence until the sun had set and the domes in the distance lit up the nighttime sky.