Music Makers: Epilogue thing-a-ma-jig

Chad paced back and forth nervously in the empty room. His agitated gaze flickered between one white wall and another, his stomach flipping nervously inside him. The room was small and had two doors; one on each end, and Chad glanced apprehensively toward the door that led to the stage. He wrung his hands together, bounced up and down in his tight shoes, and ran a nervous hand over his gelled hair. He was in the process of shaking himself in an effort to release his nervousness when the door opened and his friend Gary walked in.

Gary, about Chad’s height but more sturdily built, gave Chad a quizzical look. “Chad, it’s a musical concert, not basketball playoffs.”

The sixteen-year-old musician smiled at his friend, but the tension inside him didn’t ease up any. Gary approached him and clapped Chad’s shoulder. “You’ll do fine,” he tried to reassure his anxious friend. “You’re the youngest artist I know who has sold as many albums as you have.”

Chad winced. “Sure, but I’ve never done anything this big before.” He dared to peek out the tiny window of the door behind which a stage and an auditorium waited for him. “Is he there? Did he come?”

Gary’s expression took on a hint of regret. “Your mom said he got caught up in some work and couldn’t make it.”

Chad sighed, closing his tired eyes and rubbing them with his hands. “Figures.” Opening his eyes and peeking out the window again, he asked, “What if I mess up on stage? What if they hate me?”

“Don’t worry; if things get too crazy, I’ll pop out and do the macarana,” Gary said, grinning. He began to demonstrate, adding in his own moves and throwing in a few dangerous-looking poses. Chad laughed and pushed his friend good-naturedly toward the door.

“You’re funny, you’re funny, now get out. I need to focus for a moment. See you after the show, ok?” he said.

“You know it,” Gary agreed with a smile as he disappeared outside the doorframe. As soon as his friend was gone, Chad covered his face in his hands for a brief moment, his mind spinning. For the last few years, music had been his focus. It was all he ever thought about, all he ever dreamt about. And now, his dreams were becoming real, and he was drawing a blank. He pressed his fingers together as if he were praying and placed his thumbs under his clean-shaven chin. He had prepared for this. He could do this. This was his music. His life. It was time to share it with the world.
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A young woman, about twenty-three or so, slipped in to the crowded auditorium. She had just begun walking toward the front of the auditorium when she saw a plump figure stride across the stage {which was barren save for a piano and two thick, red curtains that had been pulled aside moments ago}. The figure apparently was wearing a microphone, for his voice carried over the room marvelously. “May I present to the public for the first time in live concert, the wonderful, the young… Chad William Brent!”

The young woman began to move rapidly to the front row as the lights dimmed dramatically. The applause began to die down and another figure came on stage in a sharp tuxedo and what looked like leather, European shoes. She was close enough now to see his face, and his features astounded her. Who was this young man and what had he done to her little, eight-year old friend?

His hair was slicked back, contrary to the bed head hair she remembered from years ago. A firm chin had replaced the chubby one she could see so clearly in her mind. The pudgy cheeks of the child had been replaced by this man’s well-defined bones, and he had now grown in to his ears that had previously been too big for his head. Wordlessly, she stepped closer to the stage, as she hoped to glimpse his eyes. He turned and smiled to the crowd, but his gaze passed over her blindly in the dark audience.

The woman smiled slightly to herself. He had his father’s eyes. But his father’s eyes had been shifty and uncertain, whereas this man’s hazel eyes seemed honest, and hopeful, but somehow wise. He had the face of a man, and he had the clothes of a man, but his eyes were a mixture both of childlike sincerity and mature wisdom. The woman allowed a small smile to touch her lips again. He was nervous. She could tell by the way he walked and awkwardly shuffled the papers on the piano bench after sitting down hesitantly. But he was willing. And that was enough to make the woman smile.
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Chad’s experienced eyes wandered over his music for a moment, his stomach still retching inside him. He let out a long breath of air, mentally steadying himself and focusing on the papers in front of his face. He placed his hands lightly on the piano keys and sucked in a breath. And then he played.

His fingers knew where they were supposed to go. They knew the beat, the rhythm, the tune, the tone. They knew how to wrench the heart out of their listeners, and how to make their eyes shine. They began to weave the tune depicted in front of them by the sheets of music, and they were pleased and began to weave faster and faster. Chad tried to contain his excitement because he knew rushed music was hardly enjoyable. The notes he played were sure and strong, and he began to feel quite at ease performing in front of the large group of people. Soon, his fingers were playing unconsciously, and his eyes began to scan the audience he could see from his peripheral vision.

He counted face after face…and then his eyes fell on a person he had not expected to be there. His fingers nearly froze at the sight of his father, and he struggled to keep a steady rhythm. At the thought of his father there, he suddenly grew more nervous. What if he messed up? What if he failed in front of his father? His father, who expected so much of him?

The young woman in the audience was studying the young musician carefully. “Slow down, Chad,” she thought to herself. He was going to blow it. He had lost his focus. She began to move again, trying to get to the first row.

Chad stared at his dancing fingers in disbelief, wondering how they had become so out-of-line. His nightmare was coming real. As the sweat began to form on his forehead, he desperately glanced up at the audience again.

He saw her. He would know her face anywhere, but how much older and sadder it seemed! She caught his desperate look, and met it with a calm one. Her dark eyebrows were raised as if beseeching him to relax. A trace of a smile lingered around the corners of her lips.

Suddenly, a voice from the past echoed in his mind. “Just keep playing. Stop thinking. Let your fingers play without your eyes. Let your heart play without your mind.”

Before Chad could think, his fingers were playing a different tune. This wasn’t just a tune. It was a song. A plea. A feeling. An emotion. It was a living thing, and it began to circle about the room, touching people’s hearts inside them and stirring thoughts in their minds. His song spoke of hope, of life, of joy, and yet it sang without words, as it spiraled around the room gently and reached inside his audience.

Chad felt calm all of a sudden, and a sense of peace began to settle over him. He wasn’t playing from the sheets of paper in front of him. He was playing from his memory – he was playing from his heart. He gazed at his hands for a moment, a grin twisting the corners of his lips, and then he closed his eyes. His song began to soar.

The young woman’s smile softened. This was the tune he had played for her eight years ago – the tune they had made up together on the bench of an old, school piano. Its simple melody was more complicated now, and its emotion seemed more intricate, as if each note sang of a different feeling than it once had. She wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes, twisting back and forth as if suppressing the urge to dance.

Chad’s fingers harmonized the melody they had created, like two voices singing in unison. With a satisfied feeling, he ended the song, choosing to let the last chords ring in the air before finishing them off softly with a few notes that flowed from the instrument like water would overflow from a glass.

The moment he had finished his song, the audience awoke as if from a spell and clapped so loudly that Chad could have sworn it was thunder. People began standing up, smiles erupting on their faces – young and old, and in between. His eyes were drawn first to his father, who was clapping enthusiastically with a grin on his face. Next, Chad’s eyes wandered over to the woman he had seen.

She was standing next to the seats on the first row, her white teeth showing in a brilliant smile as she joined in the echoing applause. He smiled back at her, before waving and bowing at the audience. Quickly, the announcer came back on and showed him off the stage, introducing the following act as Chad darted off the platform and into the prep room he had started in.

The woman watched him go, and as soon as he had disappeared, the smile gradually faded from her face. She glanced around her at the smiling people, cheering and clapping and whistling. Slowly, she stepped backwards and began moving to the back of the auditorium, blending in with the people standing around her. She had seen him play. She had heard his music. She was done here. It was time to start running again. Without having spoken a word, she left the auditorium almost as quickly as she had entered it.
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Chad burst through the door and into a brick wall. The brick wall turned out to be Gary, embracing him. Chad laughed into his friend’s shoulder. Gary pulled back and looked at the musician, grinning.

“Dude, where in the universe did that come from?” asked Gary, wonder evident on his face.

Chad couldn’t wipe the smile off his face. “I don’t know… it… it kind of just happened. It was like something I knew I could do. Like something I’d done before.” Chad ran his hands through his gelled hair, unconsciously wrinkling and spiking it in the process. “And I had. It was a memory.”

Gary laughed. “When did you remember that, man, cuz I’ve known you since we were two, and I do not remember hearing that ever in my life!”

“There was a woman here tonight. She was with me the first time I played that song. Except she was younger. And I was younger,” Chad began to say quickly, trying to explain to his friend.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me about this?” Gary asked. “You’d think that would be something important one should tell one’s best friend.”

“Because I was like eight or something. All kinds of things happened when I was eight that I didn’t think were worth mentioning.” Chad shrugged. He dashed over to the other door. “I have to see if she’s still there.”

“Wait, you can’t go out there now,” Gary insisted. “There’s another guy playing. If you go out now, the crowd might swarm you and you’ll end up crowd surfing before you can say ‘Beethoven’.”

Chad sighed. “You’re right,” he admitted.

An hour later, the two young men emerged from the waiting room and mingled with the crowd. Chad’s joyful face was replaced with a confused one. People surrounded him, asking him questions, and requesting his autograph, but the one person he wanted to see couldn’t be found. Among the many faces pressing in on him from all sides, hers was not there. With a sinking feeling, he remembered the last time he had seen her. She had disappeared in exactly the same way.

Gary, who had never left his side, leaned toward Chad’s ear and asked in a whisper, “So where’s the chick who inspired your music?”

Chad’s eyes were still scanning the crowd, but he wasn’t hopeful. “I don’t know.”

“Are you sure she’s even real?” Gary attempted to tease.

Chad didn’t catch his friend’s cheerful tone. It felt like his heart was plummeting downwards into his stomach. In a bewildered voice, his muttered half to Gary and half to himself, “I don’t know.”