Ebony and ivory. Black and white. A thin line between here, there, and everywhere else. Tyreke pushes the key of the piano over and over again, but a piano can not be forced into tune by repetition and wishing. The dissonance of the piano's stray notes reverberate from underneath her fingerprints like clues to a crime. Somewhere, on the waves of sound that float through the room, floats the chalked outline of harmony's perfection. It's homicide is a cold case--cold as the careers of Chris Webber and Vlade Divac--and the discord from the piano is a cruel reminder that some mysteries are never solved. Kevin Martin leans into the black and white of the newspaper print, hoping proximity to the ink of the words he finds there will block out the discord caused by Tyreke's futile search for a melody. Kevin's read the paper twice through already. Now marks his third plunge into a sea of words he's already mapped out like some fifteenth century explorer, who embarks for the horizon praying that just maybe he'll bump into India. Kevin has yet to bump into anything, India or otherwise. In fact, while Kevin's reading of the paper mirrors the arbitrary journeys of Columbus, Kevin feels a much stronger kinship with Jimmy Stewart's character in Rear Window.
Kevin has been walled up in his apartment for day, tracing the paths of houseflies that buzz through the room like insect adaptations of Amelia Earhart. When the flies grow despondent from ramming time and time again into the window pane, Kevin commiserates, saying, "When you build the escape tunnel, let me know, buddy. I'll be right behind you." Of course, then Kevin finishes the part of the article that's on the first page and is told that the conclusion rests on page A7, which forces Kevin to try and row through the newsprint with a cast around his wrist, a cast that barely allows Kevin to even grip the page, much less turn it. As Kevin wrestles with the front page of the paper, Tyreke pokes away at the wretched piano, and it becomes clear that today is not the day for discovering passages to India.
Out of frustration, Kevin tosses the bulk of the paper across the room; its wings flutter for a bit, giving the illusion of flight when, for a second, the paper crosses the path of an oscillating fan. Then the aircraft crashes and burns, landing in a jungle of potted houseplants. Kevin eyes the wreckage from his chair beside the dining table. The billows of smoke from the crash take the shape of the headline: "Gamble on a Weekend Getaway--Vegas is the Place." Kevin turns to face the window. The familiar flies are no longer buzzing but scattered like deceased prisoners of war along the windowsill. The bleak pageant causes Kevin to giggle. The giggle grows into a laugh so loud that Tyreke stops poking the keys of the piano.
Kevin turns to his apartment mate, "Tyreke, if we can't grow wings and no one across the street is giving us a murder to witness, then I give you permission to do me in, just don't bury me with the flies. That's all I ask."
0 comments:
Post a Comment