Plenty of people told me I was lucky after I sold my sculpture, the one I made from the innards of a piano. It went to Abu Dhabi; they’re eating up art there at the moment. The price tag was amazing but I wouldn’t call that a matter of luck — the piece was worth it. For a start, the elements were totally unique. A haunted piano doesn’t turn up every day. I hope the Arabs enjoy it; I’m just glad to get the thing out of my life. I needed the money too, after Simon threw me out of his apartment. That part wasn’t so lucky. He’s the love of my life. I’m hoping it’ll blow over and we’ll get back together.
“Maybe you shouldn’t’ve chopped up his ex-wife’s piano, then,” said Amy. We were drinking wine in The Thirsty Wolf.
“She wasn’t his wife. Just an ex-girlfriend.”
I hadn’t told many people where the piano parts came from. When my piece — I called it Silence — was first displayed, it unsettled people, I could see that. But that’s fine — art should be unsettling. They gazed at the twisted strings, the splayed black and white keys, the broken wooden frame re-assembled into a pyramid. It was an old piano, a piece of junk.
“It was a piece of junk, anyway,” I said to Amy. “It had to go, as you well know.”
I lowered my voice. There were other people in The Thirsty Wolf — half-a-dozen motley students, a writers’ group by the look of them. Amy shifted on her bar stool. She was a bit overweight. When she sipped her wine she left red lipstick on the glass.
“I told you about the playing,” I said, in a low voice. “The bloody thing was haunted.”
“Oh, Sarah, that’s bullshit.”
“Then how do you explain the Messiaen in the middle of the night?”
Amy shrugged like I’d made all this up.
“She’d come back in the night to play it. Just to piss me off. I fixed that.”
Amy ordered another white wine. I went back to the problem of where I was going to live. I’d been dossing in my studio for a couple of weeks; it wasn’t comfortable. I had to shower at the gym.
“Now the sale money’s come through, I can afford my own place. Didn’t you tell me Justin wants to sub-let his flat?”
“Yeah, he’s going to Zurich for a year, for work.”
“I’ll call him.” In fact, I sent a text right then and there.
A few days later I went to meet Justin at the flat. It was in one of those re-purposed buildings, red-brick, close to the city. No off-street parking, but my VW Beetle was easy to squeeze in. Justin showed me over the place. I liked the vibe. There were only six flats in the block; his was on the first floor. The building went back at least eighty years, I reckoned, now I’d looked it over. Big rooms, trees outside. I liked it.
“I like it, Justin,” I said. “What d’you want for it?”
He told me the rent, which I could well afford now. I did the deal.
“You’re lucky,” he said. “I only put the word out last Monday and a couple of people have already looked at it. But they couldn’t move in for a few more weeks. I’m leaving on Saturday.”
“I’ll be in as soon as you’re gone.”
“Great. It doesn’t like to be empty.”
I thought this was an odd remark but I didn’t pursue it. Looking back, I wish I had.
“What was this building before it was flats?”
“A theatre,” he said. “The Metro. Dates from around the second world war.”
I moved in that weekend.
I threw a house-warming party. It was a mild evening and I opened the windows in the sitting room. A smell of pepperoni wafted up from the pizza place a few doors down. About a dozen people came. I invited Simon, but he was ghosting me.
“I don’t know why you bother,” Amy said. “Move on.”
She didn’t understand commitment.
“He was my rescuer, Amy,” I said. “He’s the one who got me into rehab that time. You don’t forget your saviour.”
Amy sighed. “You don’t know your luck,” she said. “He was controlling. You’re well off out of it. Anyway, you should dress up a bit if you want to find a replacement. Those overalls might be arty, but they’re not chic.”
She could talk. I was about to come back at her with a comment on her own clothes, which in my opinion were tarty, but about then the music started. It seemed to come from some other flat, old-fashioned dance music with a catchy beat. It was as if the troops were in town and the old Trocadero was still going.
“Terrific music, Sarah,” said someone.
“What’s the name of the Spotify playlist?” asked someone else.
Everyone started to dance, which was unusual. The people I know are the brooding-artist type. They’re not a swing-dance crowd. Melinda, my agent, came over. She was smiling, which was unusual too.
“Terrific party, Sarah,” she said. “This flat is great.”
“Thanks.” I was wary. She usually wanted something. The evening was still warm; I wondered if that explained the flush on Melinda’s face.
“How’re you going with the commission for the insurance company?”
My pushy agent. I was supposed to be producing a corporate-but-edgy sculpture for the foyer of an office building. They’d asked for something with the same vibe as the piano sculpture.
“Give me time, Melinda,” I said, turning away from her to show that she shouldn’t try to shove me around. You don’t push artists. We’re not automatons. The music reached a brassy crescendo of foot-tapping melody. Melinda laughed.
“Great party,” she said again, and took a slurp of her drink. I’d mixed a batch of sangria in a bucket.
I couldn’t understand why the music was so loud in my place but it was popular with my friends so I didn’t worry about it. I liked it myself at first, though by midnight I was over it. I started packing up the drinks to get the crowd to leave. I wanted Amy to help me; she was still dancing. It was ages before I got them all to go home and I had to be bloody rude in the end to do it. The band music was still loud. When I finally closed the door on the last of them, it stopped abruptly. I was glad of the quiet. As I crawled into bed I wondered if Justin had set up some kind of sound system in the place, with sensors or something, but I didn’t worry about it.
My new flat wasn’t far from my studio. I could ride my bike there. The Beetle sat wedged into the parking space I’d found on the street. Soon it was covered in bird shit and jacaranda flowers. I kept irregular hours. I went to the studio whenever I felt like working and often came home late at night. A couple of weeks after the house warming party, I got back to the flat around 11 PM. The minute I unlocked the door, I sensed something amiss. When I switched on the lights in the sitting room, I was reflected in the window, standing there in my work overalls. The blinds were still up and it was black outside. Something was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it. The place was silent.
I shrugged off the creepy feeling and went into the kitchen to make a decaf latte. The air seemed to relax around me. I’m not a fanciful type, but there was a definite change in the atmosphere. It sent a shiver up my arms, bare up to my t-shirt sleeves. The sensation reminded me of the way I used to feel when Simon came home from work and kissed me. As I sipped my latte I noticed faint music, a late-night crooner song. I stood still, listening. It sounded like Bing Crosby. It was Bing Crosby. “I can’t begin to tell you…” he sang. “…how much you mean to me.” His buttery voice was close to the microphone. “My world would end… If ever we were through…” He kept singing until I went to bed. Then he stopped, thank goodness, because I needed to sleep.
In the morning I figured out what was different in the sitting room. One of the armchairs was pushed up against the window, as if someone wanted to sit there and watch the street. I shoved it back in place. I was irritated, but I had bigger things to worry about. That insurance company commission was going nowhere, confirming my belief that good art can’t be produced on cue, just because someone with a pile of cash waves it under your nose. For a few days I was moody, short-tempered. I snapped at Amy when she called. She told me I was ungrateful — a big commission like that. I didn’t know my luck. I asked her to stop talking about how lucky I was. I missed Simon.
On Saturday I tried a Tinder date, to see if that would snap me out of it. The guy’s name was Frankie. He was OK. After we ate laksa in the city I brought him back to the flat and things got hot and heavy on the sofa. Frankie was panting in my ear when the music began. It was a singer with a swing band, lively. Frankie didn’t seem to notice but it distracted me. I tried to work out who the singer was. Frank Sinatra! Well, that surely wasn’t a co-incidence. He was singing Saturday Night is the Loneliest Night of the Week. Was that supposed to be funny? Until I hear you at the door… Until you’re in my arms once more… I allowed the real Frank to finish what he was doing, then I shoved him out of the place. He didn’t seem too worried; he’d got what he came for. As he left, he said he liked the music.
Over the next few weeks the music intruded more and more often. I’d get Edith Piaf torch songs as I left for the day, and Jimmy Dorsey Big Band numbers when I arrived home. Jimmy and the Band seemed to like Love Walked In. I got that one quite often. And it wasn’t only the music, creepy though that was. There was an incident, after I went away for a weekend. When I came back, the sitting room furniture had been shoved around. One armchair was on its side. Pictures were off the walls, there was a broken wine glass on the coffee table. It looked like a big band had held an after-show booze up in the place. When I found one of my smaller clay sculptures smashed on the floor, well, that was it. I lost my temper. A few obscenities left my lips. The music started. It was militant: Bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao… A war song. Game on, I thought grimly.
I was too worked up to let things rest for another minute. I left the apartment, closing the door on the Italian partisans, and descended to the lobby. Sunday night traffic had been slow and I’d got back later than expected. It could’ve been 11 PM. There wasn’t a soul around in the dim lobby. I knew there was a basement to the building and I looked about for a door. I spotted it behind a dusty rubber plant in the corner. Luckily it wasn’t locked.
I couldn’t find a light switch so I turned on the weak torch on my phone and crept down the stairs. At the bottom was a narrow concrete corridor with two closed doors on either side. I tried a couple — cleaning equipment, a few old bikes, cardboard boxes. The fourth door was locked. As soon as I touched the greasy knob I sensed this was what I was looking for, that the answer to the intrusive music would be in this storeroom. It was utterly silent in the basement passageway. I was wearing my overalls, as usual, and reached into the pocket. I’m a sculptor — I always have some tools on me. I chose a long pick and set to work. It wasn’t easy, holding the phone torch in one hand and working with the other. When the lock sprang open, I pushed the door inwards and flickered the torch across the room. It was stacked with musical instruments — trombones, trumpets, banjos, a drum kit, covered in layers of dust and grime. Spiders scuttled when I picked up a tarnished cornet. The things looked like they hadn’t been played in years, but I knew better.
I wasn’t going to hang around in this musical mausoleum. There and then I hauled an armful of instruments out into the passageway. It was hard work. I got most of the stuff out, up the stairs, across the empty lobby and into my car. I drove to the studio and unloaded. I had to leave the drum kit until the morning. When I finally hauled it out I found an old-fashioned microphone lying in the back corner. It was a classic, a genuine Shure 55 Fatboy, if I wasn’t mistaken. The kind of thing Ella Fitzgerald herself used to croon into. Perfect, I thought. I was inspired.
Back at my studio, I made good use of the stuff. It wasn’t long before I could call Melinda and tell her the insurance company job was done. The client sent people to the studio for a viewing and they loved it. The piece was installed in their lofty city foyer. There was an unveiling, with a drinks party.
I was pleased with it. It was one of my largest pieces to date. I’d crafted the instruments into a pyramid, my signature shape. The drums formed a superstructure, with the brass instruments straightened out, dismantled, and tangled. I’d left the brass tarnished. I like the patina of found objects, but I could see people were going to do that thing of rubbing a certain piece of brass for luck, shining it up in the process. They seemed drawn to the bulb of the tuba.
The piece was well-received. People congratulated me. The insurance company CEO was pleased, showing it off to his distinguished guests.
“You were lucky to find these unwanted instruments,” said a man in a bow tie. I glowered at him.
“It looks as if it should play music,” said a red-haired woman, possibly the CEO’s wife. I laughed.
“Never again,” I said.
That was when a faint stream of sound began issuing from the microphone on top of the sculpture. Vera Lynn, singing We’ll Meet Again… I felt my face drain of colour. The crowd was delighted.
Annette Freeman is a writer living in Sydney, Australia. She has a Master of Creative Writing degree, and her short fiction has been published in a number of international and Australian literary journals (see website). She is working on a novel set in the back-blocks of Tasmania.