Free Melody Burning by Whitley Strieber Page B

and Burt Bacharach have worked in this room, Jim tells me. At this very piano.
    Ray is thin and shabby. He has taped glasses. There are nicotine stains between his fingers. He has a scar up the side of his throat.
    He begins to play, and for the first couple of bars, I think maybe there’s something there. But then it all falls apart into these god-awful cascades of arpeggios, and I cringe. It’s agonizing.
    I can see Mom knows as well as I do that these guys are a disaster. But we keep working anyway. We’ve paid them for the day, so we might as well get what we can out of them.
    They will do the “Nature Boy” arrangement for me. Mom is suspicious, but she doesn’t say anything except, “Since when did you take an interest in Nat King Cole? He’s not your kind of sound at all.”
    All I can think of is those words from the song—“a very strange, enchanted boy.” They go round and round in my head. Will he love me—or does he already—and will I love him in return?
    I’ve thought about the fact that Nature Boy washes his hair and he’s clean and everything. So he must use apartments. My guess is that he totally owns the Beresford, and nobody knows he even exists .
    On the way home, we show up randomly at the Ivy, which is, I think, Mom testing my star power. We’re instantly seated. I get my usual scallops mini plate and Mom orders the lamb two ways. She says, “Bring me a Blue Label. Huge.” I go into my iPhone while she buzzes away, wildly enthusiastic about the songs and the arrangements. My Twitter profile is active. At least my professional tweeter is awake. My last tweet was twenty minutes ago: “I’m so into my new songs. On a roll today!”
    The meal passes, we come home, and Mr. Dr. Shrink is not waiting for us as I expected him to be. He appears to be like the others who show up around here, strictly gone tomorrow. Not even mentioned.
    I’ve been lying in my room in the dark for fifteen minutes, and there are no sounds of my boy. He is not in my wall, he is not in my ceiling. I miss him and I want him because frankly I was counting on going to sleep listening to him breathing in the wall, and waking up to find him beside me again.
    You know how this feels? Exactly like waiting for Santa Claus when you’re a little kid. Only my darling guy is no big fat Santa.
    I’ve never felt so beautiful as I felt in his eyes. I want that again. I want it right now, and I’m tossing and turning. I want him here .
    I go up against the wall and put my mouth to it. “Are you in there? Where are you? Because I want you to come back. Please, come back.”
    But ohmygod what if he’s a crazy person? He could be anybody. I could be in terrible danger.
    Mom knows he is here because I told her, and I know a major complaint was filed with the building, so this beautiful person is probably being hunted down because of me.
    I think he’s wonderful and strange and kind of like a poem. Could I love him? Maybe, but first I have to stop feeling sorry for him. Right now, that’s what I feel. It’s a good feeling but it’s not love.
    I look in the closet again. The walls behind my clothes, the ceiling, the floor under my shoe rack. No secret openings. My bathroom, same deal—no secret openings, and the vent is too narrow. Under the bed? Not there, and no trapdoor.
    So he doesn’t come in via my room. Could he possibly have a skeleton key? But how? We had our own locks installed, and most everybody else does, too. We have three doors that lead into the apartment through the den, the foyer, and the kitchen. All locked all the time.
    Is there another way in, like maybe in the pantry?
    I open my door, but carefully. If Mom is still in the living room, I’m not going out there.
    She is, but she’s asleep on the couch and looks kind of haggard now. I love the Wicked Witch of the West because she is often my mother .
    I creep very quietly into the kitchen. Open the cabinet under the sink. There’s a hole back in there,