Free There's Something I Want You to Do by Charles Baxter

and chair and coffee table in the big-box Swedish contemporary style of assemble-it-yourself furniture. Near poverty now had a kind of opaque, cool cleanliness and an odor of sanctimony. You didn’t have to sit down in cast-off wing chairs smelling of marijuana and mildew anymore, but the sparse impersonality of her living room had the quality of an emergency, as if no one had bothered to think about what should be located here or had the patience or inclination to arrange it. A few books were out. The human presence had been nearly eradicated from the room except for the scratched-up spinet piano in the corner. Other than that, the room had a claustrophobic cleanliness. Everything here seemed temporary.

    “So,” Benny said. “A concert? What are we privileged to hear?”
    She had disappeared into the kitchen and came back out with a cold beer, which she handed to him. He could tell that she had an agenda that included whatever she was about to play.
    “So,” she said. “I’ve been working on this piece. It’s called ‘Ondine’ and it’s from this composer’s, Ravel’s, group of pieces Gaspard de la Nuit. There’s a story behind it. Do you want to hear the story?” Benny nodded, although he already knew the story. He had been a keyboard musician, and, though he’d never been capable of playing this particular piece, he knew about it. “So: Ondine is a water sprite. She’s very pale and intriguing. Seductive, too. She appears to the poet and she offers him a ring—a ring! how about that ?—and she also offers him the kingdom of the waters although, duh, he can’t live there because he doesn’t have gills. Anyway, the poet tells her that he loves a mortal woman, so Ondine gets upset and jealous and angry, and she sulks. So like a woman, right? After she’s finished crying, she laughs and disappears in a shower of droplets on the windowpane. The point is, he can’t have her.”

    Benny nodded and took a swig of the beer.
    Sarah sat down at the piano and put both of her bare feet on the pedals. She started to play. The piece was in seven sharps, C-sharp major, and it began softly, starting with a rumbling swift shower of thirty-second notes. Around the third bar, Ondine comes out, sweet and expressive, calling him to her. Sarah’s hands sped over the keys as she followed the score, and Benny got up from the sofa and went over to where she sat to turn the page for her.
    She stopped playing. “What? You can read music?” He nodded. She started up again, unhappily scowling. The piece was showy and fantastically difficult, and from her approximations he could tell that she was a very good but not a first-rate pianist who was just slopping her way through it, energized by the former musical ambitions she wished to put on display. Also, he saw that she wanted to show off. She made some clumsy mistakes but bushwhacked to the end, Benny standing beside her, turning the pages.
    When she finished, he put down his beer and clapped. “Jeez,” he said. “That was great. You’re terrific.”
    “You liked it?” she asked shyly. She wouldn’t smile. She waited, looking straight ahead at the last page of the score.
    “I loved it.”
    “Really?”

    “Yes.”
    “You’re not flattering me?”
    “No, I don’t think so,” he said. White lies didn’t cost you much in the short term.
    “I made a lot of mistakes. When did you ever play the piano?” she asked.
    “Junior high. High school. College. I was all right. I was in a few bands. But I couldn’t play like that.”
    “Benny,” she said. His hand rested on her shoulder. He didn’t quite know how it had gotten there. “Benny,” she repeated. “ Benjamin. Here’s the deal. I know you want me, and I know you’ve been patient with me, and I want you to know that I have feelings for you, too.”
    “It’s more than that,” he said. “I—”
    “Don’t say it,” she interrupted. “You can tell me later if you want to. But first I have to tell