Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

Duke wiggled and darted away. Chopin had little effect on him. She was working on the Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, a bitch of a piece, which she happened to love. It wasn’t the music that had her talking to fish. It was something else-the isolation, she supposed.

The doorman called up, startling her, and informed her that a Matthew Stark was downstairs in the lobby and wanted to see her, was that all right?

“Damn,” she said, surprising both herself and the doorman. She remembered Matthew Stark vividly-the sardonic laugh, the dark, changeable eyes. She couldn’t imagine what he wanted with her. She didn’t even know why he’d been in her dressing room Saturday night. Just to say hello to Sam Ryder? To her? She doubted he’d been even momentarily tempted to ask her to dinner. He’d called her toots. What was he doing downstairs? She didn’t need the distraction right now, but what the hell. “Send him up.”

For no reason that made any sense to her, she considered her appearance: black sweatpants, oversized sweatshirt with the bust of Beethoven silk-screened on the front, scrunchy black socks, sneakers. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her hair was up in a ponytail.

At least it isn’t pink, she thought as the doorbell rang.

She went into the large foyer and opened the door only as wide as her chain-lock would permit because she was a New Yorker and didn’t trust anyone. But the man she peeked out at was definitely the one who’d made her feel like such a ding-a-ling the other night. He had on a black leather jacket, a black sweater, jeans, and heavy leather boots. No hat, no gloves. Somehow she wouldn’t expect any. Snow had melted into his dark hair, but his scarred face didn’t even look cold. She hadn’t realized it was snowing. Maybe the Chopin was going better than she’d thought it was.

Stark gave her a lazy, unselfconscious grin. “A ponytail? How un-world-famous of you.”

No one had ever been that irreverent to her. Absolutely no one. “Don’t you think you should wait until I let you in before you turn on the sarcasm?”

“It never occurred to me.”

She believed him. “What do you want?”

“Five minutes. I’d like to ask you a couple questions.”

“About what?”

“A few things. I’m a reporter.”

“I only have your word on that.”

“The way I’ve been going lately, that might be the best you’ll get. But here.” He fished out his wallet and handed a press card through the opening. “Check me out.”

Juliana managed to take the card without touching his fingers. As she glanced at it, she could feel his dark eyes on her. “You’re with the Washington Gazette? ”

“Uh-huh.”

He sounded amused, and she recalled she was supposed to have heard of him. Well, bullshit. “No wonder I didn’t recognize your name.” She gave him a haughty look and one of her cool, distant smiles, both of which she figured he deserved. “I don’t read the Gazette. ”

“Nice try, sweetheart, but nobody knows me from the Gazette. ”

She felt her cheeks redden with anger and embarrassment-and, she thought desperately, awareness. He was still standing out in the damn hall, and already she was noticing little things. The lopsided grin, the muscular thighs, the thick, jagged scar on his right hand. It probably wasn’t from anything as simple as slicing cucumbers.

“Forget it,” she said. “I’ve never heard of you, and I don’t care if I haven’t.”

“You going to check me out or leave me standing out here all afternoon?”

She shut the door and considered just going back to her work. He would hear the Chopin and get the message. But she went to the phone in the living room. Curiosity, she supposed. She tapped out the number for the Gazette printed on his card. The switchboard routed her call to Alice Feldon, who verified that Matthew Stark worked for her. “If you want to call it work,” she added, half under her breath.

“Would you mind describing him?”

“Why?”

“He’s outside my door, and I’m not sure I want to let him in.”

“I see. I guess I can understand that. Who are you?”

“My name’s Juliana Fall. I-”

“Stark’s pianist. I’ll be damned.”

Stark’s pianist. My God. What was going on here?

“He’s about five-eleven, dark, scarred face, wears a black leather jacket and Gokey boots, and-”

“That’s him. Thank you.”

“Wait-put him on, will you?”

“I’ll have him call you,” she said, and hung up.

She unlatched the chain-lock and let Stark open the door himself. “You’ve been confirmed.”

“Sounds ominous.”

He walked into the living room. Juliana followed. It was a huge room that overlooked Central Park, now a Currier and Ives Christmas card under the light covering of snow. She saw him eyeing the place, as if he didn’t expect the dust on the windowsills, the marble fireplace, the piano, the hodgepodge of expensive furniture, the books, magazines, photographs, clippings, letters, awards and junk stacked everywhere. For the first time since her return from Paris, she noticed it herself. And the two big Persian carpets needed vacuuming.

“Goldfish, huh?” he said, walking over to the tank and taking a look. Then he glanced back at her. “Nice place you have here. No cleaning lady?”

“I’ve been away for a while and haven’t taken the time to cleanup and-well, I do have someone come in to clean, but she hasn’t been in yet. She doesn’t come on a regular basis. It’s hard to concentrate with the vacuum running and someone flitting around with a dustcloth. To be honest, a little dust doesn’t bother me.”

“I’ll bet.”

She felt his eyes on her and was aware her ponytail was coming loose and she probably looked a little vague. She usually did this time of the day, after hours of practice. It took a while for her to pull herself out of her heightened state of concentration.

“What do you do when you throw parties?” he went on. “Just shove all the stuff under the couch and turn the lights down low so nobody’ll notice the dust?”

She ignored his dry tone. “I don’t throw parties.”

“You just attend them.”

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“La-di-da.”

Her elastic band was at the end of her ponytail. She pulled it out, letting her hair flop down, and noticed his eyes widen slightly. She wouldn’t have noticed at all if she hadn’t been looking. So, she thought, he’s paying attention. A reporter’s eye for detail, she supposed. Nothing more than that.

“Mr. Stark,” she said coolly, “did you want to ask me something or did you just want to insult me?”

He looked at her, a touch of the warm, dark brown coming into his black-seeming eyes. “I’m sorry.” There was an abruptness to his words, and she suspected they were ones he didn’t say very often. “It’s obvious from the looks of this place, and of you, that you work hard at what you do. I didn’t expect that.”

“You thought I just woke up one morning and knew how to play the piano?”

He grinned. “Something like that.”

“Well, I didn’t.” She decided to leave it at that. “What do you want to ask me?”

“I’m half working on a story,” he said, walking over to the dusty Steinway. A dozen or so nubby pencils were scattered on the floor under the piano and her chair. He picked one up. It was two inches long. “Some life still in it, I guess.”

“I do all my markings in pencil. I don’t take time to re-sharpen my pencils when I’m working, so I start with about a dozen and throw them on the floor when they get dull. I hate dull pencils.”

“Nothing worse.”

Despite his wry tone, he was as fascinated as he was amused, Juliana could tell. “When I run out, I gather them up and sharpen all of them at once. It saves time. Look, I can’t dress up what I do or how I do it. If my methods, this place, shatter your image of what a concert pianist ought to be like, then so be it. How can you be half working on something?”