Anne-Marie Kinney - Radio Iris

The stuck man makes a helpless face, twisting his stuck torso behind the piano. One of the unstuck men takes a step away from the piano as if to continue up the stairs.

“I’ll go,” Iris says sharply. He stops.

“How are you going to get up there?”

“I’ll go,” she says again, lowering herself to her knees.

The men watch as she flattens her torso against the lavender carpet, brushing against it, close enough to smell the no smell of it as she crawls underneath the piano. She inches forward, letting the carpet burn her bare elbows and knees, and stops when she is completely enclosed between the four legs, the naked wood dangling splinters above her head.

She looks up at it. The wood is so bare, untouched by the black lacquer that coats all visible sides. She shakes her purse off of her shoulder and begins digging through it, contained as she is in piano-shaped shadow.

“Are you stuck?” someone asks.

She pulls her Sharpie out and uncaps it with her teeth.

On the naked wood, she writes, You won’t even know I’m here.

She zips the marker back into her purse and continues up the stairs. The light of the hallway feels warm against her skin, and like a lizard climbing a rock, she emerges from beneath the piano and rises to her feet.

She is poised to knock on the door of 2B when it opens, and the man inside comes out and marches past her, the rush of air between them causing her head to turn and her eyes to follow him toward the stairwell. Her body follows her eyes.

“Is this your piano?” one of the delivery men asks.

“Yeah, yeah, bring it on up, I’m in 2B.”

Iris stands behind him, facing the deliverymen. She makes a get-a-load-of-this-guy face at the stuck man, who returns her gaze with a what-are-you-gonna-do head shake. She swallows a laugh. She gasps it down her throat, mouth closed, and it works itself into a knot in her chest.

“Well, sir, we seem to have a problem,” the leader says, motioning toward the piano with both hands.

The man from 2B squints.

“Oh. Oh, okay.” He turns and disappears down the hallway and into his office. Iris has a notion to go to her office, but her boss is not around. She thinks he is supposed to be in Madrid this week, or… Malta? She only remembers the letter M. In any case, he is gone. It’s early yet. She has some time to spare. They all blink at each other.

The man returns with a sledgehammer.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” the leader says, hands up.

“Don’t worry,” he says, swinging the hammer slowly through the air like a batter cooling his heels at the plate.

The stuck man presses himself backward, creating a seal between his body and the wall. He swallows.

Iris watches from behind as the sledgehammer careens heavily into the stairwell, slowly at first, a test hit, sending plaster dust crumbling to the carpet. A few heads poke out of doors at the other end of the hall, but no one comes out. They are frozen in fear or confusion, or some mix of the two. Instantly, he swings it again, closer to the stuck man who tries to duck but is only able to bend slightly sideways and cover his head.

“What the fuck!” he yells into his arms.

“Don’t worry.” He swings again and again, building speed until he settles on a rhythm. The noise of each hit echoes into the next, and a ropy vein pulses in the man’s hairy forearm. Iris sees all his veins working overtime, purple and engorged. It occurs to her that he may not be able to stop as the wall begins to curve jaggedly inward. He has made his mark, but he keeps going.

Finally, he stops swinging. His arm hangs slack, weighted by the hammer.

“Okay, try now,” he breathes heavily, wiping his forehead with the other hand.

Iris stares at his back, his white shirt damp and clinging. The men stare at the new wall.

“I am not going to be held responsible for this bullshit! There are forms you’ve gotta fill out, because this is not my responsibility,” the lead deliveryman says, waving his arms toward the wall. More slowly, as though to a child, he repeats, “I am not. Responsible. For this.” He pauses, his breathing steadying. “And I want that in writing signed by you.”

“I know. Try it now.”

The leader turns to look behind him, then looks back up the stairs. The man smiles, open faced, above them, the sledgehammer dangling at his side.

The four men grip the underside of the piano again, the stuck man now able to move through the hollowed out space. Together, they tilt it around the bend at the landing and up the second flight of stairs. Iris backs up against the opposite wall to let them past as they continue down the hall to 2B, the man trailing behind them, holding the hammer with both hands behind his back.

“How are you going to get it through the door?” she asks.

He stops and turns.

“What?”

“How are you going to fit the piano through your door?”

He turns back without answering her. Just then, the men stop. They set the piano down in the hall.

A voice calls out, “Sir?”

He flits down the hall and meets them in front of his door. Iris follows at a reasonable distance.

“What if you tilt it sideways?”

“No way.”

“But I measured. It should fit.”

“Well it looks like you measured wrong.”

They continue back and forth, even at one point attempting a sideways tilt to appease him, but the legs are too long, and don’t appear to detach. For a minute, they all stare at it glumly.

“I could make the doorway bigger.”

“No,” the formerly stuck man says emphatically.

Finally, a delivery slip is signed and the delivery men shuffle out, nodding to her as they pass. The man stands before his brand new piano and despondently taps middle C.

Iris begins to approach, but as she gets close, she hears the phone ringing in her office and feels compelled to answer it. He doesn’t look up as she squeezes past the piano and lets herself in. She disengages the braying alarm as quickly as possible and pounces on the ringing phone.

“This is Larmax, Inc., how may I help you?”

“What time is it?” her boss asks, yelling into the phone over the sounds of traffic.

“I–I don’t know!” she yells to match him. “I haven’t turned my computer on yet.” She presses the power button.

“It’s not nine. Go home and then come back at nine.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in Milan. Until the end of the week. I have to go.” He hangs up.

Iris watches her computer screen come to life and glances at the time. It is 8:47.

When she pokes her head back out, the man is gone. The piano still sits in the corner between their two doors. She steps out into the hall.

There is no bench, so Iris stands while she runs her fingers lightly over the keys, too lightly, even, to make a sound. She drapes both hands over the keys and begins gently tapping her fingers against them, letting them dance across in silence. She never did learn to play piano. This way, she can play anything and it will sound beautiful.

She closes her eyes and listens to the sound of her fingers slipping on the ivory, slowly, across and back, until the door to 2B opens with a swift thud and she instinctively jerks her hands behind her back.

The man does not look at her as he steps out and unfolds a padded nylon slipcover, which he spreads across the piano, pulling it this way and that so it hangs evenly. Iris watches, curling her toes inside her shoes.

“What are you going to do with it?” she blurts out.

“Huh?” he says, smoothing a wrinkle.

“I was just wondering what it’s for.”

He stops adjusting the slipcover and stands up to face her.

“I’m not sure that I’m sure yet,” he says. “But it seemed like a nice, heavy thing to have.”