You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone
One
Adina
I USED TO THINK HIS touches meant nothing. We brushed arms in the hallway of his apartment, and I let myself believe the space was simply too narrow. Our hands tangled and I figured it was because we reached to turn the sheet music at the same time.
Then his touches started to linger. I could feel the warmth of his palm on my shoulder through the fabric of my dress after he told me I’d played beautifully, and I convinced myself of something else: he has touched me far too many times for it to be happening by accident.
Today I will make it happen on purpose.
My bus turns onto his street. He lives on a hill claimed by two Seattle neighborhoods, Capitol Hill and the Central District. This hill and I, we go way back. I walked up it the year of the snowstorm when the buses stopped. I slipped down it once, skinning my knee to save my viola case from smashing to the ground. Arjun saw it happen from his fourth-story window, and he rushed down with a Band-Aid with a cartoon character on it. He explained the Band-Aids were for “the little ones,” his younger students. It made me laugh, made me forget about the smear of my blood tattooed on the concrete.
I mutter “thank you” to the driver as I step off the bus, my boots landing in a puddle that splashes water up my sweater tights. It’s the first good rain of the fall, the kind that pummels windows and roofs, making a house sound like it’s preparing for war. It is sweet, fresh, alive. I’ve been waiting for it all month.
Arjun buzzes me inside, and I press the faded elevator button between numbers three and five. By the time the doors swing open, my hands are damp with sweat. To relax, I play a Schubert sonata in my head. I’ve hummed eight measures before I feel calm enough to see him.
“Adina! Hello,” Arjun says, pulling the door wide. “I was starting to think you got lost on the way up.”
“Elevator was stuck,” I lie. My lungs feel tight, like I sprinted up the hill.
“Old building. Happens to me all the time.” He grins, brilliant white teeth between full lips. “Ready to make some beautiful music?”
“Always.”
A collared shirt peeks out the neck of his burgundy sweater, showing the lines of his broad shoulders. The sweater looks so soft, makes me imagine what it would feel like to touch him on purpose. I could do it now. But I don’t have the courage yet. The sight and sound of him have turned my muscles liquid.
I follow him to his studio, where portraits of composers, all grim and serious—possibly because most of them were dying of typhoid or syphilis—stare down at me. With trembling hands, I unbuckle my viola case and arrange my music on the stand in front of me. Arjun sits in the chair opposite mine. The ankles of his pants inch up, exposing his argyle socks.
Our first lesson was three years ago, but it wasn’t until I heard him play that he became someone I think about every night before I fall asleep. Dreamed about. I try very hard to forget that he is twenty-five, my teacher, and entirely off-limits. Sometimes, though, when he looks at me after I finish playing, I swear he feels the same pull.
His lips tip into a grin. “Don’t make fun of me, but I had studded tires put on my car last weekend.”
“No!” I gasp.
He shrugs, sheepish. “Have to be prepared for the worst, right?”
I shake my head, laughing, and relax in my chair. Each winter he prepares for an apocalyptic snowstorm, since he’d never seen snow until his first winter in Seattle. It doesn’t snow in Gujarat, the state in India where he grew up, or in New Delhi, where he played in the symphony.
“It’s September,” I say. “You’re absurd. Besides, we probably won’t even get snow this year. We only got, what, half an inch last year?”
“And it shut the entire city down! We’ll see who’s absurd when you’re stuck in your house for days and you haven’t stocked up on nonperishables.”