He said, “It was collecting dust in the rec room for years, but then some fool started a petition to move it in here for the children, and of course everyone signed on for the children.” He rolled his eyes. “You can’t imagine how painful it is, hearing three-year-olds peck out ‘Chopsticks.’”
She took a quick breath so she could say, “Play something for me.”
“Oh, no, Jinxie. That’s not where this is going.” He stood up. He motioned for the guard’s attention and pointed to the piano. “My friend here wants to play, if that’s all right?”
The guard shrugged, but Laura shook her head. “No, I don’t. I won’t.”
“Oh, my darling. You know I hate it when you refuse me.”
His tone was joking in that way that wasn’t joking. Laura felt the old fear start to stir. Part of her would always be that terrified girl who had passed out in the bathroom.
He said, “I want to hear you play again, Jinx. I made you give it up once. Can’t I make you pick it back up again?”
Her hands quivered in her lap. “I haven’t played since—since Oslo.”
“Please.” He could still say the word without it sounding like a request.
“I don’t—”
Nick walked around to her side of the table. Laura didn’t flinch this time. He wrapped his fingers lightly around her arm and gently pulled. “It’s the least you can do for me. I promise I won’t ask for anything else.”
Laura let him pull her up to standing. She reluctantly walked toward the piano. Her nerves were shot through with adrenaline. She was suddenly terrified.
Her daughter was listening.
“Come now, don’t be shy.” Nick had blocked the guard’s view. He pushed her down on the bench so hard that she felt a jarring in her tailbone. “Play for me, Jinx.”
Laura’s eyes had closed of their own accord. She felt her stomach clench. The ball of fear that had lain dormant for so long began to stir.
“Jane.” He dug his fingers into her shoulders. “I said play something for me.”
She forced open her eyes. She looked at the keys. Nick was standing close, but not pressing against her. It was his fingers biting into her shoulders that fully awakened her old fear.
“Now,” he said.
Laura raised her hands. She gently placed her fingers on the keys but did not press them. The plastic veneer was worn. Strips of wood showed like splinters.
“Something jaunty,” Nick told her. “Quickly, before I get bored.”
She wasn’t going to warm up for him. She didn’t know if there was any value in trying. She considered playing something specifically for Andy—one of those awful bubblegum bands that she loved. Her daughter had spent hours watching old Jinx Queller videos on YouTube, listening to bootlegs. Laura didn’t have anything classical left in her fingers. Then she remembered that smoky bar in Oslo, her conversation with Laura Juneau, and it came to her that things should end up where they had started.
She took a deep breath.
She walked the bass line with her left hand, playing the notes that were so familiar in her head. She vamped on the E minor, then A, then back to E minor, then down to D, then the triplet punches on the C before hitting the refrain in the major key, G to D, then C, B7 and back to the vamp on E minor.
In her head, she heard the song coming together—Ray Manzerek mastering the schizophrenic bass and piano parts. Robby Krieger’s guitar. John Densmore coming in on the drums, finally, Jim Morrison singing—
Love me two times, baby . . .
“Fantastic,” Nick raised his voice to be heard over the music.
Love me two times, girl . . .
Laura let her eyes close again. She fell into the bouncy triplets. The tempo was too fast. She didn’t care. There was a swelling in her heart. This had been her first true love, not Nick. Just to play again was a gift. She didn’t care that her fingers were old and clumsy, that she lagged the fermate. She was back in Oslo. She was tapping out the beat on the bar. Laura Juneau had seen the chameleon inside of Jane Queller, had been the first person to really appreciate the part of her that was constantly adapting.
If you can’t play the music people appreciate, then you play the music that they love.
“My darling.”
Nick’s mouth was at Laura’s ear.
She tried not to shudder. She had known it would come to this. She had felt him hovering at her ear so often, first during their six years together, then in her dreams, then in her nightmares. She had prayed if she could only get him to the piano, he wouldn’t be able to resist.
“Jane.” His thumb stroked the side of her neck. He thought the piano was canceling out his voice. “Are you still afraid of being suffocated?”
Laura squeezed her eyes closed. She tapped her foot to keep the beat, heightened the pitch of her fingers. It was simple, really. That was the beauty of the song. It was almost like a ping-pong match, the same notes being volleyed back and forth.
“I remember you saying that about Andrew—that being suffocated felt like a bag was being tied around your head. For twenty seconds, was it?”
He was taking credit for sending Hoodie. Laura hummed with the song, hoping the vibrations in her jawbone would cancel out Mike’s recording.
Yeah, my knees got weak . . .
“Were you scared?” Nick asked.
She shook her head, hitting the damper pedal to bring out the vibration in the strings.
Last me all through the week . . .
Nick said, “This is all your fault, my love. Can’t you see that?”
Laura stopped humming. She knew the rhythm of Nick’s threats as well as the notes of the song.
“It’s your fault I had to send Penny to the farmhouse.”
The feel of his mouth on her ear was like sandpaper, but she did not pull away.
“If you had just given me what I wanted, Edwin would be alive, Clara wouldn’t have been hurt, Andrea would’ve been safe. It’s all on you, my love, because you wouldn’t listen to me.”
Conspiracy.
Laura kept playing even as she felt the air begin to seep from the balloon in her heart. He’d confessed to sending Paula. They had him on the recording back in the dark little room. Nick’s days at Club Fed were over.
But he wasn’t finished.
His lips brushed the tip of her ear. “I’m going to give you another choice, my darling. I need our daughter to speak on my behalf. To tell the parole board that she wants her daddy to come home. Can you make her do that?”
He pressed his thumb against her carotid artery, the same as he’d done when he’d strangled her into unconsciousness.
“Or do I have to force you to make another choice? Not Andrew this time, but your precious Andrea. It’d be awful if you lost her after all of this. I don’t want to hurt our child, but I will.”
Terroristic threats. Intimidation. Extortion.
Laura kept playing, because Nick never knew when to quit.
“I told you I would scorch the earth to get you back, my darling. I don’t care how many people I have to send, or how many people die. You still belong to me, Jinx Queller. Every part of you belongs to me.”
He waited for her reaction, his thumb pressed to her pulse for the tell-tale sign of panic.
She wasn’t panicked. She was elated. She was playing music again. Her daughter was listening. Laura could’ve stopped right now—Nick had given them enough—but she was not going to deny herself the pleasure of finishing what she had started. Up to the A, then back to the E minor, down to the D, then she was hitting the triplets on the C again and she was at the Hollywood Bowl. She was at Carnegie. Tivoli. Musikverein. Hansa Tonstudio. She was holding her baby. She was loving Gordon. She was pushing him away. She was struggling with cancer. She was sending Andrea away. She was watching her daughter finally grow into a vibrant, interesting young woman. And she was holding onto her, because Laura was never going to give up another thing that she loved for this loathsome man.
One for tomorrow . . . one just for today . . .
She had hummed the words to the song in her jail cell. Tapped it out on her imaginary bed frame keyboard the same way she had tapped it on the bar top for Laura Juneau. Even now with Nick still playing the devil on her shoulder, Laura allowed herself the joy of playing the song right up until the final, sharp staccato brought her to the abrupt end—
I’m goin’ away.