Page 54 of Share with Me

“Monday sounds good.”

“Glad that works out. Otherwise we’ll have to wait until I get home from Savannah, and then the weeks are pretty much filled up.” Whenever SISO wasn’t playing as a full orchestra, either the SISO Strings or the SISO Brass were. They played in hotel lobbies and restaurant foyers throughout the Christmas and New Year for the tourists.

“I’ll see you Monday, then,” Brinley said.

Ivan hoped to see her sooner than that, and he didn’t know why. Somewhere deep in his heart was a longing that he couldn’t place. It couldn’t possibly be for Brinley, could it? He stared at his phone. The call had ended.

He wanted to talk to her again.

It seemed silly at first, but he was sure he wanted to hear her voice again. It was pleasant.

Pleasant.

Pleasant like springtime and wide open meadows covered with blooms as far as the eyes could see.

Ivan could hear a new tune in his head. He had to write it down. He swiveled in his chair, faced his laptop, and booted it. The song just came to Ivan, flowing on the keyboard and then onto the music notation software on his laptop. He wrote about thirty measures before he printed out the music sheet, picked up his Vuillaume, and began to play.

He grabbed a pencil and jotted the title on the top of the page.

Pleasant Days.

Then he added more notes to the printout.

Ivan played some more, bow and string from the violin that the luthier Jean Baptiste Vuillaume had constructed in 1850 bearing witness to his creativity. He closed his eyes to let the sound wash over him, a meadow breeze basking in sunshine.

Thank You, God, for strings.

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