Page 2 of Heart Strings

Now, it was just me. Every single other member of KOE was gone, celebrating Mardi Gras in one way or another. I had this big Garden District house all to myself, probably for the first time since I joined the sorority.

I decided the best way to deal with this sudden and unwelcome silence was to make lots of loud noise, so I hauled my electric keyboard and its stand downstairs and set it up in the living room. I sat on a chair that let me keep my weight sufficiently forward, straightened my spine, took a deep breath and laid my fingers on the keys.

This piece was one of the few that I had been able to choose freely, but it also was one of the few I was learning that I didn’t need for one class or another. This was one of three pieces that I would play in my audition for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, which was coming up in just a few short weeks. I needed to know every single note. I needed to be playing these three songs in my sleep. Then maybe, just maybe, I would finally feel ready for this audition.

Iwouldfeel ready eventually, I knew it. I had grown up in Monroe, a town in the northern part of the state, not New Orleans, and my dad was a dentist, not a musician but…I knew I was meant to be a pianist and play for the orchestra. I wasn’t meant to follow in my father’s footsteps, but my great-grandmother’s. She had been a famous pianist for the New Orleans Opera House in 1911, and along with the books of music my grandmother had kept and then given to my mother, who had given them to me, I had received something else: my great-grandmother’s spirit, the spirit of a master pianist. She was with me always, guiding me toward my fate and helping me along this path.

Sometimes, when I played especially well, I thought I could feel her presence even without the assistance of the Voodoo queen who helped me contact her. Those times were always the ones I felt most at peace with myself and in control of my instrument.

Would Great Grandma approve of electronic keyboards?I wondered suddenly. I couldn’t remember exactly when they had been invented, but probably not during her lifetime. I felt like she would be all for anything that let people practice the piano more easily and more often, though.

Easily and often. Very, very often. Often enough to secure me a place in the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra.

I started the piece. For a few short seconds, the notes sounded great - then I made a small but highly noticeable error and started over. It happened again, that same little mistake in the exact same place, but I ignored it and continued. Then I made another mistake. This time I restarted the song. I fixed both issues with the next rendition but broke my streak with a missed note.

Frustration began building like a heavy brick wall inside my chest. I had played this entire song through from beginning to end with no mistakes, sometimes multiple times in a row. The entire house was silent, not a single creak or footstep to break my concentration.

Still, the harder I concentrated on playing the right notes, the more mistakes I made. Each one settled heavily on my chest, crushing any good cheer my friends had left me with and leaving only irritation. I sounded like I’d been playing for a month, not years.

Suddenly, in the middle of a verse, I abandoned the keys and slapped the power button. It had taken me far too long, but I finally realized that it was just time to stop. Working through frustration could be a good thing, but after years and years of practicing the piano, I had discovered that sometimes I just had to take a step back.

Except, tonight I really couldn’t. Playing the piano was my job. The bar paid me to be good at it, so I would have to get it together.

I took the keyboard back upstairs, changed into high-waisted jeans, a tucked-in form-fitting white shirt, a comfortable gray cardigan, and chose a pair of cute wedges to wear with the outfit. My loose red hair fell about my shoulders, and my blue eyes blinked back at me when I stopped at the bathroom to check myself in the mirror. Some stray strands of hair stuck out at odd angles from my waves, but I knew if I brushed my hair out the waves would become less pronounced, and I liked them as they were. I settled for pressing them down against my head and applying a little hairspray to help hold them in place.

Good enough.I didn’t really need to leave for another thirty minutes, but I didn’t want to sit around in this too-quiet house and wait, so I decided I might as well leave early.

I had ordered an Uber a few minutes ago, and the car pulled up in front of the house just as I stepped outside with my bag and locked the door behind me. Unlike Zoe and Maggie, I didn’t have a car, but I never really minded. I loved to ride the trolly and often hitched rides with my friends or any of the other sorority sisters with cars to save money on transportation. Today, though, I would just have to take the more expensive option.

“It might take a little longer than the estimated time on the app,” my driver let me know. “Parade traffic,” she explained.

“That’s fine.”Maybe I was meant to have a bad practice session. I could have been tempted to stay longer if I was playing well, and then I might have been late for work.I just had to trust that my great-grandmother’s spirit knew what was going on and would give me the strength and concentration to play well at my job tonight. Even when I had been in class all day and I had spent every second of my free time practicing piano or studying, I always managed to pull myself together at work.

And you know what? Maybe Zoe was right. Maybe, today would be the day when some handsome guy walked into the bar, listened to me play, compliment me profusely, then tell me he was with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra and asked me to join them-

I sighed loudly in the backseat of the Uber. When I got to work, I’d go to Andre behind the bar and ask him for a shot. If anything could help get me through the night - a stiff shot was my best bet.

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