A Song for Bill

In goes another spoonful of coffee and Corey Milworth closes the compartment and presses the button. He walks through the kitchen and sees the dishes in the sink and grabs them, running the water and washing them under cold. He puts them in the drying rack and the thunk is a little louder than usual and it might be because he means it. 

Walking past the couch that has held his brother in sleep for the last three months, he wonders if by some magnificent wonder of will he has decided to go off in the night to find something that used to be of himself. A quick glance at the discernible blob tells him he is wrong and that his blood is still there. He knows that the smell of coffee isn’t enough; even the accumulated sounds of an exaggerated morning have become his weapon, and now seem inconsequential. The couch-lump makes no movement and Corey’s mind makes itself up. He, a non-confrontational, ‘only-good-vibes’ English teacher, having taken on his brother who has seen better days, has opted for a change of tact.

With two cups of coffee in his hands, he makes his way to the living room, places one on the coffee table that lands with a hollow plunk and sits back holding his. The couch-rider does not stir. He stirs him with a rough shake and a face emerges from the couch-blanket cocoon. It is bedraggled and worn and thin but not a good thin and his eyes adjust and find his brother’s: 

“Mornin’, bro.” 

A grumble that defies phonics from under the blankets. 

“Listen, I need to talk to you.” Grumble. “JESUS, Mark. C’mon.” 

The urgency raises Mark from his feigned slumber and the blanket drops like the weight of lies. He makes his eyes like he is listening. 

“Listen, it’s been three months now. And I know it’s been hard for you, but look… I need a change here. There is this thing about codependency-”

“Ah, shit Corey, you been talkin’ about me to your shrink again?”

“So what if I have?” 

A few beats pass and they both sip coffee. 

  “I think you need to move out… I haven’t wanted to say this, but-” 

“Really? All of this cuz I can’t catch a tune? After all I’ve done for you? When you were a kid and those guys were fucking with you, who was-” 

“Yea, I know. You’re right. And I thank you. But look, like it or not, I need my own space. And bro, I love you. Don’t ever forget that shit. I want to pay for your first couple of months at your new place.” 

Corey nods his head and sips his coffee intensely. 

“Man, this place is small. You get it, right? I love you but I got my own thing here.”

A look of love to eyes that won’t accept it. A few words are exchanged and before long Mark is alone in his brother’s apartment. It is quiet and he sips his coffee. There is the beckoning of nothing and the wave of loneliness that sweeps through him like an arpeggio and he turns the TV on. 

Here with the ‘try it now’ and there with the ‘more after the break’ and Mark is ready to go back to the void until he tries one more and there is the ad for an Old Folks Home and the woman speaking looks like his Nana. 

He couldn’t explain it, but there was a crystallisation, a moment of clarity. For Mark, the stagnation, the graveyard sound, the apocalypse enzyme had been riding shotgun, blotting out the sunlight of himself. It might have been his brother’s ultimatum or something more granular, but it resulted in his dialling the number and causing a forceful deliberation with fate’s agents. 

“Good morning, Wellingstone Retirement Home and Long Term Care Facility. How may I help you?” 

“Yea, I was just wondering… do you have any volunteering opportunities? I’d love to-”

“Well isn’t that the darndest thing! Our afternoon volunteer for today just cancelled and well, we need someone! You don’t happen to play any instruments, do you?” 

Mark almost chuckles before he says: “Actually, I do.” 

*

Off the bus with his clunky keyboard and to the front door of the Wellingstone under a blue sky that is the life and feeling of true Spring and rebirth. Into the lobby where he speaks with a woman named Sue who smiles big in her scrubs even though she has tired eyes. She consults with a colleague and he ends up being paired with a man named Bill. Down the hallway and into the room and he sees him; Bill sleeps in an armchair that is green. His glasses sit atop his head and hair that is white and his face bears the lines, sharp angles and pockets of age. Mark sits down and waits. Bill snores until Mark clears his throat and Bill jolts awake. 

“Sorry to wake you, Sir. I’m just here - well, I’m just here to talk. If you want.” 

“Jesus Christ, another one? Don’t call me Sir. It’s Bill, I’m not in the Army anymore. Not that you would know anything about that from the pansy look of ya.” 

Mark nods and takes a breath. A few beats of silence, suffused by the sterile aroma under the watchful eyes of innocuous paintings of scenery. 

“So, Bill. Tell me a bit about yourself.” 

Scoff and now the glasses are where they belong and Mark feels a laser beam glare. 

“Wife died a while ago. I was an electrician for a long time. Got kids but one is in Vancouver and the other fucker moved to England to be a teacher. In a private school, no less. Shit thinks he’s better than the rest of us. But you can stop pretending to be interested. You just come here to make yourself feel better, right? That’s all we are to you. A way to feel better.” 

More silence and Mark starts to regret his choice. His brother’s couch would have been a lot safer. Bill looks around the room and finds the clunky black case. 

“Well, what the hell is that?” 

“That’s a keyboard, si- Bill.” 

A barely perceptible change, a softening in the air. 

“You don’t say. And I would imagine you know how to play the thing.” 

“Well, I guess you could say that. I’m a composer. I write stuff for TV and films. Lately, commercials.” Though the truth was that lately he hadn’t written a goddamned thing.

Bill’s bushy grey eyebrows move: “Well, if it means you’ll stop yammering on, I ‘spose you could play me something. Though I guess it’ll be some modern garbage.” 

Mark shrugs, seeing an opening. He gets on his knees and zips open the keyboard, his baby. This was his arena; for as long as he could remember, whenever he could play, he wouldn't need to talk. And if he didn’t need to play his own songs? Things usually went pretty well.

Mark sits behind the keyboard and sees the face of Bill and his mind that is already made up to shrug whatever he has in store off because for Bill and the years he has seen there isn’t much left to surprise him, only things left to make him double down on how little life has to offer. Mark, with his left, hits the first bass note, finds the chord and lets his right hand find the melody. It is like riding a bike and the sound fills the small room. 

“Stop,” says Bill and Mark does. “Is that Erik Satie?” 

Nod. 

“Well, I’ll be damned. It’s been a while. That the first one? Of his Gymno-whatever you call ems?” 

Mark chuckles then stops, hoping it doesn’t seem rude. “Yes, it sure is. Would you like me to continue?” 

Nod. And so his fingers find the keys that make that moment in the early 1900s come to life, when Erik Satie closed himself off from the world and found the sounds that spoke truth to him and breathed the notes that would fly and live forever. Bill closes his eyes and for a moment, there is only the soar, the introspection of Satie. 

“May I?” says Bill, somewhere around the middle of the piece. He is gesturing towards the keyboard. Mark lifts his fingers and the notes hang in the air. 

“Of course! I didn’t realise you played?” 

“A long time ago. Don’t judge me.” And so he gets up and it is a slow process and there is shuffling across the room. Mark doesn’t know if he should offer to help so does an awkward hand gesture, as if Bill could take his arm, which he doesn’t. He sits behind the keyboard and Mark sits nearby. Nearly a minute goes by as Bill looks at the keys and spreads his fingers on them without pressing them. Finally, he hits the same first note that Mark had hit and finds the same chord. He repeats the root and the chord a few times and the notes, the sound floats. He catches the changes, though his palsied fingers fumble them and a few dissonant notes ring out. He stops, stretches his fingers and nearly smiles. 

“I used to play a lot of jazz, actually. In the 60s. Everyone was talkin’ about rock and roll, but the good shit was jazz. You like Nat?” 

Mark grins: “‘Course I do! It should be illegal not to.” 

“You know his version of Paper Moon?” 

Nod. Bill starts to prime, chugging out the bass notes and vamping the chords, his fingers catching up to what was once a part of his life, the piano that he bought and fought with Deloris about but he just needed it and it was a good investment because instruments actually appreciate in value if they are looked after and now that world is with him and Nat “King” Cole is too, the nimble fingers not what they were once but even some of the grace notes falling in line, painting the picture. 

“Bill,” says Mark. “I’m so sorry to be rude, but can I use the bathroom? Too much coffee.” 

“Shit, kid. You don’t need to ask.” He flourishes a blues run that is very Herbie Hancock and continues to shuffle through a repertoire that had been robust 50 years prior. 

Mark closes the door and notices how clean, if not sterile everything is. He feels a pang of pity for how little there is of life there, and how wrong it seems; there is so much life in Bill, and it had just seemed to be hiding behind a curmudgeonly exterior. The notes from the room mix in with the sound of urine on bowl and as Mark starts to finish up there is a loud crash of dissonance and a heavy thud that is either a keyboard hitting the floor, a body hitting the floor or both. Mark makes himself decent and runs to the room. 

His eyes register the scene before his brain does. Even still, it doesn’t take him long to run from the run and to get help.

*

See Mark: he sits with an ashen face near reception. Hear the squeaky wheels as a body rolls by on its way to wherever they keep the used vessels of life. His head is in his hands and he feels a hand on his shoulder. 

It is Sue. “Don’t beat yourself up. Bill O’Neill had been living on borrowed time. Truly. And by the sound of this afternoon, you gave him a hell of a send-off. Thank you, Mark.” 

Mark nods and tears come. They come for Bill and his family and for the unfairness of it all and for himself and he is ashamed to even think about it, but why can’t he ever catch a break? 

The fluorescent bulbs buzz above him and the smell of sterility stings his nostrils as he waits for his throat to settle before he can leave the place that was one soul lighter than when he arrived just hours prior. 

*

Back on the couch in his brother’s place. Hours before, the story explained, commiseration and hugs and tears and a few beers even though it was a school night for his brother, who had to teach the next morning. Mark stares into the darkness and feels the weight of life, of expectation and desire; he knows he needs to do something, he just can’t think of what. He rolls onto his side, finding the groove in the couch that he has made and feels his body roll into the sleep. 

It’s hard to say when it happens, and details aren’t important here. But at some point, when he is somewhere between sleep and awake, between cement and sky, there is a string of notes. It’s only three notes and even in the lucidity of a near-dream, he is sure that he has heard them before. But there is something about them, the colours there, the blue-green shift to darker blue and he feels it. Something he hasn’t felt in a long time - the urgency of creation. He opens his eyes and the notes are still there, ringing in his ears, but the ears inside of his head. He gets up, turns on the light and moves to the keyboard, being sure to plug in the headphones. He plays the three notes and a waterfall unleashes: chords, fills, cadences, everything that is everything that is within him that might have just been waiting for the right time. He pauses, sees the moon from the window beyond him and feels his heart beat twice as fast for a few seconds until it calms down. He stops thinking and lets his fingers guide him through the night.

*

Morning and Corey Millworth doesn’t even hear the keys plonking silently as he opens the compartment to the coffee machine, adds the coffee and water and rubs his eyes. He yawns, finally hears the sounds of his brother and turns to the corner of the room where the keyboard sits. Mark doesn’t even notice his gaze; he is too wrapped up in his newest composition, the tell-tale sallow face and raccoon eyes that usually accompany midnight-lamp-creation. Corey taps his shoulder and Mark jumps. 

“Shit, sorry bro. Didn’t mean to startle you.” 

Mark smiles a jittery smile. There is a wine bottle beside him that is nearly full, a glass beside him that has barely been touched. 

“I - I think I wrote something? Wanna hear it?” 

“Course I do. Fire away.” 

And so, with the coffee burbling away in the background, Mark Millworth unplugs his headphones and plays the first notes of the song that he would end up calling: A Song For Bill.