It was at a small theater in Brooklyn, close to where I stayed. I was smoking a cigarette, walking back to my place when I saw it. The poster on the wall of the theater was grubby. Romeo and Juliet, it proclaimed, in bold Times New Roman. The matinee was today. Above, pink light flickered. THE GLOWING BELL. The double “L”s were smashed and dark. As I looked, the “-WING” behind GLO sputtered once like a death rattle and went to neon tube heaven. What kind of theater calls itself “The Glowing Bell”? I took one last drag from the cigarette. It was a spur of the moment thing. I took the money I had been thinking of using to buy a new pair of shoes and after a moment of hesitation, I stubbed out my cigarette on the sidewalk and entered the theater. The ticket lady was a fat, bored looking lump filing her nails with an emery board. I approached her and cleared my throat when she didn’t look up. “One ticket please.” Jabba the Hutt put down the board and pushed herself on her little roller chair over to the machine. She tapped stuff into it. The machine grumbled, spat out the ticket and she slapped it down on the counter, chair squeaking in abject pain. No words were spoken. I smoothed out my ball of crumpled notes as much as I could and passed it over the counter. “Packed house?” I asked, trying to break the silence. She looked up and stared at me like I was crazy. I let the excuse of a conversation die, took the ticket and walked in. It was dark and damp. I could smell mould. There were no ushers. I couldn’t tell what seat I was supposed to be on as I couldn’t read the smudgy font on the ticket. I grabbed a mid-row seat anyway, not that it mattered. The theater was nearly empty. There was a young couple snuggled near the back, moving shadows in the dark. The girl was on the guy’s lap making stifled moaning noises as they tried their best to have stealthy sex. They couldn’t have been more than sixteen. There was an old man on the left, head hanging back, sleeping. He was Jewish, that much was apparent by his beard, and reminded me uncomfortably of a long buried memory I couldn’t place. He looked dead. The lights dimmed further, stage lights went on, and that’s when it started.

i could fly,
oh yes, i could.
but i would rather
sleep instead.

Sex.

That’s what it’s like.

The way his fingers found their way around the keys, like lovers. There was a silence in the hall, a silence you never heard, will never hear again. A silence not made up of whirring minds counting off twenty four full bar rests, minds running through the next entry, minds tensing up for the conductor’s glance and baton twitch that will cue you in. a silence not made up of nicotine craving minds in the audience, impatience to give the flowers, for dinner, for the inevitable sleep when it was over and you got home. Just enraptured faces staring on, swallowing everything greedily, everything, everything in case you missed out on a single moment.

We watch like voyeurs, violinists and woodwinds and brass, all as part of the audience as the audience as he, with a name no one can pronounce, let alone remember, made love to the piano the way we could only dream about, making love to our girlfriends, our boyfriends, our spouses. It would haunt me forever, whenever I lie in the dark with a warm body next to mine, that it would never be as great, never be as good as all the porn in the world, which would never be as good as that nine minutes I still remember from six years ago when I saw an ugly, skinny man who could not speak a word of English spoke in the language of angels with his piano.

Love. I am in love with that man, and what he could do, what he had done in that single encore as the last note trailed away and everyone stared at him like he was god, a god who couldn't speak, a god whose name we don't know and never will, a god who stood up and strode off in the silence after that miracle.

there is something about school and you i can't fit together.

being extremely lucky and being too stupid to be bluffed is a winning combination in poker.

richard.

marcus.

so what's up? you doing ok?

you want to know if i'm getting any?

no i mean in the business. i read your screenplay. "screwed on" was it? i thought it was incredible. it was more than incredible actually, it was good. the critics loved it. especially the scene with the baby girl. i heard you wrote a sequel.

"screw off".

what?

"screw off". that's the name.

i see. to be honest, it seems like it went under without a ripple. i didn't even get a chance to look at it.

yeah, the producers of "Screw On" kept insisting i write another, considering the success of the first one. i was all against it actually, but i figured if i came up with a good story they would buy it.

and of course the pay was good.

yeah the pay was good. for the week or so when it was actually in my bank account.

so what happened?

well, it bombed. the mainstream producers thought it was boring, and the arthouse potheads got daunted by the size of it.

shows how much they know.

one firm took us up on it though. it didn't open well and they yanked the cord after two weeks or so. honestly it wasn't that good anyway.

what a screw up.

what?

i said, quote "what a screw up" unquote.

i'll drink to that.

how's james?

not very happy nowadays. hard to be after realising you spent quarter of a million on a lemon.

maybe you could write another sequel. "Screw Up". a satire or something. a costumed villain builds a projector to emit radio waves that make people befuddled and unable to tell a good movie from a bad one.

laughs.

no one wants to film anything from a writer who's last screenplay couldn't make two thousand at the box office.

"screwed on" was amazing. doesn't that count for something?

no.

there used to be words here.