Prelude in Minor Keys
by Kara Kilgore

This morning, sounds start coming together in ways in which they shouldn’t. The traffic, like strings to the solid beat of a jackhammer ten flights below. I usually meet my wife’s perky comments with cold reserve, but this morning I actually smile at the bitch. Lynn doesn’t notice, and I don’t care. I’m too busy listening to the hum of a dishwasher fuse with the frequency of florescent lights in my kitchen. The sound harmonizes briefly before it scurries away.

As I’m leaving for work, I catch Lynn smiling in the hallway mirror. I straighten my tie and see her smiling at nothing. I know that smile but have never seen it on my wife. It’s an edited smile, a socially acceptable one. It flutters and threatens to leave her lips, spilling some secret happiness. That mirror should reflect dark circles under her eyes, but I don’t care to second-guess a reflection. I close the front door and hear its single drum beat mix with the cymbals of wind chimes.

The subway is running late. Last night’s events run circles in my mind, but Lynn keeps breaking the chain. Her strange smile anchors itself, as my shoe annihilates a trail of ants on the sidewalk. I pace myself though the series of events, slowing it down. I think about them in order. I don’t want to miss anything. It was only last night, but my memories are already fragments, without depth. I pull my trench around me and remember.

I hail a cab bound for the North side of town. The driver speaks little English and drops most of his consonants. I speak twice as fast, throwing the confusion back at him. I watch his posture shrink, as I amuse myself with this small insult. He drops me off on the corner, and I walk to the apartments overlooking the highway. I knock on the door marked 311. The file clerk: a Tuesday night piece of ass. I knock again and kick at the clumps of flowers; I envision her planting daisies in this shit hole place. I inhale the thin air. The other one’s house is not far. The intern: my usual Monday night. She’s eager to move up in the company. Spinning her wheels, the little rodent just keeps on pedaling. I think to call her, but realize I don’t have her number. Maybe she’s blonde. Maybe I don’t care.

I trudge across the girl’s lawn, tripping over a garden hose. Again, with the goddamn daisies. They both live in the slums. That is one type of death, so the flowers are somewhat appropriate. I see the translucent blue light of television. I hear the canned laughter of sitcoms, but it stops suddenly and the light fades. The house stiffens. A corpse.

I’m sweating like a kid stood up at his prom. A car roars by, and I hear bright, explosive laughter. No intern. I should be disappointed, but my skin burns as I imagine this girl’s audacity. I pull a ballpoint pen from my pocket and scrawl the words I KNOW YOU’RE THERE on the flimsy door.

Daisies indeed.

I catch a cab and head home. My house is dark when I arrive, and the windows are wearing shrouds. My wife is asleep, a bottle of aspirin still in her hand. Physical weakness is my visual cue to attack. Something ignites, and my fingertips pulse. I rip the duvet off the bed and launch in to my usual tirade. A headache is nothing compared to my anguish. After her tears, I storm downstairs and turn on the stereo. I crank the volume. Decibels climb higher. It’s four in the morning, and I sleep in the comfort of sound warfare.

I should probably be concerned about the strange music, but it’s hard to care about something that harmonizes so effortlessly. On the subway now, I push all these thoughts away. I don’t have to think about anything. I listen instead, to the screech of subway tracks in B minor.

Chrome capriccio bends behind the panel of the elevator. Suits and faces file past me and I’m trying to measure their expressions. They don’t hear anything like what I’m hearing. It’s funny because I can hear the scratch of their suits as a refrain to the swish of silk ties. The dissonance of fake silk tends to hum at a lower note. The elevator stops, and I walk into the lobby. I haven’t forgotten that intern and her childish trick. I sidestep a clerk and borrow her computer. I tap out commands and generate four weeks of reports that I suddenly need by tonight. Another keystroke produces my dry cleaning instructions. I can already hear the girl’s whiny excuses.
Her cubicle is dark. The music coming from the girl’s Formica desk was so efficient. It was so cheery. The sharp notes fell like paperclips on granite. I kick the swivel chair and a coffee mug falls and shatters. “Go pump your sunshine elsewhere,” I mutter.

I need to get away from the shards of glass, that damn music, but the lilting melody follows me like children. Maybe it’s the children that Lynn wants so badly. Maybe I don’t care. I hear their refrain, a familiar one at that...a pocket full of poesy. I swallow thick white fear. The noise around me morphs into a minuet. I burst through the door of my colleague’s office. It’s empty. The panic in my throat, it’s growing, festering. I need a doctor, a specialist. This has to be neurological, psychological, one of those words, a treatable one that ended with “logical”. I see movement in the boardroom. I rake at my hair, and my feet take over. They’re all in here. No one looks up at me. Their faces are fixed on a television screen. We all fall down...I hear in my left ear, and swat at the unseen melody.

A mousy girl in black tights speaks into a microphone on television. Police are in the background rummaging around the front of a house. It’s my house. This is a mistake. I was just there...ashes, ashes...She appears to be speaking slowly, but I hear only broken pieces. The rest of her words seem to pause for me alone. The reporter gazes at the camera, directly at my face. Her voice steadies itself on a tightrope. She says, “Appears to be a single gun shot.” She looks away, and her voice pitches forward in high speed, so that I hear, “The victim is identified as the long time C.E.O. of...surviving wife, Lynn...caliber...broken” The police are digging through my wife’s flowerbed, uprooting the violets that Lynn planted last spring. The time glows on the screen. It is 10:13a.m.

I run from the boardroom, and sprint down six flights of stairs. Running seems to alleviate something in my brain.

Outside, the sunlight splinters through my head. My nose bleeds, but I ignore it. No cab, no subway, I don’t want their twisted music. I exhale and dart through traffic. It’s bad reporting, the wrong damn house. I drop my briefcase, spilling its contents on the city street. It’s all a delusion, a mirage in the desert of my cortex. My welcome mat says welcome. My door is open.

Lynn is talking to a detective on the sofa. She’s wearing cuffs. Paramedics stream like ants from the bedroom. Worker ants. The window’s broken, and I hear its single piano cord still rocking in the air. An officer is dusting the broken glass. He pauses to answer a cell phone. I kneel beside him and watch his expressions, trolling for answers. I see a body bag on the bed, and I laugh, because for a moment, it makes sense. My timid wife has managed to shoot an intruder. That’s it. I stare at the bag. It’s waiting for me. I feel that something is waiting for me, so I walk over and pull the zipper. It’s my body. My face is white, twisted from the impact of a single bullet. I still hear my own laugh, so far away. I touch my own cold hand and stare at the tiny flowers jutting from my lapel: a pocket full of posies. I hear my wife’s voice. She says, “self-defense,” a falsetto-soft lie, straight faced and accapello. I turn in to the rush of sound coming up behind me. It engulfs me, claiming me...daisies, I think. Crescendo. Finale.