Mira lifted her eyes from the toasted soldier halfway in the running yolk of a soft-boiled egg.
Across the marble waterfall island, Warshon sat on a stool, leaning on one elbow with his forefinger pressed against the side of his brow. His shoulder shook with a quiet laugh.
"Anything wrong?" She felt about her face, lest she got crumbs or yolk on herself.
"Relax," he crooned. "You don't have anything on your face."
She scowled. "Then what're you laughing at?"
"I just," he paused, raising his chin. "I'm just enjoying a simple moment in life."
"Huh?"
He shook his head, his eyes flicking at her plate, his smile lingering on his lips. "I've never offered to cook for anyone. And when I made the offer, I didn't expect it to be this, simple."
"Neither did I expect this to be a real kitchen," she retorted without much thought.
He laughed. "Didn't Nonna make you food earlier?"
"She did, and she claimed the virginity of your kitchen."
His laugh tapered into a lazy smile a tad wry. "I don't have the time or the need to turn it into a home."
She faltered while the word sorry hung low on her tongue. Remembering how he loathed the word, she gobbled it up with another mouthful.
"That said," he continued, upon receiving no reply. "Anything you want to eat when you feel better, try me."
"But I like eggs and toast." She looked down at the yolk coating nicely on the breadstick, the only thing Reynold knew how to make. "Nice and simple," she added, and even sounded like him. Aware of the attentive gaze boring into her, Mira lowered her head, stifling the unbidden tears that threatened to slop over her eyes. Fazed by the protracted silence to which the man seemed to show no interest in putting an end, she rubbed her nose with the heel of a thumb and plastered a grin on her face before lifting her eyes to meet his. "I have a question."
"Shoot."
"All the channels you chose when you were needling me." She put down the stick on her plate. "Why did you choose the lung channel when you were only trying to subdue the nausea?"
"Because the body is a holistic system, and the functionality of each organ is related to one another," he replied, his cheek resting on the back of his hand, his head angled in a delicate chiaroscuro under the recessed lights of the drop ceiling. "According to Tamen medicine, both the lung and the large intestines belong to the same element and are connected at the point where I put in the needle. And because of your asthma and pneumonia, the problem in the lungs manifests in your GI system. The antibiotics and all the First World medication, while fighting your infections, aggravated your digestion."
"Treating the body sounds like ruling a country," she said, fascinated. "The backlog of problems we have, our hate and discontent, will always find an outlet in something somewhere else that seemed unrelated."
He spurred her on with a smiling nod.
"To a healthy body, all drugs are poisonous. But the poisons can also save you when you're sick," she mused, quoting him from before. "Pushing anything too far, any idea, however grand and indisputable, it is doomed to become the exact opposite. Do you think that everything in the world is somewhat connected and essentially run by the same set of theories? "
"Everything exists and can only exist as in a paradox."
"Well yes." Too engaged in her thoughts, she went on, "Enslaved by our love, we learn to hate, by democracy, we tyrannize, by the will of life, we bring death to others, so on and so forth in the ever-shifting paradox by which we're cursed, the dialectic process that every solution will always become the new problem that defines the next generation, and –" she clammed up, her eyes shut, as she realized she had talked too much.
Narrowing his onyx gaze, the man crossed his arms before him and leaned close. "And?"
She shook her head with force, averting her eyes. "Yap, yap, jibber jabber, yap, yap, don't mind me."
He loosed a laugh, his head shaking.
Mira bit her lip. Scouring for a new topic in the hope that he would take his eyes off her, she looked across the kitchen. At the end of the living room opposing the accent wall of rugged basalt slate was a grand piano, sleeky black and solemn. "Great piano," she observed. It had been a while since she could put her hands on those beautiful keys. Among all the arts the Reds smashed when they raided their residence was the piano she had played since thirteen.
"You know how to play?"
She halted herself midway of a nod and shook her head.
"Really?"
Shifting in the stool, she dipped her head at the table, "Only a little…"
"Eat up, and let's see how little you can play," he said, his voice a demand.
"I'm full now. I've finished all the dip, see?" She turned the empty insides of the eggs to face him.
He shook his head, his brows raising. For a second she thought he was going to make her eat. Rare enough when a drug lord cooked, rarer when the food he cooked wasn't even for him, and must it be suicidal for her to dare not finish her plate. But he only got up from the stool and extended a hand to her. "C'mon then, looks like someone is eager to play."
"That's not what I meant," she shook her hands, and her head, her eyes shuttering.
But he wasn't going to budge but grabbed her hand. Warm and gentle was his grip as he led her to the grand piano. Nine feet in length, the concert-grade behemoth exuded gravitas in close-up, and yet with so much simplicity as if the mechanics knew the greatness of their art and felt no need to show off in the frills.
"What should we play then?" he mused, gazing at her sideways as they both sat on the bench.
Informed by an instinct that the question was bait, she kept quiet.
"Well, since you're a big fan of antiquity." He struck the keys with only his left hand.
The bass clef of Waltz No. 2 by Shostakovich.
She could feel her eyes bulge. How she missed the sound of each note, and the feel of the keys when she made them sing. How she dreaded hearing it now, played before her incomplete. And yet she could do nothing about it. She lied to his face that she didn't know it, and did so out of the habit. Now it was her turn to swallow the consequences, to listen to him ruining the magnum opus Mom and Dad waltzed to in a memory encapsulated in time. She stiffened, her right hand doubling into a fist.
"Emm," he teased in his gravelly low voice, his gaze scorching her cheek. "Something is missing. The treble clef, I just can't seem to remember." A half smile rippled under the frown he feigned.
"Look for it then," she managed a terse reply and shot to her feet. A stupid move, alas, as there was nowhere she could retreat, nor anyone obligated to put up with her tantrum.
But in the same instant she regretted, he grabbed her waist and made her sit. "You know all my secrets now," he said, his left hand halted above the keys. "Don't you think it'd be fair that I should learn a bit of truth about you, from you?"
"What do you want from me?" she breathed, staring down at the black and white keys.
"Play with me," he replied, his voice earnest. And he waited. He waited for her to start. It was her choice, and she could have played anything. But for the knowing part of her she couldn't explain, that he saw her for who and what she was, through her pretense and beyond her family name, her right hand gave in.
His left followed.
Their hands waltzed in the magnificent chords upon the keys, the white shirt she wore scraping against his black.
When the last note dropped, the silence that stalked felt almost too heavy, too loud.
"I'm a liar too," he crooned at length. "We all are. One way or another. For this reason and that. But it doesn't mean you can't trust anyone. Observe them. Feel them out. And decide for yourself how much leap of faith you are willing to risk. But remember, everything we yearn for, everything that is coveted and torments the soul in its want, comes with a substantial risk." His right hand interlaced now with her left, his words registering.
"Good night," she slurred and pulled away.
Only this time, he didn't stop her, nor did he tail her to the stairs.
Across the hall, she heard an incoming call, and the name Guiliana was pronounced with a gravelly growl. Knowing better than to eavesdrop, she quickened her feet up the stairs and closed the double door to the bedroom with her back against it.
Idiot! – she thought. How stupid of her to have lowered her guard that she voluntarily gave away what she had pieced together about him! Whirling to the dark wood door, she rapped her forehead on the detailed panel. The ridges of the patterns made her wince. She turned her head. Tracing along the wall, her eyes fell on the shelving unit where the phantom mask was left, one he wore on the untoward night when they first met. Even if she didn't confess her knowledge of him being the most wanted drug lord, could he not have guessed? Could he not have left her tied up in the bunker to die? Or let the natural course of her illness claim her to save him the trouble? Who would care about the death of an undocumented nobody? But he saved her, kept her, and wanted her to get better.
She glanced at the bed, his bed, and somehow, chords from the Waltz swayed still in her head. A shudder ebbed and flowed. She shut her eyes, stifling the cliche butterflies fluttering in her chest. Guiliana, Anna, Sabrina, he probably had a cache of them to practice on what he was doing to her, and she was a fool to have indulged, to become distracted and sideline her purpose. To get better, and stronger. To learn medicine and gain a hold in the foreign land so that one day, she could return and clear Reynold's name.
Tears bulged, circling in her eyes. She let them fall at last and bit the back of her hand so not a decibel of sound could escape and betray her. So much there she must do. So much there that she didn't know how. With so little time that was allotted to her. And yet of all the things she should worry about, she was sad and disappointed that he didn't come to her! Sliding to the carpeted floor, she curled up against the wall. Until the breathless cry drained her, she slowly fell asleep and into a dream, in which she was carried by a cedar-scented wind.
***
She pulled her hand away, and he didn't stop her.
She needed the space, and he was willing to indulge her.
His eyes followed her every move away from him, his smile felt wry.
Chords from the Waltz lingered on his mind, its every note a bloom at its fullest as if it would never wither. Gnawing his bottom lip, Warshon wondered if he should take his own advice.
A ring from his watch compelled him to withdraw his eyes. The number wasn't in his contact list but he remembered it. His smile hardened into a stare. He tugged the earpiece attached to the watch.
"To what do I own the pleasure, Guiliana?"