Chapter 4: The Hall in Daylight

A pipe knocked somewhere behind the wall. Ada Mercer lifted her hand and waited. Eli Finch began to speak, saw her listening, and stopped. When the knocking ended, she found she no longer remembered the sound she had been comparing.

“Again, please.”

He played it again.

Her back began to ache before the work was finished. She stood, put her palms against her hips, and looked toward the high windows. The light outside had become colorless. Beside her, the boy rolled his shoulders and stretched his fingers, though he had spent most of the afternoon sitting still.

“You can walk around,” she told him.

“I thought you might need—”

“I’ll ask.”

He walked to the noticeboard. She watched him read a crooked sheet, then turn it gently on its pin until its lower edge was level. When she called him back, he came without hurrying.

They finished with her playing and him standing where she had first placed the chair. She did not ask him whether the piano was good. She asked about a particular roughness, then another, and listened to his answers. At the upper end he shook his head.

“They all sound about the same to me up there.”

She nodded. She returned to her own comparisons, leaning closer, taking the time she needed. There were things he could give her and things he could not. The afternoon did not become shorter because they had said so.

At last she took the lever off its pin.

“Finished?” he asked.

She played a few chords, let them settle, and tried a passage slowly. One key had a worn place near its front edge that caught the pad of her finger. She went back over the passage without catching it again.

“Yes.”

He rose to help with the panel. She guided his end into place, then secured hers. They put the tools away and returned the chair. On the bench, her gloves had cooled into the shape in which she had dropped them.

At the door she looked back. The piano stood closed beneath the noticeboard. She turned off the light and followed Eli Finch outside.

The bus shelter had a clear side panel scratched cloudy at shoulder height. Wind came around it and lifted a corner of the timetable. Ada Mercer sat at the end of the bench, leaving room for the tool bag, but Eli Finch put it on the ground between his feet.

He studied the timetable.

“We’ve missed one.”

“By much?”

He showed her the time on his phone. She looked from it to the printed column and found the next departure herself.

“There’s time, then.”

“For what?”