This Side of Brightness by Colum McCann Page B

smooth ribbon, and then he rubs his fingers along the piano lid, drags a stool across, and sits—in underpants and white shirt and silver cross—pretending to play, running his fingers through the air, inventing ragtime, until he gets so sweaty he takes off the shirt. He rubs his lips together for a tune and his music grows louder and louder until he hears a foot stomping on the ceiling above him and a roar: “Shut up already, down there!”
    The following day he and Eleanor are turned away from four restaurants and refused admittance to a cinema despite their clothes. On the streets people mutter about them. Cars slow down and taunts are hurled. At home, in the apartment on 131st Street, Walker must bend his body to duck under the doorframe. Eleanor puts her hand in his jacket pocket as he carries her over the threshold.
    Her waist is wren-thin and adolescent, and he whispers that he could carry ten of her and she says, “Don’t you even think about it, I’m the only one of me you’re ever going to get.”
    She takes the mothball from his pocket and shakes her head in amusement, thumping him playfully on the chest. The long white taffeta of her wedding dress swishes as she walks down the corridor to the common bathroom. She flushes the mothball down the toilet.
    â€œGet ready for me,” she shouts along the corridor over the gurgle of water.
    â€œI’m ready, hon.”
    Back in the room, she latches the door. She has translated her face by removing her makeup. Just seventeen, she looks even younger. Walker is out of the jacket and standing by the piano, motioning for her to play. She shakes her head, no, and drags him away from it, onto the single bed, where they fall in a rehearsal of many nights of dreams.
    â€œReady my foot,” she says, and her hands disappear inside his shirt, around to his back, and she pulls him very close.
    They move like two chiaroscurists above the covers, black and white, white and black, then sleep under foreheads wet with sweat. They lie on their sides, arms around each other, one hip a hill of bony pink, the other muscular brown. Eleanor wakes and kisses the scar above Nathan’s eye. The clock on the wall cuckoos for eight o’clock in the evening. Desire lies on her tongue like morning breath, and she wakes him with a playful jab to the stomach.
    â€œI love you.”
    â€œI love you too,” he grunts.
    â€œDon’t fall back asleep.”
    He opens his eyes. “Did y’all ever see a crane dance?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOne foot first, then the other.”
    â€œShow me.”
    â€œSandhill cranes,” he says. “Like this. I saw them all the time in Georgia.”
    She laughs as he rises from the bed and dances on the mattress.
    Later, there is a loud knock at the door. Walker, in his underpants, ritually bends his head at the doorframe. He scratches his belly as his eyes adjust.
    Vannucci, Power, and the fortune-teller stand, grinning, with four bottles of champagne in their hands. The fortune-teller breezes in, clicking across the floor in gold lamé heels, her butterfly sleeves hanging down. Power limps after her, his teeth already pulling at the champagne cork.
    Vannucci’s balding head peeps around the open frame, then backs away, embarrassed.
    But the fortune-teller sits on the bed beside Eleanor and pulls back the covers to reveal the girl’s white toes. Eleanor flushes and draws her foot back. The fortune-teller chuckles and grabs again.
    Walker, leaning against the piano, struggles his way into a pair of trousers, one foot in the air, while Power tries to push him over and spray champagne down his underwear.
    Only Vannucci waits outside the door until the couple is fully dressed, and then the party begins, the handle on the Victrola wound up ferociously by the red-faced Italian. He stands above the machine as the needle travels over the grooves. It gives out solitary, beautiful notes.