Mason Johanson Is a Falling Star (mutinous) wrote in repose,
Re: log: flower delivery - ella g/mason j
Ella was a frozen thing, much the same as she'd been when he first met her. She talked the same, snatched at the rays of sunlight that came her way the same. She wanted a cigarette, and he reached into his pocket, tapped one out of the pack. He lit it off his own, pausing a moment to make sure it caught, and passed it off to her as she went by in a cloud of floral scent and riotous color. The cigarette was a little sharper and sweeter for being near him. A little more satisfying a bad habit, the smoke sinking a little bit deeper into the lungs.
He walked to the edge of the piano. He wore worn leather shoes that hardly made a sound on the finished pine. Someone had built this church plain, but to stand. It had been here since the forties, or somewhere thereabouts. A lifetime for some. He leaned on the piano's flat back and watched her settle in.
"I don't think he's listening just now," he said, with the preacher's small, soft smile. "He's got plenty of folks to take care of without troubling himself over a little music."
He knew the song. He liked music. There had been a time when religious men had said music in the church was his own work, and that was more than a little silly, but it didn't stop him liking it. Whether te deums in houses of praise made it to their chosen target, he did not know. But he knew he was fond of powerful harmony, and he liked someone who could write lyrics about marble arches and having your power cut from you with scissors. He hummed along, as he knew how it went. He had never been in the room to trouble Leonard Cohen while he was working something out, but that man would reach the end of his life soon, too. Who knew? Maybe the preacher would hear songs no one else would ever know. But this song was a good enough thing to leave behind on Earth.
He slipped around the edge of the piano and pulled up the second wooden stool, settling in beside her. He watched her play for a moment or two, and then began to follow at the other end of the ivories. He matched her, note for note. He seemed to know where her fingers would go before she did.