The City. Dean Koontz

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      The worst was that by then I wanted to take piano lessons, and my father refused to let it happen. I had noodled the keyboard at Grandpa Teddy’s house, and I understood the layout on a gut level, the way Jackie Robinson could read a ball in flight. But Tilton said I was too little yet, my hands too small, and when my mom disagreed and said I was big enough, Tilton said we couldn’t afford the lessons yet. Soon but not yet, which meant never.

      Grandpa offered to drive me over to his place and back a few times a week and give me lessons himself. But my father said, “It’s too far to run a little kid back and forth all the time, Syl. And we don’t have a piano here for him to practice between lessons. We’ll get a house soon, and then he can have a piano, and it’ll all make sense. Anyway, honey, you know I’m not your old man’s favorite human being. It breaks my heart how maybe he’ll poison the boy’s mind against me. I know Teddy wouldn’t do it on purpose, Syl, he’s not a mean man, but he’ll be poisoning without even knowing it. Soon we’ll rent a house, soon, and then it’ll make sense.”

      So I was sitting on the stoop in front of our building, such a sullen look on my face that most passersby glanced at me and at once away, as though I, only eight, might try to stomp them in a fit of mean. It was an unseasonably warm day for April, the air so still and humid that a feather, cast off by a bird in flight, sank like a stone in water to the pavement in front of me. As sudden as it was brief, a wind came along, lifted the feather, spun dust and litter out of the gutter, and whirled all of it up the steps and over me. I sneezed and spat away the feather that stuck to my lips.

      As I wiped at my eyes, I heard a woman say, “Hey, Ducks, how’s the world treating you?”

      My mom had a couple of friends who were professional dancers in musicals that were always being talked about by people who loved the theater, and though this woman didn’t look like any of them, she did look like a dancer. Tall and slim and leggy, with smooth mahogany skin, she came up the steps so easy, with so little movement, you’d have thought she must be on an escalator. She wore a primrose-pink lightweight suit, a white blouse, and a pink pillbox hat with a fan of gray feathers along one side, as though dressed for lunch in some place where the waiters wore tuxedos.

      In spite of her fine outfit and air of elegance, she sat beside me on the stoop. “Ducks, it’s rude not to answer when spoken to, and you look like a young man who’d rather poke himself in the eye than be rude.”

      “The world stinks,” I declared.

      “Certain things in the world stink, Ducks, but not the whole world. In fact, most of it smells wonderfully sweet. You yourself smell a little like limes and salt, which reminds me of a margarita, which isn’t a bad thing. Do you like my perfume? It’s French and expensive.”

      The sweet-rose fragrance was subtle. “It’s all right, I guess.”

      “Well, Ducks, if you don’t like it, I’ll go straight home this minute and take the bottle off my dresser and throw it out a window and let the alley reek until the next rain.”

      “My name isn’t Ducks.”

      “I’d be stunned if it was, Ducks. Parents saddle their children with things like Hortense and Percival, but I’ve never known one to name them after waterfowl.”

      “What’s your name?” I asked.

      “What do you think it is, Ducks?”

      “Don’t you know your own name?”

      “I just sometimes wonder what name I look like, so I ask.”

      She was pretty. Even an eight-year-old boy knows a pretty girl when he sees her, and beauty lifts the heart no matter what your age. Her perfume smelled all right, too.

      I said, “Well, I saw this movie on TV about these guys chasing after a treasure down in the Caribbean. This was way back when there were pirates. What they all wanted was this special pearl, see. Three things made it really, really special. It was large, like as big as a plum. And it wasn’t white or cream-colored or pink, like other pearls. It was black, pure shiny black, but it still had depth like the best pearls all do, so you could see into it, and it was very beautiful. So maybe I think the name you look like is Pearl.”

      She cocked her head and sort of smirked at me. “Young man, if you are already this smooth with the ladies, won’t a one of us be safe when you’re all grown up. I am Pearl. There’s no other name I’d want to be. You call me Pearl, Jonah.”

      Only hours later would I realize that I’d never told her my name.

      “You said there were three special things about this pearl in the movie. Its size and its color and …?”

      “Oh, yeah. Well, they said whoever possessed it could never die. It was the secret to immortality.”

      “Black, beautiful, and magical. I love being Pearl.”

      Two years would pass before she told me that she was the soul of the city made flesh.

      “So there you sit, Jonah, as gloomy as if you’re still in the belly of the whale, when in fact it’s a fine spring day. You aren’t being digested by stomach acid, and you don’t need a candle to find your way back up the gullet. Don’t waste a fine spring day, Jonah. There’s not as many of them in a lifetime as you think there will be. What’s dropped your heart into your shoes?”

      Maybe she was easy to talk to because she talked so easy. Next thing I knew, I heard myself say, “I want to be a piano man, but it won’t ever happen.”

      “If you want to be a piano man, why aren’t you at a piano right this minute, pounding the keys?”

      “I don’t have one.”

      “That community center you go to when your folks are working and Donata isn’t available—they have a piano.”

      Donata was the first name of Mrs. Lorenzo, my sometimes babysitter, so I figured Miss Pearl knew her and was coming to visit.

      “I never saw any piano at the community center.”

      “Why, sure there is. For a while this man was in charge down there, he didn’t have an ear for piano, it was all just noise to him. He didn’t like loud birds, either, or a certain shade of blue, or the number nine, or Christmas. He put the Christmas tree up on December twenty-fourth and took it down the morning of the twenty-sixth, and the only decoration he’d allow on it was a Santa Claus doll hung by the neck where a star or angel should have been at the top of the tree. He took the nine out of the address above the front door and just left a space between the eight and the four, repainted all the blue rooms, moved the piano down to the basement. Some say he killed and ate Petey, the parrot that used to be in a cage in the card room. But he’s gone now. He didn’t last long. He was run down by a city bus when he jaywalked, but in a short time he did a lot of damage to the center. They can bring the piano up in the freight elevator.”

      Loud and belching fumes, a bus went by, and I wondered if it might be the one that ran down the parrot-eater.

      When the street grew quieter, I said, “They won’t bring up the piano for a kid like me. Anyway, it’s no good without a teacher.”

      “There’ll be a teacher. You go in there tomorrow morning, soon after they open, and see for yourself. Well, this glorious day is slipping away, СКАЧАТЬ