Piano Tango

I'm thirty-two years old and my big Friday night plans involve a folding chair, a beer, and a fire escape. That's the situation. That's where my life is at right now, and I'm telling you this up front because you need to understand what a big deal tonight actually is.

I live on the fourth floor of an old brick building that leans a little to the left, in a town so small the main street just gives up at the pier and lets the bay have it. In the evenings the whole street glows orange and the fishing boats come in slow, and if you sit on my fire escape with your legs through the railing you can pretend you're rich and fancy instead of a groundskeeper who spends her days fixing sprinkler heads and dodging angry geese.

The sunset was doing its whole show that night. Pink, then purple, then this weird green stripe right at the horizon that I always think looks like a bruise. I cracked my beer and checked my phone for the fifth time in ten minutes. Still nothing. Which, fine, we hadn't exactly set a time, but still.

Let me tell you about myself. I moved here three years ago for the golf course job, and I keep waiting to make friends the way they do in movies, where someone knocks on your door with a casserole and suddenly you have a whole squad. Nobody knocked. Nobody casseroled. I dated a couple guys after college and they were fine, mostly, but fine only gets you so far, and then it's two in the morning and you're watching a video of a guy teaching a parrot to say I love you and getting emotional about it.

Then last week I got a message on that app. Duane, thirty-four. Mover, part-time tattoo artist. His photo showed a big guy with a beard and arm sleeves of ink and this half-smile that looked like he knew something funny and was deciding whether to tell you. His opening line wasn't even a line. It was "your dog or your golf bag, which one would you save first," and I don't even own a dog, so I said the golf bag and he said I was a monster and we just... went. For six days straight. Voice notes, dumb jokes, him sending me pictures of scratches he'd inked on people that week, me sending him the geese.

And last night he asked the question. Not the you-know-what question. The weirder one.

"What if we meet like strangers?" he'd said. "Like, no history. You're a girl at a tattoo shop, I'm a guy who walks in. Fresh start. We act it out all night."

I'd stared at my phone forever before typing yes. Then I stared some more and typed yes again in all caps so he'd know I meant it.

So there I am on the fire escape, sunset doing its thing, phone silent, and I realize I'm nervous. Not scared nervous. More like Christmas morning when you're an adult and you know what's in the box but you still want to rip the paper off. When was the last time I felt that? I'll wait. It's been a while for me too.

Around seven I gave up pretending I was calm, went inside, and changed outfits three times. The jeans stayed. The top went through a whole rotation. I looked at myself in the mirror and said, out loud, like a lunatic, "You're a stranger. He's a stranger. That's the game." Then I laughed at myself and got in my car.

The tattoo parlor sits above the laundromat on Main Street, up this narrow staircase that smells like dryer sheets until it suddenly smells like ink and green soap instead. The window said open, the lights inside were that warm yellow color, and I could hear a fan going. I took a breath on the landing. Big one. Then I pushed the door.

And there he was.

I'd like to claim I acted nonchalant. I did not play it cool. My brain saw him and went blank like a computer restarting. He was taller than his photos, shoulders like furniture, which tracks, and the beard, and the hands, God, the hands, big and spotted with black ink, and he was wiping down a counter and he looked up at me and I watched his face do the exact same restart.

"Hey," he said. Then he cleared his throat and his voice dropped into this character, all casual and slow. "Welcome in. Looking for anything specific?"

Oh. OH. We're doing this right now. Okay. I could do this. I smoothed my shirt and tried to match his energy.

"Maybe," I said, and leaned on the counter like a person in a movie. "Depends. You any good?"

A woman was sitting in the back chair getting a small wave done on her ankle, and she looked up at us like we were her evening's entertainment, which, fair. Duane leaned on the counter across from me, and up close his eyes were this warm brown and there was a little silver stud in one ear.

"I'm alright," he said. "Been doing it a while. Mostly simple stuff. What'd you have in mind?"

"Something small. Something nobody would see unless..."

"Unless what?" He was grinning now. The stranger act was already cracking around the edges because he bit his lip to kill the grin and it didn't fully die.

"Unless they earned it," I said, and the ankle lady cackled, and Duane turned red to the ears, actually red, this big tattooed guy blushing at the counter, and I felt like I'd won a prize.

"Sure," he managed. "We could, uh. We could talk about that. Sit down, tell me your name."

"Allie," I said. "And you are?"

"Duane." He stuck out his hand and I shook it and his palm was huge and warm and calloused and I maybe held on a beat too long and he let me, which, noted.

The ankle lady finished up, paid in cash, and gave us a look on her way out that said behave yourselves, kids, and then it was just us and the fan and the smell of ink and one of those little desk lamps making everything golden. Duane came around the counter and didn't get too close, which I appreciated, but he was close enough that I could see a scar through one eyebrow and a tiny faded anchor on his knuckle.

"So," he said, regular voice now, his own voice, the one from the voice notes. "This is weird, right? Tell me this is weird."

"It's so weird," I said, relieved. "It's the weirdest. I've been rehearsing stranger small talk in my car for twenty minutes."

"What did you come up with?"

"I asked if you were any good."

"And I said I'm alright, which is a lie, I'm very good, but strangers are supposed to be modest." He pulled a stool over for me and then sat on the counter itself, which I guess is a mover thing, sitting on everything. "Okay. Real talk for one minute, then we go back to the bit. You look great. I was not expecting to get flustered and it happened anyway and I'm owning that."

"Well, good," I said, "because you walked in wiping down that counter like some mechanic in a calendar and my entire brain left the building, so we're even."

He laughed, this big easy laugh that filled the whole little shop, and something in my chest unclenched that had been clenched for what felt like years. Three years of sprinkler heads and geese and parrot videos, and one laugh and there it went.

"Okay," he said, hopping down, holding out his hand again, all formal and dumb. "Pleasure to meet you, Allie. I'm Duane. I fix people's skin for a living and I drive pianos around on the weekend, don't ask."

"I was absolutely going to ask."

"Tomorrow," he said, eyes doing that sparkle thing. "Because I gotta drive a piano up the coast tomorrow, and the guy who was gonna help me bailed, and I have been trying all week to figure out how to ask the girl from my phone if she wants to ride along without it being a whole thing."

I looked at him. Sunburn of a blush, silver stud, scar, hands like docks.

"So don't make it a thing," I said. "Ask me like a stranger."

"Fine." He straightened up, all business. "Ma'am, I need a co-pilot for a piano run tomorrow. You in?"

"Yes sir," I said, and shook his hand again, and we both laughed like idiots in an empty tattoo shop at nine at night.

He walked me down the narrow staircase, past the laundromat all dark and quiet, and out onto Main Street where the night smelled like salt. He didn't try anything, didn't even linger weird, just stood there with his hands in his pockets while I fished for my keys.

"Tomorrow, eight a.m., the shop," he said. "Wear closed toe shoes. Piano toes are no joke."

"Piano toes," I repeated. "Is that a thing that happens?"

"Allie. I have seen things."

Okay, that was alarming, but I said yes anyway.

So Saturday morning I pulled up to the shop at 7:55 in my own car, because he'd said follow me or ride with me, your call, and I figured riding with him meant six hours of actual talking and I was selfish like that. He came out carrying two coffees and a paper bag of what turned out to be the world's best maple donuts, and he was in work clothes, faded jeans and a dark t-shirt, sleeves of ink doing their thing in the morning sun.

"Morning, stranger," he said, handing me a coffee.

"Morning," I said. "Where's my piano?"

Around the corner, parked at the curb, was a box truck, and inside, strapped down with more straps than I knew existed, was this gorgeous dark upright piano. Real wood, brass pedals, the works. I put my hand on it like it was a horse.

"She's beautiful," I said.

"She's a jerk," Duane said fondly. "Six hundred pounds of attitude. Her name is Gertrude."

"You name your cargo?"

"I name anything that tries to kill me." He patted the side. "Client bought her off an estate up north. I take her to an inn up the coast, they're putting her in the lobby. Six hours if traffic's kind."

"Where's the inn?"

"Little place called the Harborside. You'd like it. Rooftop garden, ocean view, the whole postcard thing."

I looked at Gertrude, then at him, then at the passenger seat, which had clearly never been this excited in its life. "Okay, weird question, but what if I just... came the whole way? Not just the drive up. I mean I don't have plans, my apartment has zero dogs in it, and the golf course doesn't need me till Tuesday."

He went still for a second, and I watched him actually consider it, which I appreciated, because a lot of guys would've just said yes so fast it would've felt like a reflex.

"You sure? It's a lot of me."

"I've survived six days of you over text. I think I can handle it in person."

"That's what everyone says, and then hour four happens." But he was grinning, and he tossed me the keys to hold for no reason at all, just to have something to hand me. "Alright then. Co-pilot's seat. Navigation, snacks, and moral support for Gertrude. That's the job."

"That's the job," I agreed.

And honestly? Best job I ever had. We pulled out of town with the piano riding quiet behind us and the radio doing that thing where neither of us picked a station because the scanning itself was entertainment. Somewhere past the second hour I learned he apprenticed at the tattoo parlor when he was twenty-one, thirteen years of needles and weird requests, and he learned I once got chased by a goose into a water hazard at work and had to finish the shift soaked.

"I need a drawing of that," he said. "Goose in pursuit. On your shoulder maybe."

"Nobody would see it unless they earned it," I said, and he choked on his coffee.

We stopped around noon at this overlook thing off the highway, gravel lot, a railing, and a view of the whole coast doing its blue and silver thing. Duane hopped out, stretched until his back cracked like a branch, and then reached into the cab and pulled out actual binoculars.

"You birdwatch?" I said.