Love and Gravity Read Free Page B

decide what to do.
    The summer night that would
usually have seemed beautiful to Margot now seemed oppressively hot and sweat
began shimmering along Margot’s forehead and chest, coalescing into beads of
sweat that traced their way down between her breasts. She turned off into a
dark alley and stopped to lean against a brick wall, breathing heavily and
wiping the sweat from her forehead with her arm.
    She took the business card out of
her stocking. She got her cell phone out of her purse and read the phone number
off the business card in the faint blue glow of the phone’s screen. She dialed
the number and took a deep breath.
    The phone rang a few times with no
answer. Margot began to worry he wasn’t going to pick up. It was, after all,
close to 4:30 in the morning. If he didn’t answer Margot didn’t know what else
to do. With each ring her panic increased and she gripped the strap of her
purse more tightly.
    “Please pick up, please,
please...”
    Finally a muted, sleepy voice came
from the phone.
    “This is Jack” the voice said
slowly.
    Margot was flooded with relief but
couldn’t help notice the fear in her own voice as she spoke.
    “Detective, this is Margot Kidman
from the bar. I’m...I’m in trouble and I need to meet you. I heard something. I
wasn’t supposed to hear it, and Pop knows I did, and I think he’s going to kill
me. I have nowhere to go hide and I can’t go home. Will you please meet me?”
    All this came out in a few short,
rushed breaths and then Margot heard a silent pause on the other end of the
phone. After a second that felt like an eternity Jack spoke.
    “Where are you?”
    “Meet me at The Early Byrd Cafe on
Howsley in fifteen minutes” Margot said. Then she hung up.
    Margot was almost a twenty blocks
from The Early Byrd. She put her phone back in her purse and took off her high
heels. She started running again, the pavement hitting her soft feet, biting at
her stockings. She ran in the shadows of the street lamps as much as she could,
taking the most direct route to the cafe.
     
    Jack was dreaming a sweet, sad
dream that took him back to his childhood, and back to his sister Chelsea. In
the dream he was around ten years old and she was around seventeen. She was
beautiful with her long brown hair, always gently curled into fat rivulets that
would stroke Jack’s face when she hugged him. Her hair smelled like lavender
and framed a face that seemed to always be smiling. Jack admired her immensely.
    They were in the park on a perfect
summer day. Chelsea was wearing a thin summer dress covered in flowers and had
laid out a plaid blanket for them on top of the grass. The sky was baby blue
and cloudless and Jack and his sister lay in the shade of a tremendous oak tree
watching the passersby. They were playing their favorite game, making up
stories about people as though they were all characters in some great big play.
    “That man is a pianist.” Chelsea
pointed to a man standing off by another tree. He was a homeless man in
tattered, dirty clothes and he was swaying slightly, side to side.
    “He’s been playing piano his whole
life and was in fact a famous concert pianist at one time. But he dreamt one
night of the music of the future. He woke up and fervently began composing it,
convinced it was his life’s mission to bring this music into the world. But he
found that the people of today aren’t able to hear it. It only sounds like a
great cacophony to them. So he goes around playing a small electric keyboard on
the street corners and everyone thinks he’s mad.”
    Jack looked around for a new
target. He pointed at a woman playing with a big golden retriever a few hundred
feet away from the man.
    “She will understand his music
though,” he said. “She’s a famous cellist and she travels the world playing
concerts. She had the same dream on the same night, but she couldn’t remember
what the music sounded like when she woke up. When she hears the pianist
playing on the