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If someone had told Elizabeth before she'd rented the apartment that the walls were paper thin and that the neighbour had a piano, she might have balked at moving in, picturing a child painstakingly plucking out Chopsticks--she'd had enough of that from her younger sister. Thankfully, however, no one had. Because the woman who lived next door might be the most wonderful piano player Elizabeth had ever heard. Elizabeth grew to love curling up with a warm tea in the evening while the pianist played on the other side of her living room wall.
It was early summer, and Elizabeth was out on the fire escape watering the plants she wasn't supposed to keep out here. So what if it was a fire hazard--her plants liked the sunlight! As she shifted a planter so its occupant's leaves could better collect the next morning's sunlight, she heard the sound of the neighbour's piano. The woman had left the window open, and between that and the lingering warmth of the day, the fire escape seemed like a far better place to listen to the concert than her armchair.
Draping her arms over the balcony railing, Elizabeth absorbed the melody drifting out of the next window over with what felt like her whole body. She had never been great at remembering the names of pieces, and hadn't played herself in years, but she thought she recognized this one. As the piece progressed, she found herself trying to remember the fingering of the slow triplets, but the name still escaped her.
As the sky above darkened the pianist next door played two more pieces, each with a quicker tempo than the last, but each just as breathtakingly beautiful. When the third came to a dramatic ending, Elizabeth sighed with pleasure. Was her neighbour finished practising for the night or simply changing sheet music?
A soft, "Oh!" broke her musings. She turned to find the neighbour in question at her window.
"I didn't mean to startle you," Elizabeth said. "I was just listening to you play."
"I'm sorry," the woman said, "I didn't mean to disturb you. I forgot that the window was open."
"No! I was really enjoying it. What was that piece you were playing just now? I couldn't quite place it."
"Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I can never seem to get the third movement quite right," she replied.
"I thought it was lovely. In fact," Elizabeth blushed, "listening to you practise is one of my favourite parts of my day."
The woman stared, blushing too. "Really?" Elizabeth nodded and her neighbour smiled. The expression transformed her face. Where before she had simply looked tired, the smile made her eyes twinkle in the light of the rising moon, and with her cheeks still rosy she looked positively radiant.
"I'm Lizzy, by the way."
"Anne." The other woman rubbed the back of her neck. "I didn't realize you could hear me playing through the wall. I'm surprised I've never gotten a noise complaint!"
Elizabeth laughed. "I'm guessing the previous tenant enjoyed your music too."
It was hard to tell in the fading light, but she thought Anne's cheeks darkened even more. She was enjoying this interaction, and didn't want it to end, but surely soon Anne would close the window as she'd clearly meant to do before spotting Elizabeth, and then they'd both go back to their own lives.
"Do you want to get coffee with me sometime?" she asked before she could lose her nerve or allow the moment to pass. She wasn't sure if she was asking in a friendly, neighbourly way, or if she was asking Anne out--she didn't even know if Anne was into girls--but she wanted to get to know this person whose music had so enchanted her over the past few weeks.
Anne hesitated and Elizabeth’s shoulders tightened. Had she been too forward for a first meeting? She’d been listening to Anne’s playing almost every evening for weeks and imagining what the pianist might be like, but Anne didn’t know her at all—
“All right,” Anne said. “There’s a little café by my work that makes the best hot chocolate. I could meet you there on Thursday?”
“That sounds great!” Elizabeth pulled out her phone. “Why don’t I give you my phone and you can text me the address?”
After they had traded numbers Anne started awkwardly, “I’m going to practise a bit longer, if that’s okay?” Elizabeth nodded, slightly offended that a woman who played as beautifully as Anne seemed in so much doubt that her playing was welcome. “Any requests?”
“I know it’s really cliché, but I’ve always loved Claire de Lune.”
“It’s not cliché! It’s a classic for a reason!” Elizabeth laughed, pleased to see a hint of the passion Anne’s music suggested for the first time. “Besides,” Anne said in a milder tone, “it would stick with the moonlight theme.”
Although Claire de Lune turned out to be Anne’s last piece for the evening—as Anne said when she briefly stuck her head back out the window to say goodnight, it wouldn’t do to test the patience of their other neighbours too late into the night—Elizabeth stayed out on the fire escape for quite some time, simply marvelling at how lucky she had been to choose this apartment of all the apartments in the city.