Piano Teacher

He’d learned piano as a little boy in South America. Lessons were conducted thrice weekly by private tutor and he reveled in the instruction. This had gone on for years, all the grade school years including the summer months. It continued into high school before ending abruptly, and involuntarily, when he was 16 years.

His father had earned a good wage as a government attorney. The job paid handsomely, enough for the family mansion, cars, servants and assorted luxuries. Then his father passed away in a car accident of questionable circumstance. Murder was mentioned in hushed tones in select company, something about payback for a successful conviction of a renowned drug dealer. Nothing could be proven and evidence was curiously absent, and the little evidence that was collected had been misfiled or lost. The results of his father’s passing, however, were ever present.

It started when the servants departed saying they hadn’t been paid dating back to the prior month’s work. Yelling expletives as they walked out the double doors carrying as much of the family silver and crystal as they could. Mother and son, too shocked at the vulgar transformation of their trusted former servants and sometimes confidantes, did not try to stop the wealth-confiscating outflow.

The expensive automobiles, meanwhile, sat immobile in the driveway and garage. His mother had never needed to drive so she had never learned. The boy was also not licensed and had never learned. Where would they need to go that servants couldn’t simply drive them?

The police eventually came to the home and allowed the bank’s representative to reclaim it because the mortgage was overdue. Overdue, of course, for there was no paycheck coming in and there were no finances saved. At least, the bank officials claimed there were no savings and no investments. The bank just commandeered those accounts, accurately accused the mother with no proof to dispel the guilty chuckles of denial. And with that, they were broke. Taking only what they wore and what could be hastily grabbed on the way out, they were evicted.

They moved in with impoverished family, arriving in exorbitantly rich garb for that part of town, and they were reluctantly taken in. Reluctant because they had not shared the wealth when times were good.

It was here the boy started dabbling in drugs. Not using, selling. He had no need for their use, his focus had become crystal clear and drug use might blunt that drive, he reasoned. A rage had been lit inside him. He wanted to get back to that lifestyle and the drugs, he saw, could help to pave the way back. There were risks, but the potentially escalated timeframe was deemed an acceptable trade-off. The irony was not wasted on him. The industry that tore his family apart was now his engine.

Turns out he was good at this new trade, possessing a knack, said some. Selling was easy for him, it came naturally and luck seemed to lead his way. He rose in ranks of the powerful cartel until he was expatriated to the United States to further conduct his illicit work. From there he would lead the drug mule program.

He had impressed management with his ingenuity and ‘can-do’ attitude. Year by year in the cartel he had gradually, and competently, made a name for himself. ‘This one gets things done,’ it was said of him. Truth is, his motivation was an enraging fire of anger. He and his family had been wronged and he wanted to get back to his privileged existence. The draw was not the power associated with wealth, but simply the luxury of not having to care about anything. It was not sophisticated, but apparently, nor was he.

His remuneration increased and his bonuses had become engorged. He had his own apartment and lived well, but remained apprehensive, tentative, after what happened to his parents and the home in which he grew up. Life still had an ephemeral sense of delicateness, like it lacked foundation and could easily be upended. He would someday buy another home, he told himself, but that day had not yet arrived. First, he must bring the cartel’s mule program to fulfill its potential. This was the 1980s and South American cocaine and heroin ruled the streets. 

The mule program entailed one, sometimes two, South Americans, often adolescents or young adults, induced to visit the United States for a vacation. Only, it wasn’t a vacation but a drug delivery. The cartel would assist the traveler to ingest as much as two pounds of drugs. The drugs would be cut and loaded into tiny balloons, the mule would swallow the balloons, often up to two dozen, three dozen for experienced travelers. They would be paid $5,000 cash or more for their trip, depending on the number of balloons swallowed. Of course, they’d be dead should there be rupture or an intestinal obstruction. They must also, of course, remember the balloon count, as they would pass normally, so say the bowels.

Poverty raged throughout his homeland. His lower-ranking colleagues would find young adults, people in their 20s, willing to take a risk for a big payday. These would be his mules. Finding the people was not difficult, especially if the details of danger were to be skirted, which they were. Their bellies were consensually loaded with drugs, ingested with cooperative difficulty despite being dipped in honey, they were then sent to him in the United States. He would gather the ‘tourists,’ procure their retrieval, pay the bonuses, then get the merchandise circulating for purchase. It was easy and hugely profitable. Until the mistake, as there would inevitably be one, dealing with humans and their affinity for mishaps.

The program went without hitch for almost a year with weekly deliveries. Then came trouble. A package opened on a flight, the traveler died while still in the air and police came looking for the source.

Without hesitation he left the airport calmly and undetected. He went straight to his apartment, packed his necessities, including a duffel bag of cash. He walked away, leaving his car behind to increase the degree of difficulty in finding him, and took a bus. He rode through the night before stopping at a diner in a university town three states away. An advertisement caught his eye on the message board in the diner’s foyer. ‘Piano Teachers Needed.’

His mind wandered reflecting back to those peaceful days of his youth. His life, his very existence, had been comfortable and well provided for. He longed for those days, his mom and dad together every evening home for supper, himself happily babbling on about his daily school excitement. Standing there before the diner’s message board, his fingers subconsciously began playing scales, the piano warm-up exercise. He pulled the tear-off and would call the phone number.

The interview went well. Meaning, the questions revolved simply around piano playing. He was asked to “Play something. Anything, one of your favorites.”

He was nervous as he took a seat on the piano bench. ‘How long had it been,’ he thought, even though he knew exactly how long, fifteen years, since the day his father was murdered. 

Play, he did, The Entertainer, his favorite when he was a carefree child, playing sometimes in an endless loop. The nervousness dissipated as soon as his fingertips hit the ivory. It was as if he was in a room by himself, just him and the piano. His fingers had not forgotten. His eyes closed, fingers dexterously swimming across the keyboard, his mind a million miles away from reality. His confidence reaffirmed, sweat on his brow, he paused, speaking no words, took a deep breathe then delved directly and deeply back to the piano into the culmination of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons’ Summer. Passionate and flawless, his heart racing. He was brought back by a double tap on the shoulder.

“You play marvelously. When can you start?”

Walking away from the cartel is, of course, against protocol.  There is only one way out of this industry, death, like his last mule. He had no aversion to death, provided it was well-earned and deserved. His mule, though, was not one of those. Everyone in the organization, however, was deserving, as was he. 

He earned only a pittance teaching piano. The hourly wage was minute and hours worked were intermittent and few. He didn’t care. He had not been teaching for the money, he did so for access to a piano and because it makes his soul sing. He wanted to help others feel how he felt as a youngster. He hadn’t experienced this since his youth prior to the eviction. Piano playing was his cause. Only, he found out too late in life to put it to a constructive purpose.

His money would easily last a year or more, but he wasn’t worried about that. He’d been living frugally and peacefully, but he had faith in the efficiency of the cartel. He would not outlive his duffel bag of cash.

His death order had certainly been issued. It just hadn’t yet caught up to him. It would some day, maybe tomorrow, next week or two months from now. Idling in his car at a stoplight with a walk up headshot. Maybe he’d return some evening to his apartment and his assassin would be seated in the dark in his leather beanbag chair facing the front door. Or a muffled shot at a nightclub some evening. It didn’t matter. 

He’d made peace with this part of his life. He’d made choices and would accept their ugly recriminations. Until then, he’d teach piano. And he’d do so beautifully.

[Inspired by a family outing perusing used books at a thrift shop. A book entitled The Piano Teacher. ‘Sounds like a boring book,’ I thought to myself. Then, the above occurred to me as a possibility for adding some spice to the tame title. klem]