The cable holding the upright piano snapped and the instrument fell to the ground, right in front of the entrance to the Versailles. Too bad no one was standing there, Norman thought. It would've been nice to see someone get killed in this precise moment. Good or bad, the incident diverted their attention from what they were discussing as everyone rushed to look at the scattered remains of the instrument.
"It was a Wurlitzer," Agnes said. "I knew it just by looking at the pedals. But oh, that poor piano!"
Agnes noticed everything about pianos, but then again, she performed classical piano better than anyone Norman had ever known. Obviously she'd noticed the instrument as the crane lifted it up toward the sixth floor window. But, Norman thought, astounded and bug-eyed, how on Earth could Agnes Limerick care a whit's end about a mass of wood, steel, ivory, and piano wire? Absurd, just absurd, as if the instrument had a living, breathing soul! Given their problems, how on Earth could Agnes care?
That poor piano, what about poor us? He thought it, but didn't say it. He had to be sensitive to what she'd been saying, right out here on Locust Street, right in front of his family's church. St. Mark's Episcopal. If the priest walked outside and overheard the conversation, he'd have a thing or two to say to Norman. He'd tell Norman just how he'd sinned, how he'd committed one of the worst of all possible sins -- and then he'd tell him, you have to pay the price. You need to seek absolution. You need to make amends. Oh, yes, Norman Balmoral knew very well what he had to do. He shuddered at their future together -- and their baby's future, being born into a world like this. They'd have to get married. But the money? Where would the money come from? Norman had no job, his parents could barely make ends meet, living above the general store in West Philadelphia. Why, every day they had to look out the front window at the vacant house across the street, where his parents had spent thirty years of marriage, a house that now bore a "Foreclosure Sale" sign on it. Marriage and a baby: not what he'd planned.
He pursed his lips, looked up at the sky, breathed in through his nose, and exhaled through his mouth. Dear God, it felt good to see the sky.
"Agnes, sweetheart," making his voice as velvety smooth as his baritone would allow, "we need to get married. That's all there is to it."
Why did she look crestfallen at his words? Did she still give a hooty-patooty about the demolished piano?
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