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It is snowing fast—nasty, icy, horizontal snow that cut my face when I tried to shovel the front walk. We have been in the house for a day and a night. There isn’t much food in the kitchen, but we don’t feel like going out into the blizzard. I’m sitting at the kitchen table making doodles in my notebook, unable to get interested in the string quartet I have been attempting. Oliver brings me coffee, then lingers by the window, watching the backyard fill up with snow. Then he asks me to write something for him.
“What kind of something?”
“A sonata. Make it difficult.”
“You don’t want much,” I say. “Are you asking for something you already know exists?”
“Um, yes.”
I sit there wondering how to evade this unwelcome task. “There’s plenty of piano sonatas in the world already. You don’t need another one. Now go away and let me get back to my important work here.”
“You’re drawing pictures of rabbits.”
“The world needs more cute rabbits.”
Oliver smiles. “I’m your muse, you know. I am trying to inspire you.”
“Since when are you my muse?”
“Since now, I guess. I’ve been waiting for you to spontaneously write music for me, but you never begin, so I thought I should ask.”
“If you’re my muse, maybe you could stand around naked?”
“Do musical muses have to get naked? I thought that was just the painters’ muses?” Oliver strikes a cheesecake pose, one hand on his hip, the other hand fluffing imaginary curls. He doesn’t look even slightly girlish.
I say, “I have no idea what is in the standard muse contract. Maybe you should take off all your clothes and we can see if anyone is inspired?”
“It’s cold in this kitchen, Alba.”
I get up and go to him; soon all talk of sonatas is forgotten.
But Oliver has started something. In the afternoon it is still snowing, and we are trudging along the unshoveled sidewalks through knee-high snow like human icebreakers on our way to the grocery store, and I say, “Are you allowed to give me any hints about this sonata I am writing for you?”
He laughs. “No, you have been strict about that. No hints.”
“You could just hum a few bars . . .”
“I could play the whole thing for you, but you would be angry with me.”
“Do we have a process? How do we do this?” I feel queasy at the thought of trying to find in my imagination this music that already exists.
“Usually you hide in your room and write and I bring you coffee and food and eventually you come out and ask me to play what you’ve written and then you tell me I am playing it wrong and then you disappear into your room again.”
“What happens when it’s finished?”
“I learn it. Then I play it for audiences.”
“Huh.” I chew on that for a while. Oliver wades through the snow beside me, peaceably allowing me to accept the inevitable. Our frozen breath billows and wafts before us. The city hasn’t plowed the streets; cars are stranded in strange places and hidden under mounds of snow—even the trains don’t seem to be running. Chicago is silent except for the sounds of shovels scraping sidewalks. A few other people are walking, heavily bundled against the wind, all of us forging slow paths toward the supermarket. It’s open, thank goodness, though once we get inside we realize that we should have come earlier: all the milk and bread is gone, there’s no orange juice or coffee. Oliver looks worried. We end up with pork chops, canned tuna fish, tea, rice, frozen corn, frozen pizza, two apples, butter and powdered nondairy creamer, ugh. Oliver finds the last carton of eggs sitting forlorn in the refrigerated section.
“Why do Americans refrigerate eggs?” he asks.
“What? Don’t you?”
“No, of course not.” He puts the eggs in our cart.
“Oliver, do you ever play concerts in the past?”
“No. I don’t like to attract attention here. I use the past as a studio, it’s for working with you, and learning the music, and practicing. Not for playing in public.”
