Fermata
The sweetest music comes from hitting all the wrong notes...
Hello dear readers!
I've been away (family matters) and wow—Substack has evolved quite a bit since my last story! These platform changes mirror some big shifts in my own life as we approach the middle of this decade. It feels fitting to make a fresh start, both with my Substack and my writing.
I'll admit I'm a bit nervous publishing after such a long absence, but I'm also excited to share new stories with you all.
And speaking of sharing—I see many new subscribers have joined while I was away (the magic of Substack!). A warm welcome to each of you! I'm thrilled to have you here as readers.
The first time I heard him play, I almost walked out of my own practice room. Three months of carefully scheduled solitude in this converted Victorian mansion-turned-music-center, three months of rebuilding my technique note by painful note, and now this: jazz flooding through the walls like smoke, wrapping around my perfectly plotted Bach invention like he had every right to be there.
I pressed my fingers into the keys, not playing, just feeling the cool ivory beneath my touch. The clock on the wall marked four thirty-seven. My time. Reserved time. Paid for in both money and pride when I'd called the center, voice steady despite the eighteen months of silence since the accident, since my last performance.
But the music from next door...
I closed my eyes, trying not to hear how his improvised melody wove through the afternoon light, how it caught in the dust motes dancing through the sunbeams that striped my piano. The way it filled all the empty spaces I'd been trying so hard to control.
Control. That's what my therapist said I needed to let go of. What my manager, back when I still had one, said was both my greatest strength and what would eventually break me.
The jazz next door shifted, transformed, became something that made my chest ache with its longing. Not the technical perfection I'd spent my life pursuing, but something rawer. More honest.
My hands moved before I could stop them, picking out the thread of his melody. Just a few notes. Just to understand the pattern. The progression. To analyze it the way I'd analyze a new piece.
But there was no pattern. He moved like water, like wind, like all the elements I'd spent my career trying to constrain within the rigid staffs of classical music. Yet somehow...
I played the next note before he did, a perfect fourth above where he was heading. Then stopped, heart pounding.
The music next door paused.
I held my breath.
Then his melody wound back, circled around, offered up the same interval like a question.
"No," I whispered. But my fingers were already moving, adding a sixth, building the chord.
He answered with a run that made my classical sensibilities cringe and my pulse jump.
I responded with a Bach-like counterpoint, precise and measured.
He tumbled through it like a summer storm through a garden of straight-lined roses.
"This is ridiculous," I muttered. But I was already playing, really playing, for the first time since I'd walked into this practice room three months ago. My carefully planned exercises forgotten, my rigid schedule of rebuilding my broken wrist with simple pieces abandoned.
The music swelled between us, through the wall, his jazz and my classical training tangling together like... like...
The door opened.
My hands froze on the keys, a chord hanging unresolved in the air between us.
"Don't stop."
I turned, and there he was. Tall, dark-haired, leaning against my doorframe like he belonged there. Like he hadn't just invaded my sanctuary. His sleeves were rolled up, showing forearms corded with muscle. A jazz musician's arms, made for pulling sound from the heart instead of the head.
"This is my practice time," I said, hating how prim I sounded. How proper. "I have it reserved until six."
"Time is relative in music." He smiled, and something inside me shifted like sheet music in a breeze. "You know what a fermata is?"
"A pause of unspecified length." The definition came automatically, years of music theory training surfacing like muscle memory. "The note is held as long as the performer chooses."
"Exactly." He pushed off the doorframe but didn't come closer. "Life gives us fermatas sometimes. Little pauses where we can choose how long to hold a moment."
The sunlight caught the edge of his jaw, the curl of his hair, the way his shirt stretched across his shoulders. Everything about him was wild, uncontained, unlike the careful box I'd built around myself.
"This isn't a fermata," I said. "This is my practice time. For classical music. Alone."
"And yet." He gestured to my hands, still poised over the keys. "You played with me."
Heat crept up my neck. "I was just..."
"Being perfect?" His voice was soft, knowing. "Playing all the right notes in all the right ways?"
"There's nothing wrong with precision." But even as I said it, I remembered how it felt just moments ago, letting my training take a backseat to pure feeling. Letting the music flow between us like a conversation.
He moved then, crossing the room not to me but to the window. His fingers traced the edge of the sunbeam I'd been staring at earlier. "You know what I heard in your playing just now? Before you remembered to be perfect?"
I should tell him to leave. Should return to my careful exercises, my structured rehabilitation. Should...
"What did you hear?"
He turned, and the look in his eyes made my breath catch. "Freedom."
The word hung between us like a note held too long, vibrating with possibilities.
"I can't." My left hand curled into itself, feeling the ghost of pain, the memory of breaking. "I have a very specific program. For recovery. For getting back to..."
"To what?" He was closer now, close enough that I could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes. "To playing music that looks good on paper but doesn't make your soul sing?"
"You don't know anything about my music."
"I know what I heard through that wall. When you forgot anyone might be listening." His hand moved like he might touch my shoulder, then dropped. "When you forgot to be Victoria Park, child prodigy, classical perfectionist, and just let yourself be..."
"Lost?" I whispered.
"Found."
The air between us felt like the moment between movements in a symphony. Charged. Waiting.
His phone buzzed, breaking the tension. He checked it and grimaced. "My next student's here. But..." He pulled a card from his pocket, set it on the piano. "I teach improvisation workshops. Tuesdays and Thursdays."
"I don't improvise."
"No?" His smile was a challenge and a caress. "Could have fooled me."
He headed for the door, pausing at the threshold. "You know what they say about fermatas, Victoria? The pause can last as long as you want. But eventually..." His fingers drummed a quick rhythm on the doorframe. "Eventually, you have to decide to let the music move forward."
Then he was gone, leaving behind only the card on my piano and the lingering sense that all my carefully constructed walls had just developed a distinctly jazz-shaped crack.
I turned back to the keys, determined to return to my scheduled practice. My fingers found the opening notes of the Bach invention I'd been working on. Clean. Precise. Safe.
But somewhere in the back of my mind, a different melody waited. Wild. Unbound. Tasting of freedom and sunlight and possibilities.
And for the first time since my accident, since the moment my wrist shattered along with my career, I wondered if maybe perfection wasn't the only path to music after all.
The card on my piano caught the late afternoon light. Sam Rivera, it read. Jazz Performance & Improvisation.
I played a C major scale, each note exactly as written.
Then, slowly, I began to improvise around it.
Just to see what would happen.
Just to see where the music might lead.
Just to see how long this fermata might last.
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Warmly,
Rachel