I laughed, and it went up into the balcony and came back down, and he laughed too, and then we were just standing there in the gold room with the knight in my fist, and I had the very distinct feeling that if I took one step toward him something would happen, and I also had the feeling that I had a nine-foot Steinway to tune by six o'clock and a brother I had not spoken to in three years and a lifelong habit of throwing things into lakes, and I did not take the step.
"When are you going?" he asked. "To Coeur d'Alene."
"Christmas Eve. They do dinner at five and then Dad and Torben play the chess game after. If I leave here at three I'll be there before the game."
"You're still going to sit at the end of the driveway."
"Probably."
"Bring a blanket," he said. "I'm working Christmas Eve. Seven to seven. I always do. Everyone else has kids." He paused. "Will you text me? After. Whatever happens."
"Yes."
"Okay." He put his orange hat on. He looked at the piano one more time. "Make it breathe," he said, and went off through the wings, and the stage door clanged behind him, and I sat at the bench and put the knight in the little box, which I had rewrapped that morning in new silver paper, three times, to get it right, and put the box in the zipper pocket of my coat, and zipped it, and checked it, and checked it again, and then I tuned the rest of the piano and every note of it breathed.
On Christmas Eve it snowed the whole way. I-90 east of Spokane runs through the Spokane Valley and past Liberty Lake and over the state line at the Idaho border, and the last stretch drops down off a ridge so that you see the lake all at once, long and dark and cold, with the lights of the town strung along its north shore like a necklace somebody dropped. I have driven that road a thousand times. I have never been as afraid on it as I was that day.
I texted Oren at a gas station in Post Falls, sitting in my car with the engine running: Almost there. Not sure I can do this.
He wrote back four minutes later: Just intubated a guy who fell off his roof putting up a giant inflatable Grinch. You can do this.
Then: Is the Grinch okay?
Then, a minute later: The Grinch is fine. The Grinch is unharmed. The Grinch is still on the roof, according to the wife, waving.