Muse Died? :-(

The loft apartment was the top floor of a brownstone in the So Ho district.  The six flights of stairs were wide enough to accommodate the movement of a piano.  The four burly movers grumbled on each step.  Puffing and panting, they finally made it to the sixth floor.  There were no windows or openings large enough to utilize the roof top hoist.  That would be used for the appliances.  She wanted new appliances. 

He glanced around the room.  Organized chaos.  The room seemed filled with canvases.  The canvases leaned against one another while leaning against the wall.  They were piled up beside the furniture.  The canvases were everywhere. Canvases half filled with paint.  Half complete.  Not finished.  Over and over he had begun to paint her.  Over and over he painted her shoulders, her arms, her slender hands……hands used for playing the piano. 

He glanced around the room.  The piano should be placed near the windows.  Then she could see the view whenever she rested from her exercises.  She could stop and appreciate the view from the top floor.  It was worth the long walk up, just to look out the windows.  The piano should be placed near the windows.

He glanced around the room.  He seemed in a daze, off within himself.  He could almost hear her playing the piano.  He could see her long slender fingers glide across the keyboard, pulling one haunting melody after another out of the instrument.  It had always seemed to him that the piano was an extension of her, another appendage. 

He glanced around the room.  He was bringing her piano here, finally.  He had promised her long ago, promised she wouldn’t have to trudge up and down the stairs to her beloved piano.  He had promised her the new appliances so she wouldn’t be frightened daily with lighting the old stove.  He had promised her that life at the top of the building would be filled with music and the arts.

He glanced around the room.  He could nearly hear the last piece she was working on.  He could “see” her sitting at the piano, pencil in her mouth, as she found the song in her heart and plied it to paper. 

The burly moving men hauled the precious cargo through the doors.  Noticing the multitude of half finished paintings, one of the men smirked, “Stuck in a rut?  Your muse died?”

He snapped back to the here and now.  “Actually she did.  Heart attack.”