Chord Variations
Ann was sitting in a diner across from Penn Station, staring into her phone. Ben had sent her another photo featuring his murderous cat. The cat, whose name was Jerry Garcia, killed things in the yard and dragged the evidence home – birds, squirrels, and lizards. Ben took posed shots of the cat standing over his dead prey, staring into the camera with an arrogant, feline cruelty. Ann had asked Ben to stop sending the grisly pictures, but he’d ignored her.
Ben lived in California now, in an ivy-covered guest house on his parents’ property in Pacific Palisades. The parents were ill. His father had emphysema and his mother was in a late stage of dementia. He’d moved back home a year earlier, with the understanding that he could live rent free if he assisted with their care. Ben was an only child. His parents had owned a successful financial planning firm but were now retired. They brandished Ben’s inheritance like it was a weapon. They had even cut him out of the will while he was living in New York City, where he’d been a struggling musician.
In New York, Ben had supported himself by giving guitar lessons. That’s how Ann had met him. He advertised using promotional flyers taped to scaffolding and mailboxes. He didn’t advertise online, as he thought people who browsed the internet didn’t have the attention span to learn the guitar. Ann had called the number on the flyer. She wanted the lessons so she could play an Ed Sheeran song for her boyfriend as a birthday surprise. Ben approved of Ann’s upbeat attitude and her reasonable goal. The birthday was two months away. Twice a week Ann left her fundraising job at Lincoln Center and traveled on the subway to Ben’s cluttered apartment in Washington Heights. She’d purchased a beginner’s Yamaha guitar. Ben was a patient teacher. He spoke with an encouraging lilt to his voice, though his training methods were a little dull. Still, she made decent progress those first weeks — before her boyfriend, who was a personal trainer, left her for a Broadway actress at his gym. Learning how to play devotional ballads on the guitar didn’t make much sense after that. Ben didn’t try to dissuade her. Without the proper motivation, Ann was no longer the kind of student he cared to teach.
Ann was surprised when Ben asked her out a few weeks later. He assured her he would never have crossed this boundary if she were still his student. She appreciated Ben’s musical aspirations and subtle eccentricities, and he still had that friendly lilt to his voice. He was good-looking too, in a low-key way. But the relationship didn’t click. The first time they slept together was a disappointment. Ben’s entire approach in bed was pedagogical. Ann was reminded of the more predictable and ordinary elements of his chord instruction.
But they had somehow remained friends.
Ann went to Ben’s gigs downtown and one time to a converted warehouse on Staten Island. It pleased her to see that Ben was a skilled performer, someone who possessed a supple, agreeable talent up on stage. Some months later, when he told her about his parents’ proposition and how he was leaving the city, she’d asked what that might mean for his career. Ben had simply shrugged and said, “I’m thirty-five, Annie. If something big was going to happen to me in that department it would have happened by now. I’m ready to pack it in.”
He even sounded grateful for the exit strategy.
Ann wasn’t sure what Ben did out in California, other than shuttle his parents to their medical appointments and document Jerry Garcia’s lethal exploits. His texts were brief and his mood difficult to gauge. He had seemed okay at first, after the move, sending nice pictures of breaking waves and sunsets at the beach. But about three months ago the cat pictures started coming. Ann played along in the beginning, joking about Jerry Garcia’s serial killer stare, but as the body count grew she became uneasy every time her phone pinged with a new message. She started to wonder if the photos might be a passive-aggressive commentary on their failed relationship.
Ann opened her phone now to reply to the latest picture, Jerry Garcia proudly standing over a lifeless mouse, who probably didn’t know what hit him. Ann typed into the phone. PLEASE BEN. NO MORE PHOTOS LIKE THIS. ONLY HAPPY THINGS FROM HERE ON OUT. DON’T MAKE ME BLOCK YOU! She sent the message, put the phone down, and picked up the menu in front of her. A friend was coming to the diner to meet her. After a minute the phone pinged again. It was a reply from Ben, with another photo attached. Ann braced herself and then tapped the message. Alright, I get it! Ben had written. No more fatalities. Is this one better? See who I met at Whole Foods in Malibu! Ann looked closely at the picture. Ben was standing next to a famous actress from an old sitcom, whom he had commandeered into a selfie. Ben was smiling like he had in his promotional flyers, but there was something a little too eager about it now. The star’s expression suggested resigned annoyance or perhaps something worse. This wasn’t any better, thought Ann. This wasn’t any better at all. Another trophy photo.
She didn’t know how to say this to Ben or why she should even try. He was three thousand miles away. Suddenly, Ann remembered something he’d told her during one of their first guitar lessons – Where words disappoint, music speaks. This sweet, random memory saddened her. She sighed extravagantly and blocked Ben’s number. She looked up then and noticed her friend approaching from across the restaurant. Ann nodded and waved, before adjusting her facial expression into an approximation of happiness.
