"Adieux tous les beaux reves"

The siren filled the street and like some wave of a magic wand the spectators outside the old man’s barricaded apartment door all disappeared. Two police officers came up, first a heavy set man a little winded from the climb up the four flights of stairs followed by a much younger officer escorting a woman who was introduced as the city social worker assigned to the case. The manager detailed the reason for calling 911 and pointed toward 4-B.

Easily pushing through the door the two policemen and the social worker found Mr. Desmond sitting in an over stuffed decaying easy chair patched with long strips of gray duct tape. He sat there in a suit and tie not moving while the officers went through and cleared the rooms. After conferring with the police officers and exchanging cell numbers with the younger one, the social worker pulled over a chair and sat down next to the old man.

“My name is Elizabeth, I am the social worker assigned to you, Mr. Desmond. Do you understand?”

The social worker pointed toward the black disc he held tightly to his chest. “I remember those, May I? My grandmother had a ton of them in her basement. What song do you have? Something by the Beatles? The Rolling Stones?”

She pulled the disc from his hands. "L'Accordeoniste? Who is Edith Piaf?”

He smiled.

“The label is a bit worn. This is heavier than I remember my grandmother's records to be. There is something written on it. A heart with an arrow through it and initials, are these your initials Mr. Desmond?”

He smiled.

Pinned to his jacket was an envelope. She opened it pulling out a short letter; a faded photograph fell to the floor.

“Your wife?”

He shook his head no.

Elizabeth read aloud.

“I am losing my mind. Dementia they call it. I remember less and less. Yesterday I forgot where the toilet was. My screams of panic that I am losing my mind must surely arouse my neighbors and eventually will bring the police.

I will not live if I cannot have my most precious memoires, those of Rebecca from my youth.

I have taken some pills.

She was beautiful, a gift from god. We made plans, she was a clerk in a store and I was studying, I wanted to be a doctor. We loved art, music, sitting along the shore of the lake outside of town. We professed so much to one another. We loved one another.

They came; they took her right from my arms, pulled her away crying. Laughing they beat me and broke my arm. I was helpless, I was useless, and I failed in defending her. My curse has been to live so long without her, with only memories. If I lose that, lose them I would have failed her a second time.

Rebecca drew a loving heart on our record. She drew and redrew it in heavy black pencil decades ago. The song a popular tune then, was our song, our piece of heaven and escape in a tumultuous time. The song helps me remember her. That she is becoming a faded mist of an image is unfair.

I wept as she was ripped from my arms and taken away and thrown aboard a train. A train ride that she would never return from. I was left there standing in the square of what was once my home town with nothing left to remember her but a record, a couple of photographs now fading away like my memory of her, and a blue silk scarf that has since turned gray like my thinning hair. Then war came, I despised fighting for my country. I hated my countrymen. I hated what they had become.

After the war I spent years searching for her until one day I received a letter from old friends back home detailing her death in one of the forced labor camps. She wasted away, her small frame becoming nothing until she had no strength, her last thoughts were of me, survivors said. I cried that day also.

Do not weep for me, for I am at peace.”

He looked over to one of those metal TV tray stands the kind with the collapsible legs and the metal tray that doubled as a table top on which stood an old phonograph player. Placing the record on the turntable, Elizabeth lifted the tone arm set it down and soon loud scratches filled the room followed by accordion and then Edith Piaf's voice came slicing through. She sat back down, he smiled, closed his eyes, held her hand for a minute very firmly and then soon his grip went limp, his breathing slowed, his head drooped, his dreams and nightmares stopped.

Elizabeth began to cry, then wiped the hair from his forehead and placed his hands across his chest. She stared at the faded photograph of his long lost Rebecca, smiling raven haired in a bathing suit at some long forgotten lakeside and put it in his chest pocket with a blue gray silk handkerchief. Her phone buzzed.

“Yeah, I am still here. No, we won't be needing a hospital room. He just passed. I guess, well I guess he was just tired, old and lonely. Calling 911 now. I will have to wait for the coroner and the police again. This will take the rest of the day and then I am going home.”

She dialed 911 and after hanging up called the police officer from earlier. After some nervous by play they made arrangements to meet for dinner. She looked over at Mr. Desmond again sitting in his chair, smiling. Unnoticed the song had finished, the needle of the tone arm stuck in that final groove bouncing off of what was left of the paper label, playing that scratchy thumping sound that lets you know the song is over, that there is no more.