The Flight Risk

         Every one of us involved in the Billy Lyle fiasco was literally at his or her wit’s end by the time he disappeared. Especially me, because I had the most invested. Considering the state of emotional exhaustion we were all in, it was a small miracle that I didn’t make the second-worst mistake of my life as a reaction to Marianne Redding’s hysterical demands. Everything would have turned out so differently.

         Marianne had a lot invested in Billy. She’d been the apartment complex manager, and she’d given the little freak a job. We can say we didn’t know then that he was a freak, but to be honest, so many red flags were already flapping that we could have been standing in downtown Bejing. She had felt sorry for Billy. We all had. Never hire someone out of pity. Never.

         Is there a word stronger than “never”? If there is, apply it to specify when you should let someone move in with you because of pity. Not to say that I am ungrateful for the way things eventually turned out, but I would not go back and do that again. Even if I knew that we were going to open the lid of the Schoninger and find several million in unmarked bills, which we did not, I wouldn’t go through it again. The Billy Lyle Experience chopped ten years off the nether end of my life, I’m sure of it.

         There we were, all the principals except Billy, standing outside a corner apartment that had taken on mythical proportions, on a patio walkway that had become the great crossroads of my existence. They were all screaming at me.

         I knew, in a small, too-scared-for-it-to-do-any-good kind of way, that their rage wasn’t really directed at me personally. They just needed someone to scream at. In a few more years the expression “venting” would come along to describe what they were doing. Billy had conned, bilked, stolen, cheated, and broken lots of hearts. As the person who harbored this criminal, I was the object of their vent.

         The person who had formerly harbored the criminal, that is. Billy was not in residence to receive aid and comfort from me. The apartment door was wide open to the morning chill, and everyone could see that everything that had been in the place, Billy’s or not, was gone.

         With the very notable exception of the Schoninger.

         The irony of it was amazing. This six-hundred-pound piano, the only thing of any potential value Billy couldn’t lift and carry off with him, was his own property.

         Would Marianne like to have the Schoninger as a peace offering? Since I was leaving anyway, already had another apartment, and my lease here expired in seventy-two hours? No she would not. “You get that goddamn thing out of that apartment so I can rent that apartment,” she screamed. “ If I lose a day of rent I lose my job.” This was the same Marianne who had told me in the clubhouse that I was going straight to heaven for helping poor little Billy Lyle so much.

         “So call the Salvation Army,” I shrugged.

         “Don’t think I haven’t,” she barked. “And the Goodwill. And the Miracle Helping Hand. And every church charity within a hundred miles. And they all said they would much rather have an eight-track tape player. Get--It--OUT--Of--There!”

         I didn’t think they could do anything to me, legally, if I failed to honor this request and just abandoned the Schoninger. But I wasn’t sure. That in itself was probably a good thing. Knowing what I now know about the laws of this state, I would not go back and risk it.

         In Marianne’s office, I got on the phone to Antique World. “We’ll give you a hundred for it,” AW said, “but you’ll have to find your own movers.”

         Taylor and Crittendon weren’t the only movers who would talk about it, but they were the only ones who could do it within the next three days. “ ‘Cross town? Hundred and sixty.” World peace for sixty bucks.

         Even back then, I knew that decisions made in great haste and emotional turmoil were often bad decisions. (Witness the decision I made to move here.) One or two days wasn’t enough time to wind down about this matter, but taking those hours to give it some thought was probably better than snapping up instantly whatever came my way. I told T & C they had a deal, but that I hadn’t decided on a destination. Still ‘cross town, but not sure where ‘cross town.

         Ah, morning. When the night shift comes home and sleeps the day away. On the bare floor, if necessary. I closed the apartment door and lay down in front of the Schoninger. I would sleep every bit as well as I ever had on the now-missing bed; the same door-slammers, leaf blowers, high watt stereos and engine-gunners were still here, still in the same place I was paying half my wages to sleep in.

         My plan to move had not been just to escape from Billy. I did want to leave him alone in the apartment; when it became clear to the apartment management that he would not pay rent, he would not remain in their sympathy long. My plan had not just been for that. It had also been in the hope of getting a place where day sleep was closer to the realm of possibility. I was not confident it was going to happen. I’d already moved three times, and somehow the same people had followed me, slamming doors, blasting leaves, cranking up the volume and racing the engines. Take the Schoninger to the new place? It seemed like asking for another close call with those abandonment charges.

         I went to sleep on it, and that is what I recommend today when there is a pressure question bearing down on someone. Especially if screaming has been involved.

         I loved to see the ice-blue light of dusk under the hem of the curtains, not just because it was soft and lovely, but because it meant that I had woken up, evening had come, and I was not at work. That was a beautiful meaning. The Schoninger was a huge, black presence in the empty room, like a sleeping draft horse in a moonlit pasture. For the first time, I was truly alone with it.

         Billy, of course, had told me that it was worth at least fifteen grand, and of course, I had not believed him. There at the last, if Billy had told me that the sun was going to come up in the morning, I would have had to go out and see for myself. He was a lying little sewer rat. But I had always admired the Schoninger. A lot. No one had to tell me it was old beyond old, made with a quality that could no longer be bought at any price. And the sound…

         No doubt there was someone out there in the wide world who could give a technical explanation of the Schoninger’s sound. Who could tell you, in terms that you did or did not understand, what parts were doing what to produce such beautiful sound. But even if that expert knew why those parts were particularly good, even his heart would be moved far beyond that, I was sure of it.

         How does a little piece of pond scum like Billy Lyle end up in possession of sweet gold like the Schoninger? This is the kind of question that bothered authors of the Old Testament, so I am sure that the answer will not be revealed to me. I still have the pet carrier that I rescued from the dumpster after Billy threw it there. It turned out that originally, this carrier came with a tiny little Yorkshire terrier named Tippin, now long gone to the animal shelter because he made a mess in it. I saw the mess. I fixed it in minutes, with an ordinary garden hose. Red flag number sixty-seven, I think that was. But oh God, Billy had been fired from his job because of vicious rumors; there were real holes in his shoes; he was a great talent just going to waste, just going to starve to death, oh God oh God.

         Billy could play the piano. But Billy’s great talent was for putting people in an impossible dilemma. If you stood there and watched him suffer and starve, and did nothing, you were a selfish wretch too cold to live. If you extended your hand to help him, he chewed it off at the wrist, and made you feel you deserved it because you were so stupid.

         Someone in the wide world must know something about what I should do. Someone must know the value of the Schoninger and what I should do with it. Knowledge, that’s what I needed. Knowledge is power.

         I locked the apartment door behind me, got in the car and drove. The city phone book on the front seat beside me egged me on, showing pictures of the city’s best cultural attractions on its front cover, saying that, believe it or not, we were a major center for the fine arts. The centerpiece of this display was a picture of Carmendine University.

         The University library was open until eleven p.m.. I went to the front desk carrying my city directory, and asked to see a faculty directory. Amazingly, the professor who headed the music department did not have an unlisted home phone number.

         “Dr. Lehmann,” I said on the phone, “I’m sorry to bother you at home, but I have a problem you might be able to advise me about. I have a 1918 Schoninger piano in my living room. It’s been abandoned. I don’t know what to do.”

         There was a short silence on the line, just long enough for me to think for a moment that my call had been abandoned. Then the old man’s voice, carrying more emotion than breath, came back with a reply I was not expecting. “Are you sure?”

         Was I sure it was an 1918 Schoninger, or was I sure it had been deserted? Both. “Yes sir. I’m sure.” Don’t think I was taking Billy Lyle’s word for it. “Schoninger 1918” was written across the front of the thing, in gold leaf as far as I could tell.

         “Oh my God,” whispered Lehmann. “What kind of condition is it in?”

         “I’m not qualified to assess that,” I answered. “It looks fine to me. Would you like to come over and look at it?”

         They beat me back to the apartment complex in their Lincoln Town Car, Henry Lehmann, his wife Hanna, a glorious white Spitz named Echo, and a dark, handsome son. Except for Echo, they all had tears welling in their eyes at the sight of the Schoninger. “What are the chances?” I heard Henry Lehmann murmur. They hovered around the piano as if it were the sickbed of a dying child. I just kept my mouth shut.

         When the son helped the father lift the lid of the piano and they looked inside, they began to weep openly. They pointed out the inscription to me, but I couldn’t read it. It looked to me like some small aliens had been in there with a hobbyist’s wood burning tool.

         “This piano was custom made for my father,” Hanna was finally able to explain after she had regained some composure, “Ivan Brastonavich. It’s been missing from the family since right after the Great War…1948.”

         “Well, now it’s back,” I said brightly, trying not to reveal my shock. Lord, even I knew who Brastonavich was. Go look in my (now missing) box of classical cassette tapes.

         “You see, my dear,” Hanna said as she groped in her pocketbook for some tissues, “as in all families, we had what you would call some Black Sheep. Young people who turned out…very wrong.” She drew out a leather checkbook along with her Kleenexes. When she opened that and started in on it with her pen, I touched her arm to stop her.

         “I don’t want anything, Mrs. Lehmann. Please don’t write a check. Please. I didn’t do anything to help you.”

         The son was frowning at me ominously. Was it because I didn’t want to take their money, or because he couldn’t believe I wasn’t somehow involved in the forty-year chain of piano-stealing? “We cannot take it back without some kind of compensation to you,” he said.

         I couldn’t tell them how wrong it seemed to me. It seemed like they were paying ransom for their precious heirloom. It felt like I would be taking advantage of them at one of the most emotional moments in their lives. Billy Lyle would have loved it. He would have wallowed in it.

         I looked into Echo’s deep brown, innocent eyes. “If you absolutely have to write a check,” I sighed, “then you’ll have to make it out to the county animal shelter. That’s the only way I will accept it. I didn’t pay for the piano.” Except in anguish and tears.

         This seemed to satisfy the Lehmanns. Hanna wrote out a check for nine thousand dollars, and I was able to hold it in my hand because she wrote it the way I had asked her to.

         In the morning, Henry Lehmann brought two more handsome sons and a professional piano mover. I went to Marianne Redding’s office. “Here are your keys,” I said. Without looking up from her paperwork, she pointed to a clear spot on her desk where I should place them.

         At the animal shelter, I adopted a tiny little mixed-breed dog that resembled a Yorkie. She didn’t trust me much at first. It was only with time that she learned I wasn’t a flight risk.

         I never saw Marianne Redding again.

         I’m sure that Hanna Lehmann’s nine grand gave many little lives another day, another week, with clean food and a dry, warm bed. Lives that were helpless, innocent, incapable of corruption…so much more deserving than the Billy Lyles of the world. Surely some of them went home with loving families. The odds against them were awful, but they did exist…after all, what were the chances of the Schoninger finding its way home?