She’d handed him the extra courage.
And she’d given this story its name.
On the kitchen floor, Penelope made up her mind.
Her father had wanted her to have a better life, and that was what she would do:
She would shed her meekness, her politeness.
She would go and pull out the shoebox.
She’d take the money out and clench it.
She’d stuff her pockets and walk to the railway—all the while remembering the letter, and Vienna:
There’s another way to be.
Yes, there was, and today she would take it.
Bez wahania.
No delay.
* * *
—
She already had the shops mapped out in her mind.
She’d been before, and she knew each music shop by its location, prices, and varying expertise. One shop, in particular, had always called her back. The pricing was the first part; it was really all she could afford. But she’d also enjoyed the shambolic nature of it—the curled sheet music, the grimy bust of Beethoven scowling in the corner, and the salesman hunched at the counter. He was pointy-faced and cheerful, eating orange quarters almost always. He shouted through his deafness.
“Pianos?” he’d boomed the first time she went in. He fired an orange peel at the bin and missed. (“Shit, from one meter!”) Deaf as he was, he picked up on her accent. “What would a traveler like yourself want a piano for? It’s worse than a lead weight around your neck!” He stood and reached for the nearest Hohner. “Slim girl like you needs one of these. Twenty bucks.” He opened the small case and ran his fingers along the harmonica. Was this his way of explaining she couldn’t afford a piano? “You can take it anywhere.”
“But I am not leaving.”
The old man changed tack. “Of course.” He licked his fingers and slightly straightened. “How much have you got?”
“So far, not much. I think, three hundred dollars.”
He laughed his way through a cough.
Some orange flesh hit the counter.
“See, love, you’re bloody dreaming. If you want a good one, or at least half-decent, come back when you’ve got a grand.”
“Grand?”
“Thousand?”
“Oh. Can I try one?”
“Certainly.”
But till now she never did play any of the pianos, not in that shop or the others. If she needed a thousand dollars, she needed a thousand dollars, and only then would she find a piano, play it, and buy it, all on the same day.
And that day, as it was, was today.
Even if she was fifty-three dollars short.