Erik was not, by anyone's measure, an extrovert. Nature and Nurture had combined forces and produced a man with little taste for the world around him. That the world found him similarly unpalatable only confirmed that Fortune had got the last word.

This arrangement had worked well enough right until he'd got himself tangled up with someone with absolutely no sense whatsoever. Then he fell in love with her.

It was perfect. Perfectly ludicrous, but then so was he. So was his theater. And his troupe. And the gentrifying heap of a main street he haunted from the cafes, craft cocktail bars, and sandwich shops with odd bread and extravagant charcuterie. There was an artisan ice creamery named 'Lick' and its menu board boasted flavors like beet and fresh mint and goat cheese and honey.

Silly. Ridiculous. And, right now, utterly and painfully silent.

He'd been to the theater only a handful of times since the world had turned inside out. The first time he broke the news to everyone on the day the city decided to close him down. He'd wanted to be firm, to be strong and reassuring as only a madman who'd flung financial sense aside and bought himself a theater could. So, with Christine at his side and his mask in place, he started to deliver the speech he'd prepared.

His throat had closed on the second sentence and he started leaking from under the mask. The whole lot of them lost it after that, from the sweet little intern who could chill your blood with her stage cackle to the big burly stage hand. He loved tabletop games and sometimes painted figures in the break room.

Christine had rallied and delivered the speech that he couldn't. Then they got to work. There had been a slim twenty-two hours before they were to lock the doors and not come back until breathing was no longer hazardous.

As they'd worked, the troupe texted, tweeted, called and emailed. Equipment was stowed and locked away while families were alerted, landlords were contacted, and bills negotiated. Costumes were bagged, tagged, and sealed as grocery orders were made, gigs found and others lost.

It was remarkable how fast time and moved, then simply stopped.

When he'd bought the theater, she was a mess. Bats and pigeons had the high ground and a few rats nested in the dark corners below. The electricity had worked provided you didn't ask too many questions and the stage was… there.

Erik paused and pulled out his keys. As much as he wanted to fling open the front doors to air out the stale stillness, he instead shuffled around the empty dumpster and set his sights on the side door. It was new, replaced in the big restoration project, and the sturdy metal affair opened easily without the need of the jiggle-tug.

Sentiment and tragedy make odd companions.

Erik walked a familiar path from the side door through the back stage. He used to check for water leaks, loose panels or fixtures, and damaged ducts. Now he checked that no one had entered without authorization and that nothing in the breakroom fridge would smell in a week. Finding nothing but salad dressing and a lonely Red Bull, he moved on.

One bottle of cheap champagne was gone from the case in the cabinet, and Erik hoped whoever took it had a better evening because of it. He was hardly going to begrudge someone a seven-dollar vacation. With that thought in mind, he peeled a bottle from the pack and tucked it into his bag.

Erik left the breakroom and headed to his office and unlocked the door. He'd thought being forced away from the theater would be an opportunity to start adapting new material. In the first days he'd dragged a stack of materials from his office home and ordered eight scripts to consider. They'd arrived a week ago, and he still hadn't opened the box.

All was well in his office and the control booth, so he locked up and headed to the orchestra pit. By the way of the ghost lights, he made his way to the panels there and checked that everything was secure. It was. Of course it was. Erik turned up the house lights and spun slowly, getting a good look around, recalling crowds, music, laughter, and the way a spotlight could light up your whole life.

His gaze fell upon the big Steinway. Though the cover was in place, the dark wood legs gleamed under the soft house lights.

Erik turned them off and left.

…

The city was requiring masks. Erik laughed mirthlessly at the irony of it all.

"Christine, I've worn masks my entire life."

"Well, according to the city, you're covering the wrong part." She held up her freshly stitched and ironed fabric. "See? Mouth and nose."

"I'm not going to dignify that."

"You will if you want to go out." She pulled out a pile of fabrics and held up a few. "What do you say, dark gray? Maybe navy? I'm not seeing you as a big pattern guy, but maybe this abstract…"

He sighed. "Black. Black is fine." He almost regretted her working with the costumes so much. She'd got pretty handy with textiles and the stack of masks on the sofa testified her skill.

She sketched thoughtfully. "I should probably try to integrate it to your mask a bit. I'll leave the rest at the theater next time I go and everyone can just take one."

Erik leaned back on the sofa and propped a leg on the piano bench. Her desk was now a sewing station and a pile of fabrics lifted from the theater sat at one side. A production line of pieces trailed along the floor.

He still hadn't opened the script box. An unwelcome wave of self awareness threatened to drag him down and, to cope, he hauled himself up and wordlessly crawled into bed before the sun went down.

Dreams were nothings. A nightmare would have been welcome because it would have been something, but like the thing out there, it was silent, invisible… everything and nothing- a giant uncertain gray threatening everything and there was nothing to do about it but sit and hope the nothing passed by sooner rather than later.

It was nearly dark when his eyes fell open. Moments later, a wedge of light cut into the room and Christine walked in and sat next to him on the bed.

"Hi sweetheart," she said and tucked back a few strands of hair. "How are you feeling?"

"Like an asshole," he said flatly. "I'm sorry I'm not very helpful. I just… don't know what to do."

Christine curled up next to him. "You know, after my divorce I probably worked seventy hours a week. I took cooking classes, did yoga, designed a few fabric patterns, and then drove myself to a new city for a completely fresh start with a few contracts, my computer, and a suitcase."

"You're insane," Erik murmured as he took her hand and kissed her fingers.

"Says the man who bought a whole theater," she quipped. "What I'm saying is, we all cope in our own way. Why do you think I'm sewing masks?"

Erik rolled onto his back with a soft grunt. "You have unaccountable fixations."

She may have sprained an eyeball rolling them. "I have to stay busy. No matter what, if I slow down, then I bog down. I'm actively participating in the things around me and making some kind of dent in the big pile of shit we're all in." Christine sat up and crossed her legs. "You, on the other hand, won't do just anything."

"What do you mean?"

She grinned and hopped off the bed. "You're going to have to figure that out. C'mon, I made dinner. You're going to love what I did with the leftover meatloaf and some canned tomatoes."

…

A splash of the cheap champagne was sacrificed to Christine's bolognaise, and though Erik had never eaten homemade pasta before he was now convinced that she had finally cracked the code on how to put a few pounds on him. He'd need a mask with a softer cheekbone.

The idea made him wince. There was a fine line between mad artist and clown, and it started with contour.

With a little twinkle in her eye, Christine shooed him out of the kitchen and topped off his glass with a bit more bubbly. Erik paced the apartment, sipping thoughtfully as he looked at her assembly line of calicoes, batiks, and scraps from the costume room. Her eye for design was evident, and he liked that her skill had a home even in this.

The charming sounds of pots and pans clattering were smoothed out by humming. Erik looked back and saw Christine sway in time to her own music, washing dishes to the rhythm of her own playlist. A broken phrase here and there, strung on an anchorless melody.

It was pretty, and he loved to hear her voice.

The glass rang delicately as he set it on his piano. It had been nearly three whole weeks, and his hands felt sluggish, but surely…

The fall board slid back and the keys winked up like friends. As though he were wearing a coat and tails and not flannel pants, Erik sat at the bench and started small. A slow nocturne, then something quicker. Songs with embedded scales to disguise the warm up. He tripped on a key, his fingertips catching here and there as they recalled themselves, working out their own demons. Blood pulsed, and fire followed.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to remember- to feel the music rather than play it. One does not play music but delivers it, creating, acting as the conduit to songs as old as man or released into the ether just yesterday. Era was irrelevant, the act was the same.

As he finished, he opened his eyes while the last notes quieted. Christine stood by the piano, smiling, still holding the dishrag. She came and kissed his cheek.

"There he is," she whispered, then drained his champagne.

Erik felt the warmth in his face. He stretched out his fingers and cracked his neck with a grin. "Are you warmed up?"

...

As the sun went down, Christine opened the balcony doors and Erik turned on the lights. It was his favorite time of the year, when cool night air mixes with the leftover warmth of day. The tree in the courtyard below was still thinly leafed, surrounded by floating lights looped low on bare branches. Christine turned off the kitchen light, leaving the soft glow from the balcony and and the lamp from her desk to illuminate the keys; they leapt and twinkled like the lights in the courtyard.

The scattered balconies were uniformly dark and desolate. A number of residents had left to return home or pool resources, furloughed or otherwise unessential. The hardy souls that remained were still fractured. Neighbors that had forgotten what the word meant.

Erik opened the lid on the piano with a tentative hand and kissed Christine. It had been too long- the world, the theater, the everything everywhere was on fire but they weren't. Too long without reminding her that of all the things that drummed away in his distracted goldfish brain, she was his absolute favorite.

She smiled at him from the piano and his ears went hot.

"I love you too, you idiot. Now let's make noise."

With a last glance out the window at the dark square, Erik breathed music into the night. Christine gave it poetry, giving Berkley Square the sweetest treatment he'd ever heard. On the second time around, she turned suddenly.

A balcony across the square had lit up. Then another. She sang Dorothy Fields, and suring Gershwin, the balconies around the square brightened and spilled dark silhouettes onto the ledges. When they finished the third song, a smattering of applause punctuated by a rowdy whistle cut the night chill, so they opened their last red and drank straight from the bottle before breaking into Alone Together in the hope that a few listeners knew that the song came before the slogan.

Weeks of little practice left them breathless. Or maybe it was the light from the balconies casting stars in their eyes. Whichever it was, Erik lunged from the bench, hungry and hot for the first time in weeks. Christine crashed into him, dragging his shirt up and pulling him to the hallway.

Some things in life were still luminous, even if the world was trying very hard to snuff them out. He warmed his hands with her softness and she eased his aching shoulders with kisses.

"You're tight," Christine remarked as she thumbed his shoulder blades. "Too much news."

He whimpered into her mouth as she pushed him over to his back. Her lips pinned him down with a feather's touch and he hoped very much that everyone in the apartment complex was having as good a night. When her lips slid past his chest he shuddered, and her light giggle set his insides flipping. Twitches followed her touch as she took the flannel pants and tossed them in the general direction of the basket.

When her fingertips traced the quivers in the hollows by his hipbones, words failed in favor of ostentatious begging. He stopped short of vulgarity; that was petty.

He may, however, have been a bit tawdry when she started climbing back up.

…