Intermission Time

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The party was like a wake; the talk was quiet, the faces of the guests waxy. Some of them regretted coming, John Carwell thought. Some of his best friends. He didn’t blame them; there’s nothing appropriate to say to a man at his own funeral.

Doris had insisted on the party, and she was struggling mightily to produce an air of celebration. The trouble was that in her it was real.

She sat at the piano, her fingers playing a twinkling song of springtime. Guests were seated about, or standing in small knots, their attention on her playing. But it might as well have been a funeral march for all the delight reflected in their faces.

John moved silently through the wide doors to the balcony overlooking the garden. In the darkness he almost collided with another figure standing by the railing. He grunted apologetically. “Sorry, George. Didn't see you standing there.”

The figure of George McCune, concert agent for John and Doris Carwell, moved like a bulbous shadow. “I'm out here weeping,” he said. “That music — it turns me over inside when I think I'm not going to hear it any more.”

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