City windows

When I was ten, my stepfather was sent to New York City to work for the CIA. (I don’t want to think about who he was keeping tabs on in the 1950s—probably people like I turned out to be.) That was the beginning of my lifelong love of cities, of gazing in windows and wondering about the lives of the people behind the windows. Lives very different from mine. 

I can’t quite read the sheet music, but let’s say it’s Liszt and the woman who plays it (with gusto) drinks imported French champagne, is distrustful of men but loves to control them, and swans around in a silk dressing gown draped erotically over her lush, pearl-bedecked bosom. She writes a luxury travel blog, and when she isn’t traveling to the world’s most exotic destinations, she sponsors fund-raisers for the Portland Art Museum. 

Or the music is Thelonious Monk, the pianist is a tall gay man whose father is the CEO of a Chinese garment business. He (the pianist) drinks nothing stronger than Moonlight Jasmine Blossom Tea but parties with cocaine; he swans around in a silk dressing gown draped erotically over his thin, hairless chest, dances like an athlete, and has a boyfriend in every major city in the world. He keeps this apartment because he adores his grandmother, who lives in Portland and is on the Board of Directors of the Chinese Garden.

Or no. The music is by Cécile McLorin Salvant, and….