the piano comes to america-10-final

the piano comes to america-10-final

fiction
edward w pritchard

for more on Wiley see the body's growth and development 1& 2

Mrs. Carson Wiley's tenth grade English teacher was the midwife of Wiley's new business plan.

Mrs. Carson hadn't made it down the stairs to Wiley's shop before she burst into tears. Her heart was broken. Her husband had told her she had gotten very fat for the first time and she had jumped into her car and went straight from Akron, Ohio to Cleveland to find Wiley. Wiley had been a beautician in Akron before he moved to Cleveland out of his ambition to make more money and now only took clients by appointment. Beatrice the hostess at the shop upstairs, where Wiley used to work before he rented and created his intimate boutique in the basement, left at 3:00 and Mrs. Carson had found her way down. Wiley was finished for the day. He had started his new regimen over a month ago in by 8AM, first client by 8:30.

The Country of Greece had over spent lavishly, the Government was defaulting on the interest payments to the bond holders and children would starve in Asia because of it. Mrs. Carson can be forgiven today however for not being concerned about the situation in Greece that Wiley had been reading about in the Wall Street Journal as she came down the stairs.

For thirteen years Mrs. Carson had gotten up at 6AM taken care of the two children, laid out her husband's clothes for over at the Bank in Akron and then went to teach all day. Now she was spent, she was suspicious of the husband but didn't have the energy or courage to find out why he wanted to distance himself from her and hurt her.

Wiley made tea in his microwave and put on soft piano blues. It wasn't about hair and changing someone's eyebrow arch today. After about ten minutes he risked a joke resuming his gay stereotypical persona that he had used when in high school in Mrs. Carson's class.

"It's all about money, honey with them and then when there's enough money it's about your fat ass". Mrs. Carson began to feel better. As she composed herself Wiley hugged Mrs. Carson and put Mama Thorton, the blue's singer on the CD player, Ball and Chain, Wiley's favorite song and began to give Mrs. Carson ideas how to lose weight by using the rubber bands he would use later today, after he finished the wall street journal. Wiley later decided he could increase his income in the shop by helping his clients, mostly gay and his earlier following older women by incorporating exercises in to his services. He would teach his clients to use the rubber stretching bands to lose weight between and during getting their hair dyed and cut.

part-2 three weeks later-Adkins Virginia

Wiley was far ahead of Drexel and didn't have his backpack, or coat so he went in the wierd gas station/convience store on the way to the crossover of the Appalachian trail onto 81 the super highway down here in Western Virginia.

Wiley was cautious. The people down here seemed friendly but he wasn't with Mr. macho Drexel just now, and he was conditioned by older relatives in Ohio about being Black in a strange place in the south, and he was gay.

The people in the store were real people, strange, and eccentric but they made a good toasted cheese sandwich and he had two, forgetting the diet after walking 31 miles today. After, Wiley followed the signs toward the crossover bridge until the rain started in earnest. Other hikers had sat in front of this old deserted hotel before for there was litter and cigarette butts and Wiley had a craving to smoke one, an ancient vice that he had conquered years ago. Instead Wiley crawled under a very old dilapidated upright piano skeleton and scrunched up inside to get out of the rain in the small overhang under where the piano keys used to be and under the shelf formed by the edge of the hotel roof.

About six hours ago Drexel and Wiley who were hiking on the Appalachian trail for a week from Damascus Virginia to where ever they got in a week had an argument and Wiley had left his backpack and raced ahead. They were following the Appalachian trail and were at Grayson State Park to see the wild horses. There was a gate to keep the horses from going South out of the park. The gate was actually two gates in a small square and a walker had to open one, close it and then do the same again on the second one to keep the horses wild and safe in the very large park.

As Wiley had entered the first gate Drexel had told him he had accepted a position with an insurance company in Hartford Connecticut. Drexel was a major league baseball player and had been on the disabled list pretty much for two years and for the most part Wiley had been supporting him. They had been together six years, a long time for a male gay couple. Drexel had taken the position by phone two days ago and hadn't told Wiley till now. Drexel knew Wiley would be upset for not being consulted immediately and being left out of Drexel's plans.

Wiley had dropped his twenty five pound backpack and raced ahead and was now under the piano overhang.

About an hour later Drexel sat under the over hang on the other side of the place under where the piano keys used to be. He was Latino and had his black hair pushed straight back. He was very clumsy in situations like this. He had no interpersonal skills, he was good at hitting a baseball with a wood bat thrown at someone's head at 98 miles an hour and that was him.

Wiley broke the ice by calling him " a stupid [-delete]".

Drexel promised in the end to have the piano they were sitting under, that Wiley had taken an interest in, moved from here to Hartford [after he somehow acquired it] and to help Wiley move his shop from Cleveland to Harford and make the boutique just how Wiley wanted it with a space for a small exercise room for the clients and Drexel promised to refer some of his baseball contacts to Wiley. Wiley decided to forgive Drexel.


End parts 1-10