* Author : Jennifer Hudak * Narrator : Eleiece Krawiec * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Eric Valdes * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Not One of Us #75 (January 2023) Rated PG Beverly’s Sonata by Jennifer Hudak   When the record player first spoke to Beverly, it used the voice of her old piano. At first, just the whisper of air among strings, like a clearing of the throat. A single tap of the middle C. Then came the scales, forwards and backwards, and the muted thud of felted hammers against metal strings. Beverly took in a sharp breath. She’d learned to play her first notes on that piano, decades ago. She knew its vocabulary intimately: the delicate chuckle of the upper registers, the lisp of its sticky high A, the squeaky press-and-release of the sustain pedal. There was no mistaking it. The scales turned into a melody, bass and treble weaving into a voice that gained strength with each pop and hiss of the needle, each revolution of the vinyl. Every glissando asked the same question: Where are you? Beverly wavered on her feet. The carpet — too new, too plush — felt like shifting sand beneath her house slippers, and she sat heavily on the green chair. The chair was one of the few pieces of furniture to have made the journey with her from her lovely house by the sea. The piano had not. It wouldn’t have fit in her son’s van, much less this tiny apartment. Yet here it was. Her piano. The ghost of it, anyway, hovering over the record player like French perfume on an old, forgotten coat. The glissando again, more insistent: Where are you? “Where are you?” Beverly echoed. The piano answered with a thundering chord that spoke of waves crashing into cliffs, and a plink of seventh-octave keys that felt like salt spray. A solid sequence of chords drew square rooms, echoing wood floors, chilly windows that let in as much of the sun-painted ocean as possible. Home. As the record played, the upholstery of the green chair hardened into smooth ebony and ivory beneath Beverly’s fingertips. Music washed over her skin like an ocean breeze. In her mind, she envisioned a whale breaching and then crashing back down into the water, leaving nothing but an enlarging circle of foam. A brisk knock on the door, and Beverly flinched. “Hello?” called her son Mark’s voice. Beverly pressed her lips together, but the piano had stopped speaking through the record. Instead, an inoffensive jazz standard played from the tinny speaker. Mark knocked once again, louder this time. Beverly hoisted herself out of the chair and fumbled with the multiple locks on her door. Mark stood in the hallway, holding up two disposable cups. “I stopped for coffee! Don’t worry, yours is decaf.” “Oh,” said Beverly. “How nice. Well, come in.” Mark entered the room just as the needle reached the end of the record; the arm lifted as if manipulated by invisible fingers, swinging back to return to rest. “I did some poking around,” Mark said, handing her the cup of decaf. “There’s a lot going on in this place. Classes, lectures, concerts . . . There’s even a yoga class! Wouldn’t that be fun?” “Maybe,” said Beverly doubtfully. She tried to imagine herself in a yoga class, dressed in something scandalous. Didn’t people do yoga barefoot? Beverly’s toes clenched inside her house slippers. “Also, Mom, they have a piano.” Beverly looked up in surprise,