The Flutist

I live with a flutist. Each morning before nine he goes into the basement to play the flute. I love this man, this insular, difficult man who touches the silver metal of his flute to his bottom lip only and keeps the other pursed in anticipation . . . of a kiss perhaps?In order to create sound, a precise direction of breath must be blown into a small hole and from there be contained and pushed along the body of the flute according to the lifting and lowering of the fleshy tips of his fingers. This is hard work.I think about his flesh in the mornings when the slender sound rises through the house like a flower winding up a trellis. The flesh of his lips and the flesh of his fingers, long and delicate fingers that seem out of place on a man's hand, the hand itself strong but the wrists like porcelain and smaller in circumference than my own.These fingers, whose pads will be red and flattened by the time he's finished practicing, carry the memory of my body, for once we were lovers and the flesh of his fingers met with the flesh of my body. We kissed.His lips. I do not want to remember his lips since they've stopped kissing mine. But the lips of a flutist are very important and difficult to forget: They work hard, and when he stops playing, a little red raised bump appears on his bottom lip. When I see this, I remember how full his lips would get after kissing me.It's not a kiss that makes his music but the absence of one, for the lips must be held taut yet relaxed, and the arms must at all times be angled in a sturdy repose, never dropping, as it is important for the chest to be open in order for the breath to be properly used. Feet apart, one slightly forward, a twist to the body: Never stand straight at your audience; the body is seen best from the side, at three-quarters.Whether it rains or shines, the man I live with gets out of bed and plays his flute. He believes in practice and I admire him for that. Sometimes I stay in bed listening to him move around downstairs making coffee, bringing in the newspaper. For a big man he is very quiet and moves with an aging grace, but he is not strong and no longer uses his body in ways to make it stronger, and his heart beats too loud and fast. But he stands all day, and that takes endurance. You do not play the flute sitting down. You raise the music stand until it's even with your shoulders and you eye it straight on. You stay that way for hours.I do not need to be near this man to get the benefit of him. There are a chair and a couch in our living room. There is a room where he keeps all his clothes; I love his smell.The house we live in has three levels; when he is down and I am up, the middle floor is unoccupied. When we were lovers, we made love all through the house, touching everything in unison.I do not need to be near this man to get the benefit of him. Every morning the silky notes ascend, enliven, and then evaporate. No longer flesh, my lover moves through the house as sound, which I take inside my body. Does he know I do this? Is that why he plays each morning?The man who was my lover has a deep red bathrobe, though he dresses to play the flute. He is a simple man; his needs are elegant, elegant in the old sense of the word as in choice. He chooses not to touch me and expects the same from me, but sometimes we touch by accident, reaching for a kitchen item or passing one another closer than we anticipated.When he plays the flute and I have a message to give him, I go only halfway down the basement steps. He sees my feet, and when I squat to turn my voice in his direction, I see only half of him because the basement beams are low. I see his waist, his hips, the standing parts of him. I do not see his face, though I have many times watched him make music. I ache for him sometimes, the standing parts of him. He stands on a thin rug, his elbows out, his chest expanding, the red raised bump pulsing. I know this from memory.I don't think music is a choice. It is a way to live a life. It is part of my life too, though for the man I live with it is all there is to life. Without music he would die. He would stop breathing in the proper way, or he would find a reason to sit down and never get up again. His hands would fall off, his lips dry up, his eyes stick shut and his ears turn to useless figs. The world would not be worth living in. Trite, I know, but I think in his case true.In the mornings in our bed, I think about how he has made a life of music, for this is all he does, and all he can do, though once he told me he would like to be an oceanographer.He does not touch me. We nod to each other like two old friends. Upstairs we walk around naked like athletes after a game, tired and shameless. I fart in front of him but he muffles his behind closed doors or the shower curtain. I told you he was elegant. His fingernails are always clean, his ears pink, his tongue is a prophet that used to proclaim itself to my thighs.I will not leave him. I don't know how. Every morning in our bed alone, I hear a sound no other woman hears. I believe I have been chosen for this.When I hear him coming up the steps sometimes I change my expression. I will begin to look serious or aloof or uncomplicated. I am never elegant. I bend one knee too much, my neck's too short.The man who used to be my lover, the man I share a life with, has a head that sometimes seems too big. His head is large and only when it's very cold does he cover it.I take that back. I've seen him curl as small as a bird underneath the sheet and put his head beneath it as well and huddle, a word which has no other, earlier meaning but is the thing itself, a hurt thing.