The third letter came with a pressed flower inside, which is how I knew it was serious. The first two I put in a drawer. This one my label put in a file, and the file produced a man. I am Annika, thirty-two, a concert pianist, and since Tuesday there has been a stranger sleeping in my guest room.
Aleks does not sit. In four days I have learned this. He stands near doors, near windows, near the piano while I practise, and he says “Ma'am” in a voice that makes the word sound like a rank he has assigned me. Ex-military, the label said, as if that explained the way he checks the corridor before I'm allowed to walk down it.
Tonight is the first concert since the letters. He is in the side aisle, where I asked him not to be, and he is not watching me. He is watching the audience, row by row, through the lens of a small camera he holds like a weapon he's been told to keep holstered.
I play the sonata. I play it badly for eight bars because I can feel him there, and then I play it well because I can feel him there, and I don't know which frightens me more.
Afterwards, in the dressing room, he closes the door and stands with his back to it.
“Row K,” he says. “Aisle seat. He left during the second movement and didn't come back. I've given his description to the hall.”
“You didn't hear a note, did you.”
“I heard all of it, Ma'am.” He says it flatly, and then something shifts in his face, one small muscle, and he adds, “You changed the tempo in the third movement. You've never done that in rehearsal.” He is right. I did it for him, to see if he'd notice. He noticed. He is standing very still, waiting for an order, and I am sitting very still, realising that for the first time I don't know what to tell him to do.
