The Hod King by Josiah Bancroft

Author:Josiah Bancroft
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2018-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

The doorman to the backstage shifted on his stool. His leg had fallen asleep yet again.

There had been a time when he enjoyed music, a time when he sought out performances in the evenings and saved the programs in a little box under his bed, a time when he held opinions on whether the waltz had killed the cadenza and whether an etude should be passed off as a melodic refrain, opinions which he had argued from the deep couches of the salons, long into the wee hours of the night.

But that was before he had sat down on the hard stool outside the backstage of the Vivant. He had discovered that listening to music through a wall was like kissing a woman through a pane of glass: It stripped away all the physical delight and left behind only the absurd shape of the thing, which was repulsive. Having to put up with the spoiled musicians and their entitled visitors only added insult to aesthetic injury.

The two things that kept him sane were the cotton wads that plugged his ears and the evening dispatch that occupied his eyes. The combination turned torment into monotony, which was at least endurable.

This particular evening had been slightly more tedious that usual. The writing in the Reverie was bad, and whoever was throttling the piano onstage was about to burst the dams in his ears. His thoughts were already drifting toward the bottle of tawny port waiting for him at home when the paisley moth landed on the top edge of his paper.

He regarded it curiously, and then realized a very large someone was charging directly at him. There wasn’t time to react, though the music seemed to slow and thicken into a rumble. The doorman thought, Ah, well! I’ve been wanting to retire. Then a fist cleaved his newspaper and relieved him of the tedium of consciousness.

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