Music Box

One night in Silver Lake,

I was driving on Vendome Street

and passed a staircase that led up

to the next street. I had not lived

in Los Angeles very long, but I knew

this staircase; it was famous, it was

the one from the old Laurel and Hardy

movie, the one where they try to

push a piano up a flight of stairs.

I parked and walked up and down

them three or four times, replaying

scenes in my head, laughing to myself.

As I was walking back to my car, a man

smoking a cigarette in the doorway of the 

building next to the staircase asked me if 

I was a fan; I said I was, and he said,

I see them here, almost every night.

I bummed a cigarette off him even though

I don't smoke and asked him what he meant.

The thin one and the fat one, he said, inhaling.

They come around two or three in the morning,

there's no piano, they just sit beside each other

and talk. Some nights I can hear them through

my bedroom window - and he gestured behind him

at the building - I can almost make out what

they're saying. How do they look, I asked,

and he said, About the same. He paused and looked

at me and tilted his head to the side, as though

taking stock of me. They loved each other very much,

he said. And I nodded. It was so, I had read how

broken Laurel had become after his partner's death, 

how he had refused to work again, how he had paid 

Hardy's medical bills after a series of strokes had left

him mute, immobile and broke. That's why they 

were so funny, I said, because they loved each other so much.

I thanked him and drove home and watched 

the piano movie online. A few weeks later, I took a date

on a walk to the stairs and told her the story of the

movie, of the two comedians. She had never heard of

them, and started to make jokes about how they must

have been gay. It was late at night, and I stood on a 

mid-level stair and she stood a few stairs below me

and her mouth was on me and I forgot for a few 

moments how much I disliked her, and after 

she had swallowed me I followed her down the stairs,

telling her again about them, about bonds of 

friendship equal to or surpassing love, and

didn't she have anyone like that in her life, and she

had laughed, and then I had laughed, because,

anymore, I didn't either, and the sound of us

was like a piano rushing through the dark,

gaining speed, unseen behind us.