Aidan San Francisco — 1985 A Little Night Music

When Aidan plays his Chopin and Debussy to the orchids, it sounds wrong. It is what he has always played, the identical composers and same pieces, but now the music seems flat and slow. He does not know why.

“It’s flat,” Ryan says. “One of the little-known benefits of being dead. We all have perfect pitch.” But as usual, perfect or not, Aidan cannot hear him.

The bird song from the night haunts Aidan’s waking hours; the clear sweet unremembered melody clouds his mind. His world, simple and uncluttered, is becoming murky. A swimming pool, left un-chlorinated, grows algae, mosquito lava, eventually attracting frogs and perhaps even fish that flash like crystals beneath murky water. It is alive and sometimes beautiful, but never, never clean.