Daniel squeezes into his jacket and hooks two fingers around the handle of his violin case, his body weightless and unreal. His keys jangle in his pocket, dulled by a half-finished packet of gum. He glares at his violin, and fantasizes smashing the torture device to splinters. Done as a musician, reborn as a composer.
Five thousand multiplied by the number of pieces he's completed is more money than he has made in his entire life. More than his college debt. He could pay his nagging dad the deposit back, refund the mechanic expenses from the time he crashed his car, and never have to ask for his help again. He would no longer owe anyone anything.
Marina said he lays golden eggs, and he feels invaluable instead of worthless, as if his skin is made from expensive instrument pieces, rosewood and ivory, artfully crafted by a luthier. It's stupid. Daniel was frankensteined from plastic trash and CD shards and bad music.
"Stay here for the night."
The handle is balmy in his palm and the latches jitter.
"Oh! You have a guest bedroom?" He tries for a casual tone.
"I do, but it's occupied."
Marina opens the door to her right and a rectangle of light fills the pitch-black room. Canaries flutter in a massive cage. No windows, and the walls are lined with foam soundproofing. They sing in thirds, fifths, and sevenths, all in the same key.
"They sound so... good together?" He says.
Birds don't do that. They just repeat calls. She must have sung to every one of them individually, until they only repeated those notes. Female canaries don't sing, they only chirp, and these all have the bright flame coloration of males.
"Don't they? Like my own personal orchestra."
The canaries are excited by Marina's presence, bang against the cage bars, sing louder, fluctuate octaves. She closes the door, and all that is left of their song is a high-pitched hum.
"You will sleep in my bed."
Daniel steps backward, and shakes his head so hard his brain knocks around in his skull and gives him a mild concussion. When he opens his eyes and the hall spins, Marina is still there.
She grabs his wrist and leads him through corridors with long tasseled carpets and biblical oil paintings. He trips onto a king size bed and gets a faceful of memory foam and the citric acid scent of Marina. If he knew they were going to have sex, he would've showered.
Flowy dress pants billow around her pale legs, then puddle on the floor. She strips down to her gray cotton underwear, her firm breasts less than a handful. It does cross his mind that she could be pretending to like his music to manipulate him into fucking her, and he is not sure whether to be excited or disappointed by this.
Marina unbuttons his jeans, pulls them down, and his erection undulates. She blinks at it, and he is compelled to apologize. The crevice of her bare chest slots on his knee. Jeans crumple to his ankles, and she unties his muddy converse dangling from the side of her bed, perfect fingers struggling on the double-knots.
Daniel yanks off his own shirt to show some initiative. Sex is not complicated, he's done it an average amount of times, in the backseat of a nissan with a peeling paintjob and sun damage, in his university disabled bathroom, upstairs at a friend's house party. Calm down. In his froot of the loom boxer briefs, she flattens him to the bed.
His body is wet with sweat, warm streaks trail his forehead and slide down his arms. Every time he touches her body, his oily fingers smudge her complexion. He has much more body hair than she does, at his inner thigh and lower abdomen, dark blonde and curly.
