As twilight blooms over Oklahoma State University, piano song resonates through the lobby of The Atherton Hotel.
Bearded professor types in suits lounge on regal-patterned couches, sipping various stout brews.
The sound intensifies as the pianist sweeps his nimble hands liquidly from end to end across the pearl keys.
The men have stopped drinking.
For a moment there is a shocked stillness, filled with the crescendo of an elongated arpeggio.
In a glass-encased corner of the hotel, a young man wearing worn tennis shoes and a black beanie performs his variation of Beethoven’s “Für Elise.”
Two stout looking women in gray skirts and beige pantyhose throw back the glass doors and hustle into the vibrating solitude of Sam’s music box, crossing the whitewashed threshold with black tipped stilettos.
The women tromp directly to the back of the room, where they clank thin white plates into piles on a steel cart.
They pay Sam no mind.
But the doors to the music box have been opened.
The lobby is shaking with melody.
The men have refilled their glasses and loosened their ties.
This is the Atherton. This is a respectable place.
Now the suited gentlemen have formed a loose circle in the middle of the lobby, clapping for one old man with a gray mustache quick-stepping his black dress shoes and argyle socks in the center of them all.
The gold chandeliers above are shining like a thousand shots of whiskey.
The men link arms and start spinning faster, faster, to the quickening melody.
With a final flourish, the song ends, and the suited, sweaty men collapse in laughter and back pain.
The sound of music is replaced with heavy breathing and the crunching of Aspirin.
Sam gently shuts the cover to the keys and exits his glass music box.
He passes the fallen men in the lobby without a glance, unnoticed.
Opening the wide wooden doors of The Atherton, Sam steps smoothly out into the cool coming night, connecting notes between the crickets and the stars.
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This episode is also available as a blog post: https://jordonious.wordpress.com/2021/07/21/character-sketch-sam-alberts-passionate-pianist/