David fell in love with her the moment he heard her sing. So did everybody else. As soon as their first rehearsal with her at orchestra practice was finished, there was a line of men waiting to talk to her. Not a literal line, but there were pockets of men conversing in small groups as she was conversing with her own group of lady friends, everyone stealing glances toward her waiting for her to be alone to shave off the embarrassment of making a move on her in front of her friends—to save any number of seconds of the mortification that would come from her inevitable “no.” The waiting seemed to last for hours, but it was only ten minutes before someone made a move.
Her physical beauty only matched the beauty of her singing. She was the quintessential blonde hair, blue-eyed beauty—red lipstick and light makeup accentuating everything beautiful about her. Her figure like an hourglass, men instantly became infatuated with her, only to face inevitable rejection. Especially men like David.
Which is why, instead of joining one of the small groups of men pretending to engage in intelligent conversation and making it obvious to every woman in the orchestra that they’re interested in the singer and the singer alone with their secretive but obvious glaring staring (they thought they were being unobvious, but a woman always knows), David packed up his cello and started making his way out through the backstage area and to the Hill Auditorium parking lot.
David is extraordinarily ordinary. With short cropped, black hair, pale skin, and still having minor problems with acne in his late twenties standing at 5’2”, there is nothing remarkable about David, apart from his cello playing. But even then, he’s not first chair. He’s the type of man whom nobody notices. David always found that ironic. His Jewish parents named him after the greatest king in all of Israel’s history, yet the greatest thing he’s ever amounted to is last chair in the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra’s cello section. This is no small feat, but with his father being a successful accountant and his mother a successful counsellor in her private practice, they wasted no time reminding David what a disappointment he is for pursuing his dream of becoming a world class musician instead of following their footsteps or some other more lucrative—more practical—career.
Even so, David has always skated easily by—achieving the bare minimum grades, even the bare minimum for excellence on the cello, and easily blending in a crowd. He counts it as luck that he passed the audition for the orchestra. That’s why it shocked him when he heard the most soothing voice say before he could leave backstage, “Hi David.”
Although he has only heard her sing, he immediately knew who it was. She was the one to make a move.
“H—hi,” he stuttered stupidly, immediately blushing, which only made him blush harder because he’s extremely pale and every man in the room was looking at him like they’d just witnessed a miracle. He couldn’t dare look her in the eyes. He would melt.
“Would you mind walking me to my car?” she said with an accent he couldn’t place. “It’s rather dark out, and I’ve never felt safe in large cities.”
He finally looked at her, and his heart didn’t feel like it was going to pop out of his chest like in the old cartoons, but literally implode.
“Sure,” he said, marvelled that he was still standing.
As he put the straps of his cello case around his left shoulder, the singer hooked her harm through his right arm as they began to walk. This took him by surprise, and he seemed to gasp like everybody else in the room. Her touch was… magical. David couldn’t come up with a better term. It’s as if her mere touch causes her beauty to pour into your very essence, making you feel beautiful inside and out. On the inside, you’re filled with an impregnable self-love. On the outside, you feel like you’re surrounded by her aura of unconquerable elegance—like a shield to ward off everyone’s malicious judgements. David couldn’t help but wonder if this was what love feels like, or perhaps it’s only mere infatuation of a 28-year-old virgin.
As the cold December breeze hit their faces outside, he managed to ask, probably from the strength her aura provided him, “I feel stupid for saying this, but I’ve already forgotten your name. Mister Daniels, the director, only said it the once.”
She giggled. “That’s okay. My name’s Esmerelda.”
“Esmerelda… Wow, does everything about you have to be so…”
“So what?” she prompted.
“So damn beautiful?” David wished there was a word more profound than beautiful. Synonyms like lovely, stunning, radiance, elegance, and magnificence juts didn’t seem to cut it.
Esmerelda giggled again and he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw she was blushing. Or perhaps that was only the cold air flushing her cheeks. David wouldn’t know; he’s never made a woman blush before.
“So, which one’s your car?” he asked.
“Which one’s yours?” she asked back.
That stunned him momentarily. Why would she care about my car? he wondered.
Balancing his cello on his shoulder, he pointed to a 2003 Saturn, a completely unremarkable car in a tan color that blends in with its rust.
She stopped and looked him in the face, “I don’t like my hotel room. Take me back to your place.”
I must be dreaming, he thought. He blinked his eyes several times—hard. He even pinched himself on the thigh. He wasn’t dreaming.
“Why me?” he finally said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I’m ugly. I know I am. I’m not the greatest cellist in the orchestra, and when you see how crappy my apartment is compared to how gorgeous you are, you’ll want to leave. I’m beginning to think someone is playing a prank on me.”
Esmerelda seemed to be examining him seriously.
“Yes, I have been blessed with significant beauty,” she said. “And yes, I have… shared my time with equally handsome men. But I’ve found them to be extremely boring and… insipid. I have since learnt that it’s men like you—humble, even cute—who offer the most depths and, dare I say, are quite savory in bed.” She winked at him.
That made David blush all over again. It felt like his whole body was blushing.
“But we hardly know each other,” he said. He couldn’t believe he just said something so stupid.
She smiled at him. “We’ve got all night to get to know each other.”
David couldn’t argue with that, so he walked her to his car, opening the passenger door for her.
When they got to his apartment, she was surprisingly not appalled by how simple and dirty it was—empty food containers and miscellaneous trash in cluttered areas, his sink filled with dirty dishes, and dirty socks in various places on the floor.
She sat on his couch, motioned him to sit next to her, and they talked for a while. They talked about music, their favorite composer (hers was Vincenzo Bellini, his was Mozart), the orchestra, how they got into music—what seemed like everything having to do with music. If he wasn’t in love with her already after merely hearing her heavenly voice, he certainly was now.
After two hours, she asked if she could take a bath.
“Really?” David said. “Why?”
She sighed, but it wasn’t an annoyed sigh. “As ladylike as I appear to be, I must admit that I do sweat. With all those lights on the stage on us, it gets really hot up there, don’t you agree?”
David could easily sympathize with that. “Yeah, I was sweatin’ balls up there.” He immediately choked himself off from saying anything more after using such crude language in front of her.
But all she did was grin at him and made her way to the bathroom. As the water ran, David immediately stood up and began pacing the room.
“Is this really going to happen?” he said underneath his breath so she wouldn’t hear him. “You have a beautiful woman in your bathroom—no, a goddess—taking a bath. In your dirty bathroom! And she doesn’t seem disgusted by anything about me? How? Am I so desperate that I can’t see it? No, she’s here and she went inside your bathroom instead of out the door! What if she invites me in? What do I say? I know it’s a sin, but I don’t think I can resist the temptation! I mean, look at her!”
Just then, the water stopped running, and as if predicting the future, Esmerelda called out, “David, would you care to join me?”
He hesitated at first. But then he mustered all the courage he had—what little there was—and marched into the bathroom, and there she was, beautifully naked in the tub, the water just above her perfect breasts. He stood and stared at her, paralyzed, trying to find the courage to run away.
She giggled at him. “Get in, silly.”
He quickly tore off his clothes and got in, water pouring out the sides of the tub. After he got himself as comfortable as he could, he smiled at her.
Esmerelda stuck her hand out, caressing his hair with a soapy sponge—his soapy sponge—and began to hum the most beautiful melody he’s ever heard. David has listened to virtually every piece of classical music, but he couldn’t recall this melody. It was new to him.
Esmerelda’s soft caressing suddenly hardened as she gripped the top of his head and slammed it into the water. David started flopping around like a fish out of water, utterly confused, grabbing her wrist, and trying to remove her grip. But she was strong—incredibly strong. Too strong for a petite woman. During it all, her humming turned into singing and a language that sounded like Greek.
Finally, David drowned. And this was a mercy, because he was far too dead to watch Esmerelda’s teeth elongate into protruding daggers as they sunk into his flesh. She consumed every piece of him, nothing left but the crimson water and faint echoes of her melody that later tenants would hear in the bathroom.
The Lutheran Column 