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Speaker 1: Welcome to the ten Minute Storyteller. That's me Bill Simpson,

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Speaker 1: your host, narrator and author. We hear at the ten

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Speaker 1: minute Storyteller endeavor to entertain you with tall tales or

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Speaker 1: rendered swiftly and with the utmost empathy. We pledge to

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Speaker 1: pack as much entertainment, emotion, and exploration into the human

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Speaker 1: condition as ten minutes will permit. Mini novels on steroids.

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Speaker 1: Today's offering is entitled Music by the Sea, a timeless

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Speaker 1: tale of empowerment, emancipation, and never ever giving up the ship.

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Speaker 1: Music by the Sea waves roll in, wash up, and

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Speaker 1: ebb one after another, never ending, ceaseless and endless refrain.

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Speaker 1: She sits on the beach and listens to the waves

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Speaker 1: and thinks it would be so easy to walk into

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Speaker 1: the surf and just keep walking until she until she

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Speaker 1: begins to float, to drift away, pulled under and swept

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Speaker 1: out to sea. She thinks she might just do it,

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Speaker 1: walk into the sea and disappear. Why not? What is

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Speaker 1: there to live for? She stands, stares, and decides to

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Speaker 1: do it right now, right this second. But no, first,

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Speaker 1: she needs to go back to the house, the beach

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Speaker 1: house that isn't quite on the beach and take care

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Speaker 1: of a few odds and ends. She's so to leave

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Speaker 1: things undone. She's like the never ending, ceaseless cycle of

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Speaker 1: the waves, always busy, always going, little mundane tasks over

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Speaker 1: and over and over. Oh the sea. It looks so

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Speaker 1: inviting all her life, that nagging need to get things done.

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Speaker 1: Homework tests, cello, practice beds, to make dishes, to load clothes,

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Speaker 1: to put away, worries, to entertain. It's been she thinks,

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Speaker 1: such a waste of perfectly good time, and worse than that,

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Speaker 1: an absolute utter bore. Oh my, she thinks that bit

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Speaker 1: of port I had with lunch has gone to my head.

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Speaker 1: She found the beach house on her computer, the computer

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Speaker 1: her son gave her and taught her to use the

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Speaker 1: beach house on a website. Her daughter suggested she check

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Speaker 1: out Airbnb. She looked for weeks, for months, for almost

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Speaker 1: a year. It's what she and Guss had always wanted

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Speaker 1: to do. Rent a beach house, a house on the beach,

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Speaker 1: right on the beach, walk out the back door onto

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Speaker 1: the sand, across the sand, and down to the water's edge.

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Speaker 1: They'd always wanted to do it, always for thirty years,

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Speaker 1: but they never did didn't have time or the money,

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Speaker 1: couldn't afford it, had to save for the kids, college,

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Speaker 1: for retirement, for a rainy day. But then, on that

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Speaker 1: rainy day at Costco, hurrying across the wet parking lot, Gus,

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Speaker 1: after a lifetime of doughnuts and steaks and bacon and

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Speaker 1: eggs cooked in bacon fat, blew a gasket and keeled

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Speaker 1: over dead among the rows of shopping carts and shoppers

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Speaker 1: gawking and thinking, better that fat dude than me. That

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Speaker 1: was two years ago. Now two years without Gus. She

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Speaker 1: tells the kids and her friends and Reverend Alex how

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Speaker 1: much she misses Gus, misses his laugh, his strength, and

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Speaker 1: how she can't wait to join him in heaven. Thirty

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Speaker 1: four years of marriage. After all, she means what she

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Speaker 1: says she does, but also, well, it's just a little

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Speaker 1: bit of a fib, a little white lie. Even after

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Speaker 1: she searched and searched on that Airbnb website, looked at

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Speaker 1: well over a hundred beach houses, she just couldn't bring

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Speaker 1: herself to hit the book button. Her finger would hover

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Speaker 1: over the mouse, ready to click, but it took days

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Speaker 1: before she finally did it. It was so much money

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Speaker 1: and so scary to think of going all that way,

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Speaker 1: almost a thousand miles to the sea, all by herself.

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Speaker 1: But the pictures were just divine, the house open and spacious,

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Speaker 1: everything painted white, the sofa white, the chair's white, the

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Speaker 1: table's white, the kitchen cabinet's white. And the big windows

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Speaker 1: looking out at the sea, the big wide wrap around

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Speaker 1: porch with its chaise lounges and views of the waves

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Speaker 1: breaking upon the beach. Divine. Two weeks she booked. Two weeks,

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Speaker 1: like Gus always said, one week to settle in sweet Peach,

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Speaker 1: another week to just kick back and relax. Two weeks

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Speaker 1: a small fortune, even off season, not too off season,

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Speaker 1: just a few weeks after Labor Day. But the price

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Speaker 1: sixty percent less than in August. Even one week in

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Speaker 1: August was out of the financial question. Even with Gus's

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Speaker 1: school pension and the life insurance. She needs to watch

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Speaker 1: every dollar. But now all that worry about money and

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Speaker 1: all for naught. Just going to tie up a few

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Speaker 1: loose ends at the beach house and then take my

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Speaker 1: long walk into the sea and be done with it all,

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Speaker 1: all the silly chores and loose ends and all that

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Speaker 1: wasted time. Tonight after dinner in the dark, so no

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Speaker 1: one sees me. She wouldn't want anyone to see her.

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Speaker 1: She wouldn't want to make a scene. She's never wanted

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Speaker 1: to make a scene, has never wanted to be seen.

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Speaker 1: As a child, she took easily to the cello, a prodigy,

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Speaker 1: really earned a scholarship to the University of Chicago to

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Speaker 1: study and hone her craft as a master cellist. Only

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Speaker 1: one minor problem, stage fright. Intense stomach churning, anxiety inducing

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Speaker 1: stage fright. She tried everything, therapists, hypnotists, drugs, but nothing helped.

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Speaker 1: She finally quit, married Gus and moved to the dull

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Speaker 1: flat lands of central Illinois, where Gus taught math and

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Speaker 1: coached football at the local high school while she stayed

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Speaker 1: home and raised their three kids and crossed off the

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Speaker 1: days of her life. House on the beach, my ass,

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Speaker 1: she mutters, turning up the brick walk. What a sleazy

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Speaker 1: pack of lies and disingenuous pictures. Oh, she can see

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Speaker 1: the beach from a corner of the porch and from

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Speaker 1: an upstairs window, but it's definitely not on the beach.

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Speaker 1: She can't believe all the time and energy they wasted

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Speaker 1: thinking and talking about coming to the beach, to the sea.

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Speaker 1: It's flatter here than in Central Illinois. Flat flat, flat

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Speaker 1: and boring, boring, boring, flat and boring, just like home,

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Speaker 1: all this way, eight hundred and sixty eight miles, all

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Speaker 1: that fatty fast food and those smelly rest area bathrooms

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Speaker 1: and that dirty motel room with stains on the bedspread.

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Speaker 1: And it's not even on the damn beach, and it's

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Speaker 1: flatter and even more boring than flat, boring Anchor, Anchor, Illinois,

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Speaker 1: for the love of Saint Peter, Anchor, Illinois. How absurd.

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Speaker 1: And we spent all those years thinking this was the dream,

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Speaker 1: this was what we wanted, this was the future. All

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Speaker 1: those years, I could have been playing the cello at

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Speaker 1: Orchestra Hall, at Carnegie Hall, the cello that sits in

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Speaker 1: its case up in the bedroom, the cello she plays

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Speaker 1: every single day, two or three times a day, but

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Speaker 1: never for anyone but herself. Never not gus, not the kids,

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Speaker 1: no one else. Ever. She is she well knows, a maestro,

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Speaker 1: a virtuoso, having honed to perfection over the long years

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Speaker 1: of practice such demanding pieces as Hayden's Cello Concerto Number one,

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Speaker 1: Divorcee's Cello Concerto in B minor, Brahms Cello Sonata, and

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Speaker 1: most impressively, Box first Cello Suite in G major. Oh God,

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Speaker 1: how she loves to saw away on box incomparable suite.

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Speaker 1: A thousand times or more She's played it, and never

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Speaker 1: the same way twice. Good and great players play the

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Speaker 1: piece with exceptional skill, the same way over and over

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Speaker 1: and over. But the true artists, they reinvent the notes

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Speaker 1: with each passing of the bow over the strings. This

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Speaker 1: is who she is, and she has forever long to

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Speaker 1: be dreaming during all those long, lonely years in that

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Speaker 1: ugly brown rectangular ranch house, surrounded by flat land reaching

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Speaker 1: nowhere to the horizon in every direction. She takes the

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Speaker 1: few articles of clothing from the dryer, folds them neatly,

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Speaker 1: puts them away. She does the same with the breakfast

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Speaker 1: and lunch dishes. The sand she sweeps into a pile,

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Speaker 1: pushes it into the dustpan, tosses it outside. She lines

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Speaker 1: up the magazines on the coffee table, the sneakers and

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Speaker 1: the sandals on the welcome mat just outside the door.

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Speaker 1: The thoughts in her head, Everything lined up in perfect order.

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Speaker 1: Chores done, She reheats the chicken from last night, makes

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Speaker 1: a small salad, butters a piece of French bread, pours

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Speaker 1: a generous glass of red wine, and carries everything out

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Speaker 1: to the large round table on the porch. From here

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Speaker 1: she can just see the beach. The last supper, she

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Speaker 1: says aloud, SIPs her wine, and slowly eats her meal.

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Speaker 1: After the last bit of bread and the last drop

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Speaker 1: of wine, she leaves the dishes a most uncharacteristic negligence,

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Speaker 1: goes upstairs and takes her cello from its case. The

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Speaker 1: kneeling concert cello, with its spruce top and solid maple

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Speaker 1: sides back and neck, is easily the most expensive item

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Speaker 1: she has ever purchased, has ever owned. It is her

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Speaker 1: most prized possession. Several years ago, she used the small

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Speaker 1: inheritance after her father's death to purchase the sixteen thousand

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Speaker 1: dollars cello. No one, not Gus, and not the children

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Speaker 1: ever knew how much she paid for the exquisite looking

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Speaker 1: and even more exquisite sounding instrument. She has decided to

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Speaker 1: carry it with her into the sea. Impatient, Now dusk fleeting,

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Speaker 1: she leaves the beach house that is not on the beach.

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Speaker 1: The sky to the west, a long swoosh of orange

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Speaker 1: red as though on fire. She climbs the steps to

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Speaker 1: the boardwalk, quiet, deserted, no one about. She goes down

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Speaker 1: the steps on the other side and out on to

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Speaker 1: the beach, also quiet, also deserted. She walks across the

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Speaker 1: sand toward the sea. Here's the waves breaking, and knows

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Speaker 1: that soon she and her cello will be among them.

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Speaker 1: But before they go, she wants to play one last time,

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Speaker 1: one last song, one last sweet, one last sweep of

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Speaker 1: the bow over the street. She returns to the boardwalk

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Speaker 1: and sits on the wooden bench where during the day

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Speaker 1: the old folks sit and stare forlornly out to see

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Speaker 1: and think about what might have been. She looks around,

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Speaker 1: sees no one, not a soul, dark now not pitch black,

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Speaker 1: but well passed dusk. She is, for all intent and purpose, invisible.

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Speaker 1: She begins to play box wondrous bobbing, broken chords, and

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Speaker 1: all that loving, plaintive tranquility pours from her cello as

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Speaker 1: the bow floats with gentle ardor across the strings. The

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Speaker 1: sound is otherworldly, heaven sent, perhaps once and for all,

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Speaker 1: proving the existence of God. The piece ends. She stops playing.

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Speaker 1: So engrossed in the music was she that she failed

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Speaker 1: entirely to notice the gathering crowd. They break it to

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Speaker 1: robust applause. Bravo, Bravo, They shout, bravo. More than a

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Speaker 1: few shed tears of joy at the emotion that chellis

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Speaker 1: brought to the Music by the Sea. They ask beg

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Speaker 1: for more. She thinks she will not be able to play,

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Speaker 1: but the bow begins to move, and the strings begin

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Speaker 1: to vibrate, and the night fills with Hayden and Beethoven

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Speaker 1: and Mozart and of course Bach, always more Bach. She plays,

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Speaker 1: and plays, and plays until dawn and beyond. Thanks for

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Speaker 1: listening to this original audio presentation of Music by the Sea,

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Speaker 1: narrate it by the author. If you enjoy today's story,

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Speaker 1: please take a few seconds to rate, review, and subscribe

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Speaker 1: to this podcast, and please visit Thomas William Simpson dot

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Speaker 1: com for additional information about the author and to view

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Speaker 1: his extensive canon. The Ten Minute Storyteller is produced by

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Speaker 1: Andrew Pleglici and Josh Colodney and as part of the

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Speaker 1: Elvis Duran Podcast Network in partnership with Iheartproductions. Until next Time,

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Speaker 1: this is Bill Simpson, your ten minute storyteller,