Before his illness, Abram fashioned flutes of precious metals: silver, gold and platinum. Now, he was listening to the live recording of Brahms’ First Symphony on the classics station performed by the Viennese Philharmonic, while awaiting another round of chemo.
Hoping to hear the flute solo in the symphony, but feeling anxious that he might miss that point in the piece, Abram sighed heavily. As if to echo him, violins and violas played downward leaps of broken chords which sounded like sighing.
Only once had Abram made a platinum flute. Coincidentally, that flute was acquired by the Viennese Philarmonic for eighty thousand dollars, and he had hoped to hear it. Platinum flutes were commissioned on rare occasions and mainly for virtuoso soloists, not so much for their monetary value, but for their much darker palette of sound.
Still harboring some hope that he might hear the platinum flute, his flute, Abram stared at the nurse as she plugged an IV tube into his PICC line, another thin tube protruding out of the vein in his arm.
Bodies of flutes, he thought, also begin as two tubes. Abram remembered how he first started working at the flute company. Before he came to America, he had been a civil engineer in Russia, so except for his love of classical music...
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