Rolf sat on the park bench, the way he had since the last twenty years. He saw a couple of deer gamboling about. Some children with orange-striped cotton candy made palaces with pebbles and flowers. Rolf looked at them but did not really see them. Far across the park, he saw the theater lit up with globs of marquee lights. For some reason, these lights alternately strobed between golden and ice-blue. It was a nice touch, considering the weather was chilly and it was only a matter of time before it started snowing.
Rolf remembered the first time he entered that place. He was a child. His father had spent more time grooming Morney, the monkey, than him. But Rolf was a born performer. He could jump, dance, juggle, do the splits. The world was usually amazed by a four-year-old doing these things. For his father, it was routine, though. After all, they came from a line of Gillets - the tribe that shone with feverish energy whenever the spotlight hit them. It was, as they say, in their blood.
But it was a long, slow, quick, dull, bright life. Rolf grew, then got older. As he got older, he spent a lot of time polishing the spotlight to fall on someone else. He didn't mind it though. There was so much to do. He taught himself cooking, embroidery, and origami. He taught himself how to do make-up on people's faces so that they looked like swans and dolphins. He taught himself the xylophone, all the time imagining it to be a piano. A piano was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It was a musical and benign Loch Ness that arose, time to time, from an ocean churning with melody.
But life was done. The theater had burned down. Rolf went on to do other things - play at weddings, do make-up for children's parties.
Then they brought the theater back up - prouder than it stood before.
Today there was supposed to be a performance. A child prodigy who could do acrobatics across wild, untamed animals.
Rolf sat as the evening gave way to night. The stars spread like confetti across the sky. Children still played but their parents came and wrappped them up with bright scarved and mufflers, mostly with prints of cheery animals. His fingers tapped and moved across the park bench, playing an imaginary piano.
He imagined that chubby little prodigy now running and jumping across lions in the cage across him.
It occurred to him that his father was perhaps a better father to him than he realized. At least his father was by his side, even though he barely looked at him.
Rolf just sat on a park bench listening to imaginary piano music as his son blinked at the crowd.
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