A Tuner's Hands

The workshop at the end of Sycamore Street smelled like varnish, onion soup gone to glory, and that precise, warm metallic tang that swims off steel strings when a room holds its breath. Rowan had learned to read odors the way other people read faces. A burned pastry on the market corner meant Mrs. Havel’s stall was late this morning; the ferry horn three streets over signaled a tide change; Arthur’s pocket tobacco — a mixture of clove and something floral — meant he’d been polishing something sentimental. Rowan tilted their head, set the tuning fork between teeth and ear, and let the A settle into the cartilage of their jaw. Sound lived differently here; the shop was a mouth and the instruments were teeth.

Arthur liked rules. He kept them on polite, embroidered cards and on the inside of his shirtsleeves. The most important was never to tune with impatience. The second, which he recited like a benediction, was that every instrument deserved a middle name. “It humanizes them,” he’d say, patting the lid of a baby grand as if it had cheeks. He’d chosen “Eleanor” once for a piano that meant a woman in his past, which made Rowan laugh until they had to apologize—an odd inversion of respect.

A cat presided over the low end of the shop like a stubborn, furry gong. It had a habit of making itself comfortable across the bass strings of the upright when Rowan needed to hear a low register. The first time it happened, Rowan had nearly strangled a mute on the tuning pin to keep fingers from jerking in laughter. Now the cat was a fixture; it snored in time with the metronome when things were quiet and batted away the wrenches when it wanted attention. Not very helpful, but excellent for morale.

Rowan worked by feel more than sight. Palm cupping the curve of the piano’s belly, they slid a rubber mute between two strings and plucked a treble with their thumbnail, listening for the harmonics that told them whether a note loved its neighbors. When the note was flat, they wound clockwise, feeling the pin give way in little grains like sand. When it went sharp, they eased back and listened to how the wood warmed around the soundboard. Their hands smelled faintly of rosin and soap, their knuckles acquiring the white, callused sheen earned by repetition. It made them feel reliable in a way casual conversation never had.

“Rowan,” Arthur called without looking up from a coil of tuning wire he was pretending not to tangle. “Don’t overdo the micro-adjustments. Temperament is not an emotional therapy session.”

Rowan grinned. “You mean, don’t let the piano’s feelings run the show.”

Arthur’s mouth twisted. “Precisely. You are a conservator of balance, not a marriage counselor.”

There was a practical tone under his mockery. Arthur’s rules kept things from unspooling; they kept the shop from becoming a museum of experiments that made instruments hiss and refuse to sing. Still, sometimes Rowan wondered if keeping everything safe was the same as keeping everything quiet.