Cello.

It was colder than I had expected it to be, and the gauzy new sweater I’d bought was hardly keeping me warm. Nicole noticed and handed over her jacket… the suede was heavy and unfamiliar, but welcome.

I’d never been to the theater before, a place chock-full of independent films and opinions and new views, a place I was sure to love. Salt Lake is strange to me, an unfamiliar place where I belong more than I expected to, where every street corner offers me something exciting and new… and still somewhat safe. I feel warmed there, as if I just bent to touch my toes and the stretch is still thrumming in my legs.

There were strains of music floating through the square. We all noticed them at the same time, turning to pay attention, to see where they were coming from. The aesthete in me was automatically piqued by what I saw, what I heard.

A man sat on a chair twenty feet from us. An old, rather battered cello settled between his knees, and his hands—red from the cold—touched on its strings delicately, seeming to hardly press down. He knew his instrument, knew just the way to draw the bow across the strings to make it sing for him. He was wearing a red and blue ski parka and a pair of tattered jeans. He had a lazy eye, wandering this way and that, seeming to concentrate on the passers-by as the rest of him concentrated on his music. I recognized the strains, but couldn’t name them… and I felt guilty for not knowing. They were Mozart. Beethoven. I wasn't sure. His smile was gap-toothed but genuine, as nearly everyone that passed into the theater paused to drop coins or perhaps a few dollars into the coffee-can that sat in front of his left foot.

All of us fumbled for our wallets. It wasn’t to look well in front of strangers; I know my friends well enough to know they would never do something like that. It was the sheer hurt we felt, almost the guilt. No, we didn’t want him to be homeless, and no, we didn’t want him to be cold, but we wanted him to play on. His fingers fumbled on the strings, and I knew they must feel like blocks of ice by now.

It was gratitude, I realized as I pushed a few dollars into the coffee can and he nodded at me, never pausing, but offering a smile. It was gratitude, and guilt for the gratitude. I felt terrible that I was grateful to him for being without a home so he could play in a square in front of a movie theater, and make my life that much more quaint, that much more worth living. It was a strange, painful emotion that battered underneath my breastbone.

We went into the theater. We saw Garden State. It was true. It reminded me of Rob. It reminded me of Jory. I saw myself in it all too clearly.

As we left the theater (after gathering obscene amounts of leaflets on the independent films that are playing there), I could hear the melancholy strains of “Greensleeves”. I recognized the tune this time, and I felt as if it should be snowing. It’s a Christmas tune to me.

We passed him as we walked toward the parking garage. I felt my feet slow down. I wanted to wait, to talk to him, to ask him why he wasn’t in a symphony, what had ruined his dreams. I wanted to know about him. I wanted to be the someone that cared.

“Come on,” someone said. I can't remember who. Then Nicole: “What’s the matter?”

I didn't answer. I walked in silence for a few minutes. I almost went back twice, almost turned around and asked the questions that I wanted to ask.

“I should have talked to him,” I told the girls as we climbed into the car. “I wanted to.”

“Yeah,” Milla said, pausing to reflect a bit. I think she might have wanted to stop, too. I couldn't tell. She is so cautious, so knowledgeable about the danger in things like that.

“It would’ve been interesting,” Erin said with her usual enthusiasm and a little regret, buckling her seatbelt. Nicole just gave me a small look, and I knew she was thinking that it would have been okay if I had stopped.

I should have.