The practiced dissident dance of David's fingers across insidious ivory needed no shepherding and could not distract or contain his ache to play his music for this woman whose arched back spoke of rage and confusion, until he lost all moorings and played only the pulses inside his chest, hotly, relentlessly, to each bead of perspiration forming above her lips and continued pounding the Steinway with all the weight of his desire, until he collapsed exhausted and she barely swooned from the room.