The low piano keys had always been silver. Deep silver, the color of old photographs, a color that had no proper name in any language he had tried. Geln had assumed this was true for everyone until he was twelve, when he mentioned it and saw his teacher's face. It was not true for everyone. It was his, and only his, and he had spent the next twenty-six years learning to work with it.
He had a catalogue. Not written down originally, it had not seemed necessary when the colors were stable. He had started writing them in the past eight months, when he noticed the amber was going. Amber had been the mid-range keys, a warm dirty amber he associated with late afternoon. It was not gone entirely. It was dimmer. Like a room where the lights have been turned down slightly and you keep expecting someone to turn them back up.
He worked his way through the catalogue each morning before he played anything for its own sake. Upper register first: still pale, still the pale yellow-green that had always made him think of early spring. Middle register: the amber, checking, still there, lower than it should be, the same as yesterday. Lower register last, because it was the one he was most afraid of losing.
Weld was in the doorway with coffee she had not yet handed him. She had been in the doorway more than usual in the past few months. He had noticed. He did not know whether to say something about it or whether saying something would make it into a different kind of thing, a thing that required a different kind of attention than he currently had to give it.
He played the low keys slowly. A, G-sharp, G, F-sharp, F. He checked. The silver was there. Deep silver, old photograph. He played them again, not for music, just to look at the color. It held. He did not know whether it would keep holding or whether he was only looking at the last of it. He played it one more time, slow, to have it in the record.