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Drawing us in

John Lennon

The October issue of Harper's has a neat story by T.C. Boyle.

The premise is: the first-person protagonist lives within walking distance of the home of a recluse  who was once (in the late 70s, early 80s) a member of a "third-tier" but financially successful rock band.

The rocker/recluse has just died, and no one noticed that fact until people walking by the house smelled an overwhelming stench and called the authorities.

The protagonist feels compelled early one morning to enter the now-empty house and look around, getting to know the enigmatic decedent.

This entry and examination takes place by degrees, and the story does a great job of drawing us in to how the narrator is himself ... drawn in.

Sample:

There was a grand piano in one corner (Steinway, white) and across from it an electric version hooked up via a nest of wires to a pair of speakers that stood on either side of it. I had an impulse to lift the lid on the Steinway and try a key or two -- who in this world has ever entered a room with a piano and failed to go to it and tinkle out something, be it 'Chopsticks' or the opening bars of Tchaikovsky's 'Marche Slave'? But I fought it down. The neighbors might have been behind an eight-foot wall, but how could they fail to remark on the sound of a dead man playing the piano at six-thirty of a Sunday morning? No. no piano playing....I had to go. But what was this on the walls, these rectangular forms giving back the soupy light? Photos. Framed photos.
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