He always began, "I am so sorry to occupy your time, but I would like to inquire..." He always said those words as if unaware that the person at the other end of the phone remembered him having said it a dozen times before, as if he were addressing this person for the first time.

Each of the people who received the man’s calls puzzled over his reasons for wanting to know which performances would be recorded for posterity. It seemed a reasonable question to ask, but why he did he ask the same question, time and time again...

He ran his fingers along the record albums, each sheathed in a protective plastic cover. He had hundreds of albums, accumulated over a lifetime, meticulously kept in order by a complex numerical classification scheme. He never purchased any albums except those of classical music performances he had personally attended. He felt as if he were a part of each recording, and so it was always difficult for him to choose which album he wanted to listen to at a particular moment. He decided at last upon a recording of Mussorgsky’s "Pictures at an Exhibition" by the Boston Philharmonic.

He carefully pulled the album off the shelf then gently removed the inner paper sleeve from the outer cardboard one. He carried the record to his stereo as if it were a precious antique. He set the turntable in motion, cleaning the grooves of the record with his brush.

He pondered whether he felt in the mood to listen to the entire album, or just his favorite moment. He knew the exact spot on each album where his favorite moment lay, and at times like these, when he could not stand the excruciating wait for that moment to arrive, he placed the stylus down upon the vinyl just a few seconds before the passage he wanted so much to hear.

The needle dropped into a swirl of strings, and then there was a brief moment of silence, a quarter rest. And there it was — the sound of him coughing in the first balcony. It was a particularly deep cough on that night, he thought, smiling. One of his better ones.