by W E DeVore
Q swallowed around the hot swelling in her throat and her body tremored with the sympathetic recognition that Derek was telling her the truth.
He cleared his throat and straightened his spine before continuing, “Everyone has been telling you it’s going to be ok. You’re going to get through this. But they’re all lying to you. There will never be an end to this. You are going to feel this every day for rest of your life.”
Her body shook harder and he continued to gaze directly into her eyes. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. She kept watching the twin points of pale blue studying her face.
Derek finally said, “What gets easier, is how loud it is. You’ll learn to turn it down. Some days you won’t be able to, but most days you will. Right now, you can’t. It’s too new. So, you need to drown that noise out, and that’s what you and I are going to do every day from now on. Fiona’s plane is landing in an hour; she’ll meet us at the studio. JJ’s coming, too. I’ll call whatever musician you want. It’s on me. But we’re going to drown that motherfucker out until you learn to turn it down on your own. You got it?”
Hot tears filled her eyes and she blinked to clear her vision. The water trickled down the sides of her face and she panted through her nose to maintain control, feeling the rushing torrent raging up through her skin. Derek reached over with both hands and wiped away her pain with his thumbs. Her breathing slowed, responding to his cool touch. He leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers.
“Breathe in. One. Two,” he whispered slowly.
She did as she was told and inhaled through her nose for two beats.
“Hold it. Three. Four,” he whispered in a deliberate, measured pace.
The cool air in her lungs lifted her body momentarily, easing her heartache.
“Let it go. One. Two,” he instructed, and she exhaled slowly, counting in her head.
“Hold it. Three. Four.”
As she held the emptiness, her mind grew quiet. Silence replaced the continuous echo of Ben screaming for her to get down and the report of the blast that followed.
“How did you do that?” she asked in wonderment.
Derek winked at her. “I’m the magic man. Ready now?”
“Ready.”
But she wasn’t.
◆◆◆
Within an hour of arriving at the studio, powerless frustration filled her and she felt like throwing anything within reach against the wall. She stared in disgust at her hands. The left one was trembling uncontrollably and the right one was stiff and useless.
Derek put his guitar down on its stand and shoved his hands into his back pockets. As he leaned against the glass of the control room, she could feel him watching her and she looked to JJ for help. She’d known her bassist since he was a child and he smiled compassionately at her. His long dreads were tied high above his round, rich cocoa face, making him appear even younger than he was.
“Mr. Derek,” he said. “Maybe we should give Q a break. She hasn’t played for months. She’s just out of practice, is all.”
At twenty-three, JJ had played with more famous musicians than Derek, but he still respected his elders. It had taken Q years to get him to stop calling her ‘Ms. Q’ after he’d joined her band, QT and the Beasts, and she still hadn’t convinced him to stop calling her ‘ma’am.’
Derek didn’t respond for several minutes, continuing to keenly observe Q at the edge of her peripheral vision. He finally said, “JJ, go take a break. Tell Drake to take one, too. I want the studio clear for the next twenty minutes. Fi should be here any second now. Tell her to grab some lunch and hang out.”
JJ glanced at Q before doing as he’d been instructed. After he left, Derek folded his arms and said, “Play.”
“I can’t,” she said, lifting her trembling left hand for emphasis. “There’s nerve damage or something. It doesn’t work right.”
“What do the doctors say?”
She looked down in shame. “It’s psychological.”
“Ok,” he said. “What’s your excuse for your voice, then? You can barely hold pitch.”
She scowled at him in response.
“How much have you had to drink today?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” she exclaimed as her hangover bubbled up on command, making her temples throb.
“And yesterday?”
“Too much. Fuck. I had a bad day. Why are you doing this to me?” she said, her voice breaking.
Derek said, firmly, “Play the fucking piano, Q. You need to practice. Your voice sounds like shit. You’re wasting my time.”
“Fuck you,” she said, gazing up at the ceiling. Her eyes traced the swirls in the golden wood grain overhead. “This was your idea, not mine.”
He was still. The silence of the room pressed down like a weight. The soft, shimmering breath of a cymbal vibration was the only sound bold enough to disturb the quiet. The piano resonated in sympathy. Q stroked a key with her right thumb to soothe it as if it were a living creature.
Derek cleared his throat. “You sit here and practice. I’ll give you some space, but your voice, your playing… it’s not you, angel. I can’t help you if you can’t snatch that part of yourself back.”
“You play,” she said, continuing to stroke the cold ivory with the tips of her fingers. “I’ll listen.”
“I’m not here for me, Q. I’m not the one who can’t turn their shit down. That’s you, remember?”
She held her hands over the keys and her left hand shook harder. “I can’t do this, Derek.”
Sitting next to her on the bench, he took her hand in his, looking at her intently, his pale blue eyes focused on hers. “Yes, you can, angel. Give it to me. All of it.”
Q focused on his face and the coolness of his hand on hers as he whispered, “You can play, there’s nothing wrong with your hand. Give it to me, whatever it is that’s making your hand shake like this. Give it to me.”
Her arm tingled from her shoulder to her wrist while tears slid down her face. As she rested her fingers against Derek’s, her hand suddenly stopped shaking. She looked at it in awe. “How did you do that?”
“I told you,” he said. “I’m the magic man. Now play.”
Derek stood up and Q played a simple two-chord progression in the lower register of the piano, repeating it over and over as it steadied her breathing, washing a calming peace through her bloodstream.
Just two chords. I can handle two chords.
She added two more notes to the progression, one note an octave lower than the first. Tranquility filled her as her left hand stretched over the keys as it should, finally releasing the tension in her shoulder. She forced her right leg to bounce to the beat that was pounding in her mind, lifting her heel high and slamming it back to the floor of the studio. The beat pulsed through the residual soreness of the healing bullet wound on her thigh and she siphoned the pain up through her body and out through her fingers.
The sucking sound of the studio door opening reached through her reverie, but she ignored it, continuing to play, listening to JJ walk back to his bass rig. Strong hands grasped her shoulders as Fiona bent down from behind to kiss her on the cheek before leaving her alone with the notes she was playing. JJ’s bass growled to life, making her shiver. She kept her eyes focused on her fingers, trusting that she was safe to do whatever she wanted and what she wanted was to play two chords and two notes, one octave away from each other. So, that’s what she did.
Fiona let out an aboriginal yell from behind the drum kit and abruptly began playing a simple, steady rock beat, periodically cracking the snare like the attack of a machine gun.
Q glanced at Derek. He’d resumed his lean against the wall, his lips curved into a hint of a proud, affectionate smile. He reached over and picked up his guitar nearby. Making it feedback until the amp sounded like it might explode, he transformed the noise into the faintest hint of a melody. Q found the randomness of it all hypnotic. There was no forward movement, just the back and forth
between two chords, an endless jam going nowhere.
Breathe in. One. Two. Hold it. Three. Four. Let it go. One. Two. Hold it. Three. Four.
Her knee bounced to the beat and she leaned into the microphone, playing with a melody with her ill-used voice. Her throat burned as she began to sing one word over and over.
No.
They played for endless minutes until the song organically faded to a conclusion. When they finished, Derek walked to the microphone and spoke to his engineer in the control room. “Please tell me you were recording that.”
Drake pressed the talkback button and his voice filled the room from the speaker above the glass. “Of course, I was. I lost the first four bars of Q playing but we can fake that later if we want it.”
Q looked up at Derek, oddly comforted by the nearness of him and asked, “Now what?”
He winked at her. “Now you sing, angel.”
◆◆◆
Q paced the five steps from one wall to the other in the small vocal booth, the cord of her headphones a tether that pulled her back to the start. The music she’d just recorded played on a loop in her ears and she wrote lyrics on a piece of paper, periodically kneeling on the floor to write, then standing back up in agony as her shoulder, stomach, and thigh cried out in unison at the cramping the posture caused. She wrote the last two verses up against the wall, violently shaking the ink of her pen back to its tip when it refused to darken her words.
She finally read the page and looked out through the glass at her audience. Derek and Fiona were resting on the soft leather couch at the back of the control room. Derek’s head was in Fiona’s lap and he was scrolling through some social media feed on his phone. Fiona was sipping a glass of whiskey and talking to JJ, who had taken a seat on the floor, leaning against the wall. Drake’s chin rested heavily in his hand, propped up by his elbow leaning against the armrest of the mixing console in front of him. He yawned and caught her watching him. Sitting up, he pressed a button and his voice filled her ears.
“You need something, Q?” he asked.
She spoke into her microphone and said, “Um… I think I’m done. Can we maybe take a pass?”
Accustomed to Derek being in charge in the studio, she was hesitant to give orders. But Derek had insisted that this session was hers and hers alone. He was there for moral support and hot leads and nothing more.
“Take it from the top,” Drake said.
Her headphones went silent and she watched Drake turn to say something to the others with him in the control room. Derek stood up and took a seat in the chair next to Drake at the console.
Q put the sheet of paper in her hand on the music stand beside her and leaned against the wooden stool for support, moving her face into position in front of the microphone.
Her simple two-chord progression began to play and she cleared her throat to sing:
He walks in a cloudless day while the rain pours down
He keeps his eyes ahead of the pain all around
I would give my body, I would give my blood
All I have is all my love and a song for you.
He makes the world go away when he holds my gaze
He holds the wolves at bay but I still won’t stay
All my careful planning, my fortress underground
The battlements are crumbling now, collapsing down.
I would give my body, I would give my blood
All I have isn’t quite enough, it’s just a song for you.
The sky breaks open and the world falls to night
I’m running through the streets so desperate now
Just to see you one more time
The hunters all surround me
Demanding that I choose
But I would rather be alone than to be without you
I would give my body, I would give my blood
All I have is all my love
And this song for you.
The music faded and stopped. Q’s eyes searched the control room for Derek. Finding him absent, she cursed. The door to her right opened and he came in holding a mug. The smell of ginger filled the room.
“Drink this, angel,” he said. “Take ten. Then we’ll try again.”
“How bad was it?” she asked.
“The song or you?”
“Either. Both.”
“The song is perfect; your pitch is crap. Drink your tea. Remember how to breathe, will you? We’re not going home until you get this first one out of your system.”
Q took a sip of the hot ginger tea and set it on the stool to cool down. “You’re an asshole. I wasn’t that off key and you know it.”
Without warning, he put his hand on the side of her face and pulled her into a tight embrace. She held onto him and he whispered in her ear, “That a girl. You’re the motherfucking archangel. We’re going to get those wings back. You and me.”
A flood of emotion surged up and she held onto him harder. He kissed the top of her head and let her go, leaving the room.
She picked her headphones back up and put them on her head. Speaking into the mic, she said, “From the top.”
September: Anger
Q rested her elbows on her knees, studying the Doppler radar on the screen and trying to focus on what the overly enthusiastic meteorologist was saying about the spaghetti models. Her stomach rumbled.
I could go for pasta.
She stood up and went to the kitchen to cook some lunch. Ten days past the anniversary of Katrina and a Category 4 hurricane was barreling into the Gulf, putting the entire city of New Orleans on edge, but Q couldn’t get up enough emotion to care one way or the other. As she watched the water heat over the gas flame on the stove, she considered her options. Evacuation seemed like a waste of time. She remembered Ben cutting pieces of plywood to cover all the windows of the house at some point and wondered where he’d stashed them.
When he water began rolling over itself, she dumped a handful of angel hair pasta into it, watching it melt into the boiling liquid. Scooping it out into a bowl, she scrounged in the refrigerator until she found a small chunk of butter hidden under a moldy lump of cheese. Tossing the cheese in the trash, and the butter in her pasta, she doused her lunch with salt and returned to the living room to eat it.
Two bites in, the doorbell rang and she grunted in annoyance before standing up. She glared at the abstract painting over the mantel, it’s melting face grinning at her from the negative white space between the green and blue splotches of paint.
“Doesn’t anybody call first anymore?” she asked it. She widened her eyes for emphasis before muttering, “Oh, shut up.”
When it still didn’t respond, she went to the door to find Ben’s parents on her porch.
“Ben. Lila,” she said.
Big Ben glanced at his wife and said, “We do something to piss you off, darlin’?”
Q inwardly gasped at how much her father-in-law sounded like his son. She swallowed hard and replied, “No.”
Lila studied her face. “You haven’t been to Sunday dinner for almost a month.”
“I’ve been busy. Recording.”
“Can we come in, please?” she asked.
Q shrunk back and Ben’s parents followed her into the living room. She could feel Lila’s eyes scan the room and Q glanced around the familiar space through her mother-in-law’s vision at the dust and the discarded pile of Converse and jeans at the bottom of the stairs. She led them into the living room and picked her bowl of pasta back up from where she’d left it on the coffee table. Curling into one of the leather chairs, she resumed eating her lunch.
Big Ben and Lila sat down on the couch, holding each other’s hands. Lila stared at the crumpled pile of blankets and pillows on the floor near her feet. Q looked from one to the other and said, “I’m not evacuating if that’s why you’re here.”
“We know,” Big Ben said. “Your grandmother called us, in tears. She and Mavis are leaving tomorrow.”
“Yeah, she called me yesterday,”
Q said. “I told her she’s wasting her time, the storm’s losing power and heading West. It’s going to hit Texas, not us.”
Her mother-in-law continued to study the pile of discarded bed linens. Q could hear the inner workings of Lila’s maternal instincts kicking into high gear and she decided to shut down the lecture she’d already received from multiple sources before it began.