Hard Rock Improv

by Ava Lore

  I blinked. “I thought you didn’t want me here when you said that,” I blurted.

  He blinked, clearly surprised. “What? No! This shit is boring as hell, I just wanted to give you an out if you didn’t want to tag along.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling stupid. “I thought when you said it would be the thrill of my life that it was going to be really awesome or something.” I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but it had definitely been something more exciting than what I’d ended up with.

  “I was being sarcastic,” Manny said as he turned and began walking down the beach in the opposite direction of the trailers. “But don’t worry, no one else likes this either. We should get free booze to be here.”

  I hurried to keep up with him, my sandaled feet sinking into the soft sand and giving my calves a workout. “You don’t get free booze?” I asked.

  He grinned. “Nope. Which is why we are headed for the nearest place that sells booze.”

  “And where’s that?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” he said and extended his hand toward me.

  I caught my breath, wondering what it meant that he was inviting me to hold his hand. Had he forgiven me for implicitly rejecting him last night? Was he giving me a chance to go back on my decision?

  Manny wasn’t part of the Plan, but my palm itched to take his hand anyway.

  My fingers twitched just as he let his hand fall to his side. The smile on his face was plastic. “Not into holding hands?” he asked. His voice sounded light, but underneath it, if I strained, I could hear a note of tension.

  I shook my head. “No, I am,” I told him.

  “Then just not into holding hands with me?”

  I sucked my breath in. “No!” I said. “I want to!”

  He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Could have fooled me.”

  “I’m sorry!” I said. “I’m just...I have issues, okay?”

  “You and the rest of the world.”

  I scowled at him. “Yeah? So? It takes me a while to reach a decision, okay?”

  Now his plastic smile cracked into a smile tinged with genuine humor. “It takes you thirty seconds to decide whether or not you want to hold someone’s hand?”

  I sniffed. “I doubt it was that long,” I said, “and yes, it does. And I was going to, but you dropped your hand before I could grab it.” I crossed my arms and stuck my nose in the air.

  Manny chuckled. “Rosalita,” he said, “please hold my hand. And tell me if you find me attractive or not so that I can either stop pining for you or start seducing you in earnest.”

  My lip found its way between my teeth and I bit down hard. Reaching out, I took his hand in mine and squeezed it, feeling the rough palm against my soft one. “I...” I said, trailing off.

  Slowly Manny turned toward me, his other hand coming up to cradle my face in his palm, and my brain turned to mush. “You have problems taking a leap of faith, do you?” he said.

  I swallowed. “I may or may not have been burned before.”

  His genuine smile softened, grew sad. “Me, too,” he said. “We can go slow. But only if you say yes. I don’t want to ruin what could be a nice friendship if you don’t want me.”

  Our eyes met, and for a moment I swam in those pools of molten gold. I wanted to fall into him more than anything in the world.

  “I want you,” I said.

  “Good,” he told me. His hand fell away from my face and he turned again, leading me back up the beach and toward the road.

  * * *

  We were far closer to a town that I had thought. Only half a mile up the beach and inland and we were in a town called Hanalei. In the bright noon sunshine it seemed to glitter like a jewel. Houses and little shops colored brilliantly in pinks and blues and sea greens and purples and all the colors that no one would ever want to see in Oklahoma.

  No matter what Manny said, growing up in Hawaii was probably better than growing up in Oklahoma. Not that I didn’t like Oklahoma and its stark prairie charm, but at least in Hawaii you could go to the beach. In Oklahoma your best bet was cow-tipping, which actually didn’t work, so really all you did was think up a really funny story about tipping a cow over while it slept to tell city people who didn’t know cows laid down to sleep.

  Which is to say I loved Hanalei the moment I laid eyes on it, and for a sudden, strange moment I wondered what it would be like to stay here after the band went back to LA. There probably weren’t any jobs, but I had heard that sometimes cities shipped their homeless to Hawaii to get rid of them since it was pretty much impossible to die of a cold snap in the tropics.

  I could stay here, I thought. I could stay here and work at a snow cone stand or be a waitress or wash dishes. I could sleep on the beach. I’d never have to sit in an office ever again...

  We reached a main shopping area, quaint and adorable. “Oh, balls,” Manny said and dropped my hand.

  I frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  He threw his arms in the air, which would have been startling if it hadn’t looked so funny. “I forgot my wallet back at the beach house!” he said. “I’m a freaking idiot.”

  “No you’re not,” I said. “You were probably planning on just eating what they served, right?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t really plan on anything,” he said and grinned at me. “Not like you, who has to plan out her hand-holding.”

  I rolled my eyes. “If I had a mind to go looking for booze,” I said, “I would have definitely brought my wallet. But I didn’t think about that, and I don’t have any money either. I guess we’ll have to go back to the beach.”

  “No way,” Manny said. “I said I wanted a drink and something to eat, and that’s what we’re going to get.” He strode off toward the shops.

  “How are you going to do that?” I asked, hurrying to catch up with him. There were people all over the place, so I severely doubted that we could manage to snatch and run with a case of beer before someone caught us.

  He tossed a smile behind him. “Ever heard of busking, Rosalita?”

  “Um,” I said. “It sounds like something you’d do to someone of the opposite sex after signing a waiver.”

  He laughed. “Maybe, maybe,” he said, “but usually it’s just street performance. We’re going to busk, get some tips, grab some beer, and then head back to the set with a nice buzz. Good?”

  I nodded, then frowned. “Wait,” I said. “We?”

  “You know how to dance?”

  “Haha!” I said. “No.”

  “Lies,” he told me. “Anyone can dance.” He gave me a wink. “Especially when you hear my music.” He tipped his head and studied me. “You could pass for a local if you let your hair down,” he said after a moment’s reflection.

  I touched the tight bun of dark hair I’d wound on top of my head. “Let it down? I don’t think my skin is dark enough, though.”

  “So?” he said. “Lots of tourists here. They see what they want to see. Take your hair down while I find a drum.” And he made a beeline for the shops again.

  How are you going to get a drum if you don’t have any money? I wanted to ask him, but then I realized that the shops were not his primary goal—the spaces behind the shops were where we were headed. Frowning I followed him, my fingers tugging at the elastic band holding my hair in place, freeing it to fall down around my shoulders and down my back in soft dark waves.

  I looked at my skin. It wasn’t dark, but it was pretty tanned. I’d been spending a lot of time outside after all, so I was significantly darker than I’d ever been in my life. Maybe Manny was right—I might have been able to pass as half-native if I could get the stick out of my ass. The only native island dance I knew of was the hula and I certainly did not feel comfortable shaking my hips. A tight knot of dread began to grow in my stomach.

  We reached one of the Dumpsters behind the shops and, to my shock, Manny jumped right in the first one.

  “Manny!” I said. “I don’t know about this...”

&nbs
p; “Know about what?” he asked, popping up from the Dumpster and looking down at me.

  “This busking thing,” I said. “I’m not...I’m not really cut out for performing. I’m not a rock star or anything like that. I’m a lawyer.”

  “Pfft!” he said and ducked back into the Dumpster. “Lawyers perform all the time, right?”

  I thought about it. “Yeah, I suppose,” I said, “but that’s more like...like animals performing mating dances or something. Lawyers like to see who has the biggest, reddest baboon ass. It’s nothing like making music, it’s just puffing up your tail feathers.”

  “And showing your ass?” Manny asked. “If you did that I bet we’d get a ton of tips.”

  “That was not a suggestion!”

  “But it wasn’t a bad idea!” He popped up, grinning and holding two cardboard boxes in his hands. “Okay, got some drums.”

  I felt my brow wrinkle. “Corrugated cardboard drums?”

  “If you can find a bucket, that would be cool too,” he said, “but I doubt we’ll be that lucky. Make it do or do without, Rosalita.”

  I found I had nothing to say to that, so I began to poke through the rubbish around the Dumpsters. I found a bag full of adult diapers, fifteen paper bags of empty beer bottles, and three hypodermic needles. All good. All good.

  “I got nothin’,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, you can’t control what people throw away.” Manny shrugged and vaulted over the side of the Dumpster. “Are you ready?”

  “No,” I told him.

  He grinned. “Good enough for me!” he said, and led me around the alleyway to the front of the shopping center.

  I watched as he went from bench to bench, scoping them out for properties I could only guess at, but when he finally found one and settled down I breathed a sigh of relief. I pulled out my phone and checked it, feeling my muscles clench up at the sight of the time on the home screen.

  “You know we have to be back at the set in thirty minutes,” I said. “Right? You know that, right?”

  “Totally,” Manny said. “Hey, can I see that?”

  “This?” I asked, holding out my phone.

  “Yeah,” he said. I let him take it from my hand and watched as he shoved it in his pocket and then continued arranging his busking set-up. I stared, wondering when he was going to use it.

  Then it dawned on me.

  “Hey!” I said.

  Manny grinned, arranging one of the cardboard boxes between his knees. “What?” he said.

  “Give me back my phone!”

  “You don’t need it,” he told me. “You’re on island time now.”

  I almost hated to ask. “And what does island time mean?”

  “Late,” he said, and pulled his drumsticks from his back pocket.

  I looked around as he began to rub the head of one of the drumsticks across the corrugated cardboard, making a zip-zip-zipping sound. There were people everywhere, wandering and looking half-drunk from the sun, thought I was willing to bet the other half of their drunkenness came from alcohol or weed. Not that it mattered—wasn’t that why people came to the tropics? To relax? Not that I knew what that felt like, of course, but surely someone somewhere knew how to relax. Right?

  “This is gonna be sweet,” Manny said. “You ready to dance?” Desperately I cast my eyes about, looking for a place to hide, but we were right on the street corner leading into the parking lot—the perfect place for a street performance, and also the perfect place to embarrass the shit out of me.

  “I don’t think so,” I said honestly.

  “Well,” he said, “get ready.” And then he began to play the drums.

  The world changed.

  ...That was the thing, really. Manny really did play drums like no one else in the world. No one else I’d ever seen, anyway.

  I’d seen drummers. In Oklahoma and Texas the big thing is football, and with football comes the marching band, and there were plenty of drummers in the band. They loved to keep time, rat-a-tat-tatting with their drumsticks or their fingers whenever they had a chance to touch a solid surface. But Manny was nothing like that.

  I watched, entranced, as he fell into each drumbeat, his whole body limp and thoughtless, revealing no driving rhythm, no relentless beat. Everything about him was easy, slow, flowing.

  And yet the beat he kept was uncompromised. Steady, then syncopated, then steady again. I watched, my eyes growing wider, as his whole body seemed to become boneless and graceful as he fell into each note, each downbeat, each touch of his sticks against the cardboard box between his knees, the cardboard box on the ground, the wood of the bench he sat upon, the metal of the trash can he had situated himself next to—everything about him suggested a carelessness, as though he didn’t even care if his beats hit, although they did, unerringly, relentlessly.

  I swallowed and looked around again, forcing myself to tear my eyes from Manny, and I saw people stop where they had been walking, their gaze turning toward us. Manny hadn’t even set out a hat or anything to invite tips, and all of a sudden I realized that it wouldn’t take much to get what he wanted.

  Leaning down I peeled off my sandals and placed them next to Manny, criss-crossed so people would know they had been deliberately arranged, ready for change or bills or anything at all that people wanted to give us.

  And yet, in truth, Manny’s performance was so astounding, so astonishing, that the people who had stopped to listen—no matter how far away they were—seemed rooted to the spot. There was no way we were going to get any money if everyone had been paralyzed by Manny’s talent.

  I inched toward him. His eyes were closed, his body swaying like a snake charmed by its own music. “Manny!” I hissed.

  His golden eyes opened in small slits and he glanced at me. “Yes?” he said, and his voice was dreamy and far away, from some other time and place.

  “What should I do?” I asked him.

  A tiny smile graced his lips. “Dance,” he said.

  My whole body stiffened. “I can’t dance for all these people!” I almost squealed, but Manny’s smile just grew wider.

  “Not for them,” he said. “For me. Show me what you want to do to me with your body. Show me how much you want me.”

  And with those words his golden gaze swept up and down my body, leaving fire in its wake, and the rest of the world melted away.

  Yes, I thought. I want to show you what I want you to do to me. I want you to know how much I want you.

  How much do I want you?

  More than anything in the world.

  As though on strings, my arms rose above my head, limp and yet graceful, and slowly I let my hips begin to thrust.

  Forward. Backward. Forward. Backward.

  Manny’s golden eyes watched my hips, and I knew, bone deep, that he was imagining my body wrapped around his, my hot inner core holding him tight. He swayed on his seat, and a flush thundered over my whole body, drawing me closer to him. I put one foot forward and began to circle my hips.

  When you are inside me, I thought, I will work your cock like no one has ever worked it before.

  When you are inside me, I thought, I will wring so much pleasure from you that you will forget anyone else ever existed.

  When you are inside me, I thought, I will swallow you whole and you will never, ever be able to break away.

  My hips circled. Thrusted. My arms hung in the air, as though suspended by marionette strings, but the rest of me undulated, swayed, rippled to Manny’s rhythm.

  If he was inside me, I thought, his rhythm would be the same, and with that thought came a pulse between my thighs, a strange, shuddering swell in that dark, secret space. The beat of Manny’s cardboard drums—oddly resonant and clear as a bell—thundered through me, and my heart sped up to match it.

  I closed my eyes, my body swaying. I heard, far away, at the edge of my consciousness, people murmuring, amazed and intrigued, and there was the clink of coin in my sandals as I thrust and sw
ayed, fucking Manny in my mind, unable to escape from his relentless rhythm. Yes, I thought. Yes, yes, yes...

  And between my legs his beat thundered, pulsing, striving, pushing me up and up and up, toward that glorious golden height, the one he had found that night in the parking lot, the one I wanted to give to him again, that beautiful place where the body and the mind melted into one, until there was nothing but pleasure and joy...

  And then the cops showed up.

  Chapter Eight

  I hardly had any warning. My only inkling that I was about to get in trouble for the second time in my life was Manny suddenly saying, “Cheese it, it’s the pigs!” And then he was up and running, leaving his cardboard boxes behind.

  Not having grown up in a place where the cops were the automatic bad guys, it took me a moment to realize what was happening. I looked around stupidly, my pulse still hammering in the soft spaces of my body, begging to be touched, to be held and caressed and licked and fucked. But there were men coming toward me, chubby men in blue uniforms. Cops.

  Then one of the cops making their way toward us, seeing that their quarry had spotted them, yelled, “Hey! Hey, you guys got a permit?”

  Oh, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck! I thought. Looking down I saw my sandals—with a few dollars sitting forlornly in the toes—then leaned down, scooped them up, and took off after Manny.

  “Ow,” I muttered under my breath. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow ow ow ow owowowowowowowowowOWOWOWOWOW—”

  Asphalt? Not that much fun to run across. Luckily, Manny had a plan. Or at least, I hoped he had a plan.

  His plan, it seemed, was to run as far away from the cops as possible, and given what I knew about cops—being from LA and all—I had to admit that this was not a bad plan in the slightest. I just had to avoid getting caught. Somehow.

  I picked up my pace, as much as my aching feet would allow, and followed Manny as he cut across the two-lane highway running past town.

  There were cars. Of course there were cars. Normally I would have stopped and waited until there were no cars, no cars at all, until I couldn’t even hear cars, but there was shouting behind me and I knew without a doubt that I had to get the fuck out of there, fast, and if that meant ascending to a higher plane of existence via the shedding of my mortal body, well, I’d done stupider things.