Deep Blue

by David Niall Wilson

  Just as he reached the door, Shaver caught him. The boy’s hand gripped his shoulder a bit too tightly, and Brandt turned to meet those intense eyes.

  Without waiting for any questions he would not be able to answer coherently, Brandt spoke. “Be careful, Shaver, be very careful. They can get mighty deep. Soul-deep. You want to be careful you don’t drown.”

  And then he was walking, the moon watching over his progress. Deep in his heart the music washed and eddied, swelling with each soft wave. He heard their voices, their music, and he hummed along softly. It ached, but he could wait, for the moment. Soon, though, he thought, stopping in an alley and tipping back the Johnny Walker, soon he would have to play.

  In the shadows, the soft voice of a harmonica chased the discarded Tarot image down the gutter, dancing the white-faced harlequin in the clutch of a cold breeze.

  Two

  Synthia didn’t talk to angels, but she saw them. She never mentioned them. She didn’t watch them directly, only out of the corner of her eye, and only because they were always there. It wasn’t like she had a choice. They haunted the periphery of her vision, watched her world from the shadows, but they never watched her. Synthia saw the angels, but they didn’t know she was alive.

  When Syn had been ten, she’d tried to tell her mother. She’d sat down at the kitchen table and asked to share the oddly-scented herb tea that filled her mother’s afternoons. She could still recall the heat of the cup as she wrapped her small hands around it, and the way the mint and herbs had sifted up through the mist to tickle her nose.

  She’d felt very grown up that day, as if a page in her life had turned, or a cycle had shifted to the next ring. Her mother had had very deep, brown eyes, and long hair teasing down over her shoulders. Syn remembered the way the morning sunlight had filtered through the blinds, striping the refrigerator like a surreal, oblong zebra. She remembered her mother’s odd little smile, the one that caused the shift. The one that made them friends, in that moment, and not mother and daughter. Deceptions were realities on all levels. That smile had drawn her in, and Syn had spoken her heart.

  She had told her mother then, about the old woman on the landing of the stairs, white hair wisping about her face and eyes wide in pain, or fear. She told her mother about the two boys who mirrored her steps as she walked to school, books clutched tightly to her chest and eyes to the ground so that they would not catch her attention. She told her mother about the girl in the shower at school, the one who was there, always, naked and cringing in the corner, and the shadowy, half-seen figure who hovered over her. She even told her mother, for the first time, why it was that when they went to visit Grandmother’s grave, Syn had clutched so tightly to her leg.

  Throughout that dialogue, Syn’s mother had not said a word. She’d nodded, sipped her tea, and listened. Silence is golden. Right. The liquid that had slid into the syringe had been golden. The doctor’s eyes had been a deep, golden brown. Her mother’s smile had been as sweet as golden honey. Nothing. Syn’s mother had believed nothing. She’d called a doctor, and Syn had told her story again. The drugs had followed. One drug, another, and another still, in quick succession, each chemical attack trying to drive out the demons. Trying to drive out something that was just there, not illusion but frightening reality, made more frightening as the drugs robbed Synthia’s control. There was no way to make them understand; only silence had helped. The silence had stopped the drugs, but by then two years had passed. Cynthia had passed to Synthia irrevocably, awakening as a junior in high school with barely passing marks and no friends with a future. Through it all the angels had watched the world in silence, and she had watched them in turn, never speaking.

  Now they were multiplying. No matter where Syn turned, she saw them. When she closed her eyes, she felt them. When she slept, she dreamed dreams populated with their shadowy forms and empty eyes. She didn’t even know why she called them angels. They looked more like ghosts, but that wasn’t a place she felt comfortable. Angels would never hurt her . . . ghosts might not care. Ghosts might have laughed when Momma and the doctor brought the drugs. The angels had paid no more attention to the drugs than anything else.

  Since the night Brandt had left the band, the ghosts had slowly overrun her reality. She knew it was foolish to dwell in the past. She hadn’t spent enough time with Brandt when he was with them. She had teased him, promised him, but she’d never let him get close. Now he was gone, and that music—that last night. How could she reconcile herself to the reality that was the band and the memory that was Brandt and feel anything but loss and regret? How could she live her life walking through a mist of angels? Brandt had noticed her. Without that notice, the weight of his eyes and the soft sound of his voice, the nothingness of the angels’ presence weighed on her like a shroud.

  Syn rose, pulling the sheets up around her, automatically shielding herself from the prying eyes of those who didn’t even watch. She blinked and shook her head to clear the cobwebs. She needed to hurry and shower. Shaver would call soon. He called her like clockwork, every afternoon at four. It gave her a minimum amount of minutes to shower, paint herself to perfection, and gather her wits. It gave her a chance to push aside the visions and focus on herself, and her life. Angels didn’t pay the bills, and though the band wasn’t breaking any records, since Brandt’s drunken ass had carried itself so dramatically down the road, they had been doing well enough to get by. They might even break out of the bar circuit and cut a CD soon. If Syn could keep it together. If Shaver didn’t lose his heart. If the new guy, the pseudo-Brandt they’d hired, Calvin, with his long, long hair and his long, long eyes, and his constant sniffing; no way to ignore the chemical base of that subconscious habit. Calvin could play. Calvin could sing. Calvin was barely aware that he could do either. He was helping the band in ways that Brandt never could have, but . . . he was no Brandt.

  Synthia felt Brandt’s loss in ways she’d not been willing to admit possible. He had always just been . . . there. Now there was the band, and her life, and the angels. Nothing else. Nothing that touched her on a deeper level than a mild sunburn. Not that Brandt had ever seemed so important. Synthia had spent more time cursing him than talking to him, and though she’d felt very comfortable in his presence, she’d not spent as much time there as she might have. No reason to. No reason to believe the opportunity would not present itself in its own time.

  Now he had marched off down the road, right through the gathered ranks of angels who had actually watched him go, not ignoring him, as they did Synthia, as they had always ignored her. Brandt had left her to watch his receding back, looking somehow more appealing in the tight, faded jeans than she’d remembered him. And he’d left the memory of the music. Brandt had always been good. He’d always been just able to pull it off, no matter how drunk or out of it he might have been.

  The music had meant more then, though it had taken the vacuum of Calvin and the “new” sound to drive that reality home. Even through the thick white makeup, dead-clown pretty-boy attitude, and sneering lips that sugar-coated a frustrated heart, Syn had sensed Brandt’s talent. Each time Syn had been ready to kick his ass out on the street and demand he be replaced by someone who would at least show up for practice, he’d pulled something out of his ass and tugged at her heart strings with it.

  Synthia remembered the night she’d convinced him to take her out, to the carnival. That night Syn had nearly told him about the angels. Then the old witch lady had turned over that card, and Brandt had flipped out. The moment, and the courage to speak, had slipped away.

  Everything had been so right that night. Syn had felt so close to him, so special to be with him, though she’d have never said so. None of the others ever seemed to get it, but Brandt did. During his rare lucid moments, he was the only voice she trusted to answer her in the same language she asked a question. That night might have been the beginning of something special, but she’d seen that damned tent, and the past had intruded once more. There had been a sin
gle old angel, kneeling by the door in prayer, or sorrow. Brandt, of course, had seen nothing. The old angel’s hands had scratched what seemed at first to be random lines in the dirt. The random lines had formed a word.

  “Remember.”

  Synthia had read the word, turned from the angel, and her vision, and the only straight path had led through the doorway of the tent, toward the cards and destiny. Synthia’s words, the whispered confidence she’d meant to share with Brandt, had slipped a notch back down her throat, and the night had done the rest. Stolen moments were often taken back. Rules of the road in the game of Life. Brandt had staggered out of the tent, drunk, tripping, and he’d fallen. Syn had followed, but the chemicals had robbed her of her strength, her ability to help him. She had tried, God she had tried, but the act of trying had pumped her blood more swiftly and the drugs more powerfully, and they had nearly both ended up lying together in the dirt, staring at the huge Ferris wheel instead of just Brandt. At what? She’d never asked him what he’d seen.

  They never watched her. They never saw her. She saw the angels, but they ignored her. That was her pain. Her mother had seen her, but never really seen anything. Her father hadn’t seen her at all. Boys, men, all had seen her body, her heat. None had seen beyond it. She had her own silent chorus of angels, mocking/accompanying her dirge-like song of life.

  That was why Syn played the bass. The deep, droning tones. The vibration straight through to her soul and back again. Even the angels wavered when she played. When the deep intonations of rhythm and resonant power rippled through the air, it took on a deeper acuity. The angels did not listen to her bass, but they felt it. The universe was one giant chord, one universal vibration. Syn longed to find her niche in that unity. Her heart was a rebel . . . fighting her desire. Her playing was dissonant, deep, wild and passionate, but it seldom blended. Instead it forced the blend to her . . . forced her to become the eye of the storm, and every eye to seek her form. The only time she could forget that the angels ignored her was when no one else did.

  She’d never asked Brandt why he staggered out of that tent, or what he’d seen, stumbling into the midway. She had stared into his eyes as he stared up at the Ferris wheel, far above them, and she’d seen . . . something, reflected in his eyes. She couldn’t remember what, or who.

  The phone’s ring ripped through the silence. Syn gripped the blanket around herself more tightly, willing the world to silence. Failing.

  She rose, the blanket trailing away behind her, gripping the phone’s receiver tightly and drawing it to her ear, concentrating.

  “Yeah?”

  “Rise and shine, Princess.” Shaver’s voice was edged with caffeine and fueled by that bright, inner fire that set him apart from every other being on the planet. Lead notes rippled through the tones of his voice if you knew him. The taut, corded muscles of his arms spoke of an inner fury, a driving need that only the guitar could sate, and then, apparently, poorly. Shaver had been, if possible, even more intense since Brandt’s revelation and departure. His leads were faster. His eyes wider and more incomplete in the perfection of his motion. A technical marvel with etched tears tattooed on cheeks of granite . . . muscles drawn so tight they could turn bullets aside. The angels didn’t watch Shaver either.

  “I’m up,” she said. “I’ll be there.”

  “Coffee is on me,” he said, and then the click/buzz/tone of the phone and silence again. Somehow it was less perfect, less intimate.

  Syn let the blanket fall away with a sigh and rose, moving to the bathroom, the shower, hot, soap-scented mist and the grit of the past swirling away, sliding over the lip of the drain and into oblivion. The clock ticked. Rhythm of reality. She needed to get in and out of that steamy heaven and down the road to the coffee, Shaver, and the club. If things worked out, this could be their last night at Sid’s. The “right” people would be in the audience tonight.

  Calvin had managed it, somehow. Calvin and his drugs, his mediocre, good-enough-for-record-company-work guitar, his scratchy, cigarette-ravaged voice. His “Rod Stewart stars in the Day of the Living Dead” perfect look. Calvin had the package that sold. They should change the band’s name to Pretty and Empty. The angels wouldn’t care. The angels didn’t even listen, no matter how hard Syn played, or cried, screamed, or lied. They stared into the nothingness of eternity and Syn was left to watch them as they watched. Alone.

  Quick paint job at the mirror, pointedly ignoring the figure in the corner, a stooped old man staring out the window as if he’d been watching the city grow for a hundred years. Syn worked the mascara and blush carefully, practiced flicks of her wrist painting the hard, brittle edges of her eyes, first defense against the crowd. First defense against Calvin. If they didn’t get the recording contract, she would have to do something with or about Calvin. The latter made her nauseous, and the former scared her like nothing in her life had scared her before.

  The record execs had been around before. She’d seen them tossing back expensive drinks and slumping in corner booths, watching and smiling like they cared. They didn’t listen any more than the angels, most of the time. Maybe recording contracts had nothing to do with what they heard. It didn’t matter. Somehow Syn knew that if they didn’t listen tonight, she was gone. No plan, nowhere to go, but she was out. Shaver would be fine. Caffeine and high E would get him a ticket anywhere he wanted to go. Calvin? Fuck Calvin. He would probably be signing copies of his tenth gold record within a couple of years, with or without Synthia. With or without Shaver. With or without a meaningful thought or moment in his long, tired existence. As he signed, the ghosts would stand around, oblivious. Synthia needed to hear them sing.

  Brandt had done it. Fucking Brandt with his drunken-ass lyrics and his so-natural-the-fucking-alcohol-couldn’t-blunt-it talent. His sad, out-of-date clown-face paint and words no one else had understood, but that everybody had loved. His beautiful guitar and tenement apartment. His voice, clear and transcendent when it didn’t slur and spout the wrong words in long litanies that meant as much to the crowd as the real words—nothing at all. Brandt and that magic night he’d left, when the angels had played, and sung, and danced. The crowd and the band had watched Brandt. Syn had watched the angels, and on that single night, they had watched back, not just her, but Brandt, and the band . . . the crowd. They had spoken, and joined the song, making it something more than just Brandt’s song. Brandt had flowed through the notes, but Synthia had felt them in her heart, and those of the others who heard. Brandt had played, and the world had gone still.

  But Brandt was gone. Syn shook her head. Coffee. Club. Music. Those were the only things that could bring even temporary solace. If she closed her eyes, let her fingers draw the rhythmic, pulsing notes from the bass and her voice join with Calvin’s, it formed a barrier. The angels didn’t listen, but at least they seemed remote, part of the audience and the energy. They were less depressing as backdrop to the sound.

  The coffee did less than Syn had hoped to raise her energy level. As she sipped the Americano, a tall iced-tea glass of black coffee with a shot of espresso, she’d been preoccupied by the young girl at the window. The girl’s back was to the world outside, her gaze locked to the back of the bar. Not exactly a bar now but a bar in the past. Syn knew this as truth, though she had no way of knowing how she knew. She also knew that the angel . . . the girl . . . knew it. The world the girl watched was different. In that world, Syn did not exist. It hurt. Alone in the crowd and singing to nobody, that was Syn’s story.

  The coffee had burned her tongue, and it rolled around inside her, the caffeine waking her body, but the empty ache of no food and too much sleep fogging her mind. She couldn’t get Brandt, or his angels, out of her mind. She drank the bitter liquid down quickly, hit the street, and headed for the club.

  Sid’s wasn’t too busy for a Friday night. There was a small crowd of regulars gathered near the bar and the pool table, but nothing to write home about. Synthia moved past them all, oblivious to the stares and
soft catcalls. She was used to it. If she could stand the empty gazes of the myriad angels populating the vacant tables and leaning against the dingy walls, a few Goth-Punks and losers weren’t likely to cause much stress. No sign of the record company, but no surprise there. Too early for anything serious. If they showed, it would likely be somewhere mid-third set, when the band was catching their stride, or stumbling to fall on their faces. Either way, it eliminated the gray areas.

  Syn slipped through to the back, closed the dressing room door behind her, and leaned back against it to catch her breath. Something was different, something in the air, the taste of the evening on her dry lips. For once she was alone. None of the others was in the back room, and there were no angels. Syn turned to the mirror, watching herself watch herself and thinking.

  When she exited the room, turning toward the stage in silence, her face was white. Ghost white. She’d found an old tube of Brandt’s makeup. None of the black he’d used to darken his eyes and accent his lips, only the white, blanking out all that was unique, all that made her stand out from the crowd. She came to the stage as a blank page and lifted the strap of her bass over her shoulders with a quick shrug.

  Brandt had always told her that the bass was the backdrop, the canvas across which the music was painted. If she faltered, the image was skewed. If she lost the rhythm, the lines would waver and the notes fall to discord. Shaver would shift off into a discordant shiver of steel-strung notes with no stable support. Face white, ready for the music, she became that canvas. Shaver stared at her for a long moment, his brow furrowed in concentration, then nodded and turned away, tuning. Always tuning, a nervous habit, fingers molded to the keys. Calvin’s jaw dropped. He started to speak, started to make a bigger fool of himself than life had managed, then clamped down on his tongue.

  What crowd there was grew silent. There was no one there who’d not heard the band before. There was no man in that bar that had not, in some way, come to share a moment with Synthia. To steal a fantasy from the supple curves of her body, the taut strength of her wrists and forearms as she played. The deep, purr-growl of her voice when the words were hers and the higher-pitched backdrops she laid for Calvin’s throaty, grinding vocals. The white-empty face changed everything. Synthia’s arms cradled the bass, but her face was . . . blank. No one knew how to react, so no one did. The angels didn’t even notice.