“What?” he said sharply.
At first nothing. Silence.
“If this is a wrong number I’ll hunt you down and kill you like a dog,” Shaver said, his voice regaining its rocking tone, the patterns of his thoughts shifting and merging into a coherent pattern.
Soft laughter and a quick snort, then words. Dexter. His words even and rhythmic. “Hey, man, how you feeling?”
“I was fine until you made me pick up this fucking phone,” Shaver answered, unable to keep his voice as cold and distant as he wanted it and nearly laughing at himself for trying. “Fuck! My fingers hurt, Dex. They hurt bad.”
“I told you to see a doctor, Shaver, your bad call,” Dexter replied. Shaver could see the soft humor in his friend’s eyes. No need to be there to know. Dexter always smiled when he spoke, especially when he was right and saying, “I told you so.”
“Fuck you,” Shaver said, smiling outright.
“I’m coming over,” Dexter announced. “Be there in ten minutes.”
Dial tone. No time for no, don’t you do it, leave me alone, my fucking hand hurts. Just that. Coming over, ten minutes.
Shaver dropped the receiver into its cradle and turned, staring at his bed, and the wall, and smelling the half-burned coffee from the kitchen. He couldn’t drink it, couldn’t stand the thought of more energy, faster inner motion trapped without a release valve. He stared at his hands, at the wrinkled, pasty-white flesh he’d dangled so long—too long—in the lukewarm water and chemical bandage.
Shaver kicked a pile of clothing on the floor, dislodged a t-shirt, and grabbed it. Didn’t matter that it had been worn once . . . twice . . . who knew. Didn’t matter that it was one more interesting scent in the olfactory aura that was his new world. It was a shirt.
He slipped it over his head, grimacing at the necessary gripping and tugging. As it slid into place, he glanced down. It was a black t-shirt, emblazoned with a brilliant white caffeine molecule. He laughed suddenly and moved to the kitchen, yanking the cord of the old, chrome-plated percolator from the outlet and turning back to search for shoes and a pair of socks he could bear to touch. Fucking Dexter.
The knock on the door found Shaver dressed and waiting. No way he was letting anyone in to see how his world was crumbling. Life was hell with no hands. Housework was out of the question. He pulled the handle and grimaced, fighting the urge to curse loudly, and forced a smile as Dexter’s grinning face came into view.
“Hurt, didn’t it?” Dex asked with a grin.
Shaver fought the urge to repeat his suggestion of monosexuality. “Not at all,” he said, smiling. “Very refreshing after the normality of a sense of touch that didn’t fucking scream at me every time I used it.”
Dexter laughed, holding the door wide. “Fine, I’ll close it, if you don’t mind. I don’t care if it hurts, but I don’t deal well with close, soulful moments between men.”
Shaver didn’t say a word, just slipped past Dexter’s slight form and into the hall beyond. The door closed with a decisive click! Swell. Lost in the world with no hands but Dexter’s, Dexter who thought it was funny.
“So,” Shaver said quickly, probably too quickly, “where are we going?”
“Coffee,” Dexter said. No inflection, no emotion. Just that one word.
“No,” Shaver replied. “No coffee. I can’t.” He was silent for a long moment, and then the emotion broke. “Dex, I can’t fucking play, man, I can’t do it. No coffee.”
Dexter watched him carefully. “I have a bottle of straight Tennessee corn whiskey, if you think that would help more. Might take the edge off, make those fingers comfortably numb. Either way, you have to come with me. I’ve been saving it. Meant to call you right after Brandt freaked out. Meant to call you after Synthia. Somehow, the bottle just sat there. Fucking Mason jar, Shaver, just like in the movies.”
Shaver could barely keep from puking as it was, and the thought of the alcohol, the thought of sipping, then guzzling, his fingers tight and painful on the bottle, brought a quick shake of his head. “Not tonight, Dexter. No whiskey, no coffee.” His resolve was slipping, but his voice remained calm.
“Trust me,” Dexter replied. “You’re going to need it.”
They slipped down the stairs and out to the street with no further words. Shaver intoned an inner chant to his own recalcitrant mind. “No coffee.” He knew he’d drink it if it were placed before him, and knew equally well that Dexter would do so without a thought. The patterns still shifted before his eyes, sidewalk cracks and road-lines, but as long as he moved, it didn’t seem quite as nauseating.
Dexter didn’t have a car. Shaver had a battered old Mustang, but he couldn’t drive with no hands, and he let no one but himself touch the old Ford. They walked quickly, in step, down the street toward the Bean & Buzz. Dex was silent, habitually so, but this time it bugged the shit out of Shaver. Drag him into the world, order him toward coffee he couldn’t handle, then just walk off down the street like nothing was different from any other day.
Shaver hurried his steps. He came even with Dexter, grabbed the drummer’s shoulder, winced, drew his hand back, and stepped up even more quickly. “What the fuck, Dex?” Shaver spoke sharply, suddenly angry. “What happened? You hear from Calvin? Synthia called? I’ve been in that house for a long time, man, sitting—watching the patterns on the walls run into guitar leads I can’t play and emptying into the carpet. Alone. Nothing from you for a fucking week, man. Why now?”
Dexter kept walking, hands pressed tight and deep into his pockets. They moved on another block, and another, before he broke the silence.
“I found the song, Shaver,” he said softly.
Shaver stopped in his tracks and just watched as Dex moved off down the sidewalk. His eyes narrowed. He didn’t follow Dexter down the sidewalk. He didn’t move at all, just stood, and watched, and waited.
Dexter moved half a block farther before he turned and looked back. He did not smile. “You coming?”
Shaver hesitated. His mind screamed at him to turn and leave. His room, another hot Alka-Seltzer soak, and his bed until oblivion claimed him for another day, and another, until his fingertips could feel again and his hands could grip the neck of his guitar. Shaver watched Dexter’s face and frowned hard, brushing his fingers back through his hair in a nervous gesture that made him gasp in pain.
“Jesus, Dex.” he said. “You find the fucking song now?”
Dexter didn’t say a word. He turned and headed off down the street again, leaving Shaver to follow, or not. His steps were even and measured. Everything about Dexter was rhythm, syncopated animation with a subtle back-beat of unkempt, street-wise cool. Dex could carry that down-and-out prophet look that evaded others so easily, making them look like bums, or poseurs.
Shaver cursed, tried to stick his hands into his pockets, failed, and growled his frustration. He followed in silence, his feet subconsciously moving in subtly varied patterns, as if even in the act of walking he could play lead to Dexter’s rhythm. As if his feet could make up for ruined hands and allow some warped release to the notes reverberating through his skull. He entered the Bean & Buzz on Dexter’s heels.
“Hey!” Soft, feminine voice with a southern lilt floating from the left as a sudden wave of warm flesh and sweet perfume wrapped Shaver almost tight enough to remove the stench of days without a shower.
“Hey yourself, Liz,” Shaver grunted, fighting to keep her tightening embrace from finding his hands and bringing an unmanly yelp of pain. “Long time.”
She pulled back, feather-light blonde hair dancing around her face and her eyes bright. “Not because I have been hiding, lover. What’s up with you, anyway? I haven’t seen you since . . .”
“Not now,” Shaver answered, reaching to hold a finger to her lips . . . hesitating as his hand came into sight, wrinkled from the soak and raw from the cuts. He tried to draw it back but she was too quick for him, slender fingers capturing his wrist neatly and turning it, inspecting.
> The flash in her eyes moved from warmth to anger in seconds, mercurial and lovely. “You stupid bastard. Don’t you care about anything?”
Before Shaver could answer, she was turning to Dexter. “Don’t just stand there,” she said sharply. “Didn’t you see his hands? Go tell Maggie you need the first aid kit.”
“I told him to go to a doctor.” Dexter smiled thinly, obviously annoyed at the interruption. “Can’t help it if he’s dense as granite, now, can I?”
For the first time Shaver got a look at Dexter in the light and he gasped. His friend was gaunt and pale. The rock-star image had melted into the drummer’s skin and drained away the color. Somehow, it seemed less significant that Shaver’s hands hurt, and he’d been alone for a week. Patterns shifted in the omnipresent cloud of billowing tobacco and clove smoke that slid up from the ashtrays lining the bar. The colored lights that lined the mirrored panels just below the ceiling shimmered through that white haze and Shaver took half a step forward, stumbling. If Liz hadn’t had him by the arm, he’d have pitched headlong.
Dexter didn’t move, and as Shaver regained his balance, something sounded in his mind, deep inside, where the colors faded and the patterns shifted to symmetrical perfection, sliding in spirals down and down. Into Dexter’s eyes. The patterns shifted again, marring the perfection he’d glimpsed, and it was too much. The soft lilting strains of a song Shaver could remember clearly, and yet could not quite bring to the surface of his mind, dragged at him, holding his lips pressed tightly together, denying sound, denying him the output of any of it, drawing him inward instead, down the spiral. His hands/face meeting the floor never even registered.
The soft plastic of the booth was cool against his cheek and Shaver could hear voices close by, music in the background, the jukebox and Eve 6 competing with snatches of—something—that he couldn’t quite shake from his mind, cobwebs of memory and something more. He tried to sit up, first mistake in a slow reintroduction to pain. Nausea swept through him, and he turned his face to the side, but did not lose what he had not eaten, only gasped and clenched his lips/eyes tightly.
“Easy, Shaver.” Liz’s voice, calm, reassuring, and worried. Why was she so worried? It occurred to Shaver to mention to her that she’d not called or come by either. Then the rest of the pain reminded him where he was, and what had happened. His head throbbed in time to the beat as the band reached the break, the softly chanted words sifting through the speakers and his thoughts.
I am the one you don’t know you need, ‘til you can’t feed your ego. . . .
He righted himself in a slow, lurching motion. As his hands met the booth, he flinched, but was surprised to find the pain much less than anticipated. Shaver stared dumbly at his bandaged fingers, each neatly bound in gauze and tape, the tell-tale seep of iodine reminding him of the dried blood, nearly sending him to darkness again in a vertiginous rush of déjà vu.
“Fuck,” he said softly. “What happened? I feel like I was clubbed in the head with a brick.”
“Not exactly.” Dexter’s voice from across the table. “You clubbed yourself with the floor. Not the most graceful act I’ve ever seen, but it got you to hold still long enough for Liz to take care of your hands.”
A sudden shift of air ushered three steaming mugs of coffee onto the table and Shaver groaned out loud. He waved feebly, but his hands were gently brushed aside, and the strong, pungent caffeine and steam magic wound their way up his nostrils and through his senses. Shaver cursed softly and sat back.
Dexter met his friend’s gaze for just a second, and then stared down at his hands, and his own coffee, fingers drumming nervously. “You heard it.” Not a question: a statement, blunt and matter-of-fact profound.
Shaver made no move or sound of acknowledgment. The truth floated in the air between them. Dexter knew. Liz knew, though she had no idea what they were talking about. Fuck, he couldn’t even get the echoes to stop reverberating around in his head long enough to wonder how Dexter knew.
The silence thickened, and Shaver frowned. He curled his bandaged fingers around the coffee mug and lifted it slowly, already flinching from images of steaming liquid splashing off his lap. He had no confidence in the gauze-bound fingers, fingers that served him as no other part of his body, bringing the sounds and patterns together, now barely able to lift the cup and bring it to his lips. His eyes brimmed with sudden tears and he cursed softly as he realized he couldn’t even hold the cup in one hand and use the other to brush them away. He felt Liz’s fingers brush his cheek and the hot flush of shame at his helplessness.
Dexter still hadn’t looked up, hadn’t seen the tear, or the shame, and suddenly Shaver was angry. More angry than he could ever remember being. He slapped the coffee onto the table, feeling the hot sting as the dark liquid splashed over the back of his hand.
“Why Dex?” he asked, voice low and dangerous. “Why now? “
Dexter’s head tilted back with a lightning quick motion, eyes wide, staring—empty. “It isn’t my song, Shaver. I can hear it. Fuck, I might be able to play it bro, and my song might be there too, hiding in the background, but this one is you. What else could I do?”
Shaver stared. His heart was hammering, kicked into gear by the coffee.
“You know what I mean,” Dexter continued. “That first night, when Brandt went off on that guitar like the Devil was working the strings. That wasn’t my song, or yours. It wasn’t even Brandt’s, not at first. It grew into him slowly, and by the time he walked out that door there wasn’t a lick of pain left in that boy that wasn’t bared to the universe. Same with Syn. I wanted to ask her what she saw. I wanted to know who she reached for, kneeling on that stage, but the song . . . it wouldn’t let me. Wouldn’t let me do a thing but see things I was never meant to see, and I can still hear it. That never stops now. You hear it too.”
Dex was silent again for a long moment, gaze dropping to his coffee once more. “You listen close, Shaver. That song is you.”
“Excuse me,” Liz cut in, breaking the sudden silence. “What the hell are you two talking about? What song?”
Shaver let out the breath he hadn’t meant to hold and sank back against the booth. The anger melted away in a sudden flood of memory. He closed his eyes, trying to dredge up an answer that would make sense. Nothing came, so he opted for the beginning . . . fuck, where else would he start?
“Me and Dex,” Shaver said, “have always had a theory. There are songs: good songs, bad songs, in between. More songs every day, and still they come. Each is different, even if only a little bit. Each is important. Like people. It works on a series of levels.
“One level, you got your pop rock, elevator music, mindless crap that sounds nice but gives you nothing. Lots of other levels. Sometimes it is so good . . . so fucking close. You were there.” Shaver turned to Liz. “You were there when Brandt played. You heard it, just like we did.”
Liz’s eyes clouded. Her expression grew vague, and she nodded slowly. “I heard . . . something. It was good, damned good. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it, but . . .” She grew silent, and Shaver watched her, waiting.
“She heard it on a different level too, bro,” Dexter cut in. “I’ve talked to at least a dozen others who were there, both nights. Everyone heard something. Everyone was blown away. No one gets it. First night they were feeling closer to God. Second night, it was . . . weird. Third night, now? They think it was one ‘kick-ass-fucking-concert’ and ‘it’s too bad that fucking Brandt guy weirded out, man, you guys were going places.’”
“What are you talking about?” Shaver growled, anger bubbling up again. “‘Kick-ass-fucking-concert?’ That? My gut hurt for a week after hearing that. And the . . . dreams. We talked about the fucking dreams, Dex. Who were those people?”
“I don’t know, bro,” Dexter answered. “All I know is, I heard what I heard, you heard what I heard, others heard what they heard. Not the same, and for them it fades. Some deal, huh? They get the experience, the pai
n, the music, and then they get their lives back.”
Liz pushed back from the table suddenly. “You saying I can’t hear what you hear?” she asked, angry. “You think you’re fucking special for beating those damned drums senseless every night?”
“It isn’t like that,” Shaver said softly. He thought for a moment, sliding his arms clumsily around her shoulders, drawing her against his side and flinching as his fingers pressed to her shoulder. “You know how it is when you draw?”
Liz softened perceptibly when he mentioned the art. The murals that covered the walls inside and out at the Bean & Buzz were hers. She hadn’t heard the music, but somehow Shaver knew he’d found a way to explain it to her.
“You ever wonder why you can give the same blank page and pencil to me, Dexter, and half the bar, draw a picture, and none of them can see it the way you do? None of them gets it. They might make something that looked vaguely like what you saw and drew. They might even have an image of their own with some power behind it. They can’t draw what you draw. Most people can see things fine and can’t draw them at all. It’s like that with the music.”
“But lots of people can draw,” Liz said.
“Not like you, Liz,” Dexter threw in. “Not like you. You ever see something in your head and fight to get it out on paper, or a wall, and fail, and curse and try again, and again, and even though it is great, and everyone loves it, you can’t get what you want . . . until it hurts deep inside, eating at your thoughts and stealing your dreams?”
Liz started, eyes shifting to Dexter’s. She nodded, unable to speak.
“You are trying to draw the song,” Shaver said. “That’s what we’re talking about. The one song behind it all. The one perfect pattern that blends each piece perfectly. Everything has a pattern.”
“And no one can pin it down, no matter how clearly they hear it, or see it,” Dexter added. “That was the theory, anyway. Brandt fucked that up, then Syn. You’d think it would make me feel better, knowing perfection exists, that it can be attained, but it doesn’t.”
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