No audience this time. No wondering eyes or slack jaws slobbering disbelief into half-warm beer. No hungry, why-can’t-I-have-that eyes dragging at his in pain. Brandt drew his fingers tightly to the strings and set his pick in motion slowly, rolling into the melody. No sudden jarring sound. No catchy introductory interlude. He launched straight down the center lane, closing his eyes, leaning into the stone angel’s feet and letting the music flow.
He didn’t think of the pain. He didn’t think of those around them, though he could feel Synthia’s gaze shifting, the soft motion of her head as she watched the angels gather. Brandt played, and he focused. He concentrated on Shaver’s image, the cocky, too-quick grin and the sharp, questioning eyes. The bereft, tortured stare as Brandt had left him there on the stage, fingers white-knuckle gripping the neck of his Strat, oblivious to everything but the haunting-echo remnant of the music. The hunger . . . the raw need in Shaver’s countenance haunted Brandt, and he let that emotion play out through his own fingers, drew it from the strings and sent it shimmering through the cemetery, over the angels, or ghosts, or whatever the fuck they were, willing it to his friend.
Those who gathered glared at him emotionlessly. They were not staring at him this time, but through him. The pain was not lessening, but growing. Still he played, keeping his mind set and his teeth gritted.
“Not for you,” he managed, voice low and grating. “Not everything for you, you bastards,” but his fingers burned. His eyes teared and the beating of his heart ran counterpoints that battled the flow of notes, skewing the harmony.
The crowding forms huddled closer and Brandt fought off a sudden blast of nausea, recoiling from it but holding to the melody, the stolen memory he knew only from old Wally’s harp, from the song that had almost brought Shaver to him. He fought his way through the notes, as if sliding his fingers through heavy molasses, forcing his mind and body from the steady ebb of pain that surrounded him, flooding in and around and through his senses.
He felt the raindrops splashing off his face, his hands, felt the water warmer than it could be, steamy. The mist became steam, and still he played, unable to rid himself of that song, that single melodic chorus. Syn rocked gently on his shoulder and he used her strength shamelessly, fed off her, used her to press back against the crashing, battering waves of pain that were not his, but the world’s, pain he knew he’d have to play and play and play to dull even to a soft throb. Voices murmured in his ears, soft brushes of more than air and water teased at his flesh. The sound became cyclical, swirling, notes whirling and whirling into themselves, quickening and shortening, dragging him in.
A low growl rumbled in Brandt’s throat, and he forced his way through it all, forced the notes, one after the other, as thought faded.
Shaver shivered softly. Liz worked the warm water and soap over his flesh slowly, and he leaned against the bathroom wall, eyes closing and steaming, rippling water working down over his face, over tired muscles and stinging sharply as it wound down to his fingers. He ignored that pain, concentrating on the soap, her hands, and the sound . . . the music?
“What?”
“Shhhhh.” The curtain parted and suddenly, Liz was beneath the flow of the water with him, naked . . . smooth. The curtain slid back in place behind them and Shaver leaned more fully on the wall, head shaking gently back and forth, trying to concentrate. He heard the low wail of guitar, deep and resonant, shivering through the walls and aching down his spine. The warm water did nothing to raise the temperature of that wall, which felt more like cold, hard stone than tile, and very suddenly the steamy rinse of the shower chilled to the spatter of cold rain.
Liz’s hands never left him, traveling over his chest, down . . . sliding in and cupping him gently. Shaver wondered through the haze how the fuck he managed to be erect as his brain swept away with the cold wash, as he shivered and arched away from that stone-touch, into her hands. He stood upright in the tub and clapped his hands over his ears tightly, fighting the sound.
His fingers itched again, not with the heat, or the pain, but with need. Raw, pounding hunger to play and play and not stop until the strings met bare bone drove through him and he cried out sharply, shivering now, chilled inside and out, and the notes continued to drag at his senses, fighting to control his thoughts.
Then the voices began. Slowly, softly, they slipped between the notes, finding cracks and holes, filling them like a rushing tide and expanding, each building on the last and forming a dull, droning roar that hid the beauty and pain of the notes with maddening discordance. Each spoke clearly, concurrently, words blending to other words and back to form a litany of pain that broke through the notes cleanly, though they rippled back each time, gripping Shaver’s heart in a desperation both palpable and desperate, familiar and terrifying. The voices ebbed and the notes crashed, cold rain blended to steam and back and another sound leaked into Shaver’s mind, working counter to the rhythm, jarring his thoughts free.
“Shaver? Shaver!” Liz’s voice cut through the music and quieted the voices, gradually, her nails biting into his shoulders hard and shaking him roughly. “Damn you, stop it! You’re scaring me.”
Shaver shook his head dazedly, eyes focusing and skin warming suddenly, the water from the shower clear and very real, swirling over him, down between them and he leaned in close against her, feeling her soft breasts flatten to his chest, slickened with soap. He leaned in onto her shoulder and whispered harshly, “What’s happening to me?”
No words, tight press of her body and undeniable heat, so sudden Shaver’s knees nearly buckled as he wrapped her clumsily in his arms and held her, letting the hot, steamy water blend them, feeling her damp hair against his cheek, fingers pain-gripping her hips, ignoring it, letting other sensations claim him.
Her voice murmuring, “Thank God, don’t go, Shaver, don’t . . .” fading to the soft patter of the water, softer tracing of long nails over his back. No music, only the heady scent of moist heat, naked flesh, and floral soap.
Brandt felt the shift, felt the warming of the rain and reached out with the song, letting the notes cascade through the steam, reaching for Shaver’s heart. He knew he was getting through, could sense the joining, the sync that had always clicked just before the music was perfect. It was hard, harder than anything he’d ever done. He knew the notes, knew what to play and how to make them do as he bid them, and yet it was difficult to concentrate. Each time one of the angels drew nearer, eyes wide and hungry, gazing at and through him, a shiver of notes rippled through him. Each time a vision invaded his mind, drawing him from the graveyard, and the shower, and the song, into some ancient, undeniable pain, it was a struggle to be free of it, to play his own choice and not theirs, to play Shaver’s pain and ignore what gripped his heart.
Mercifully, Wally remained gone, doing whatever it was he did, leaving Brandt to fight his own battle. The rain warmed again, like a shower. He felt the tingling touch of another’s hands, felt someone, not Syn, though he knew she leaned in tight to his side, but another, sliding sharp nails and seeking hands hungrily, his clothing melting in wet heat.
The voices swelled around him, the angels, each note drawing them closer, each defiant scrape of pick on string shimmering through them and agitating, blending the images, weaving the pain into a single blanket of misery that draped over and around Brandt, pressing him down.
“No,” he whispered. He pressed his fingers tightly to the strings, and he screamed. Blistering, searing heat, pain like he’d never known rippled through his hands; only the death-grip rictus of cramped, ruined hands kept the guitar from spilling free.
He heard Syn’s voice, felt her wrap herself tightly around him and draw him back. The angels hit them both like an icy wave, washing through, no physical touch but a psychic burn of outrage and frustration. Brandt knew in that instant that it was Shaver’s fingers that could not play, Shaver’s pain that drove Brandt’s teeth through his lip and arched his body in such perfect agony. Brandt tried to regain
the melody, to force his hands to move, to play. Nothing. He bowed double in pain, the guitar trapped as his mind gave a little snap to the wild side.
Brandt closed his eyes tightly, but it did nothing to ease the flow of images cascading through him. He tried to play them, to capture the music and set it free, but he couldn’t shake that single moment of Shaver’s pain. The strings lay pinned and mute, and the pain rolled about in his mind and gut, wrenching with cold talons at his sanity.
There was a rush of air, something/someone gripping his hair tightly and dragging him back, out of the huddled heap. His head whipped up too fast, too fucking fast, and there was a soft smack, wide “O” of lips as his skull struck the tombstone. The world shook again, but the images burst into fragments. Brandt turned his eyes down dumbly, staring. He felt the strings, the guitar, the cold rain that soaked his pants and shoes and beaded on the polished surface of his instrument.
He felt Shaver’s pain acutely, deep within the achingly chilled fingers of both hands, but the pain that throbbed there now was his own. Calluses worn away, joints too cold and swollen to stiffness. Inside his head the pounding throb of pain he should have let go, of notes that rang from the rafters of his mind and shook his soul. There was nothing left of the warmth of moments before, only the dull echo of pain and the memory of failure, pounding to the rhythm of his pulse as it shivered through the growing knot on the back of his head.
Gradually his thoughts cleared. The pain receded, then focused. He shivered and found he couldn’t stop, the cold rain and the shock of what he’d been through gripping him in paralytic rigor. Syn had her arms around him, and her voice droned in his ear. No words at first, sound, familiar sound, harsh and grating. Brandt shook his head and uncurled a bit from the guitar, aware suddenly that he was clutching it too tightly, that he could damage it. He stared at the rainwater dripping down the neck of the instrument and gasped, trying to rise and falling back with a lurch that smacked his head against the stone again.
“Fuck!” he gasped.
“Damn it Brandt, listen to me!”
The words focused through the haze and he leaned back into the stone. He felt Syn’s hands gripping his shoulder tightly, shaking him, sending waves of nausea pounding through him. He held up a hand, wanting to tell her to stop, but unable to form the words, needing to be still, very still for just a second, just time to get his bearings and . . .
No way. His stomach rolled and the bile slipped up hot and acidic. He leaned to the side, away from Syn, away from the guitar, thrusting it feebly from the path of spraying filth. He hadn’t eaten a good meal in days, but several gallons of coffee and half a cherry-filled donut spewed over the wet ground, washing down his leg, into the pooling rain and the oozing mud. He felt his insides clench, cold empty vacuum, and then gasped in air . . . holding back the second wave and drawing his knees up to trap the guitar against his chest. Tears rolled freely down his cheeks, but they were invisible, lost, futile in the wash of rain.
Syn’s voice had softened. “Don’t you fucking leave me again, you bastard,” she whispered, drawing him to her more slowly. “Don’t you even fucking think about it.”
Brandt leaned into her shoulder, sighing. “We have to go,” he managed, tasting the bile again and nearly retching all over. “Have to get out of the rain. Cold, so cold. My guitar . . .” He stared down at the instrument in horror. What had he been thinking?
Syn was up as soon as the words left Brandt’s lips, tugging his sleeve, steadying him as he clumsily found his own feet and leaned on her shoulder heavily. He had no idea where they were headed as she started off through the mud-spattered grave-markers. His concentration was sapped by the effort not to gag, and the secondary effort of keeping his guitar from banging off of anything solid. He was vaguely aware that Syn carried his case. She was thinking. It was good one of them was.
They made their way slowly beneath the arched, wrought-iron gates of the cemetery and onto the street. The rain had slowed to a cold drizzle that clung and chilled, coating them with ice and soaking their clothing. Syn lived several blocks away. Brandt hadn’t had a place to stay in a week. He hated to depend on her, clinging to her all the same, feeling her strength through the tight grip of her fingers and the bite of her nails. He was shaking, weak and drained, cold and the beginnings of a cough itching at the back of his throat.
“Dumb bastard,” he heard her say. “Dumb fucking bastard, why couldn’t you listen to the old guy? Why the hell couldn’t you just play?”
“Shaver,” he said. “I had to try.”
Shaking her head violently, Syn dragged him to her shoulder and quickened her pace. Brandt leaned on her, watching the rainbow-haloed streetlights and shivering. He strained his senses, but there was no sound. No voices . . . no music in the background. His fingers felt like so much raw meat, though the pain was not his own, and his throat constricted slowly from the raspy ache of the cold.
He glanced behind them a final time . . . eyes downcast.
“I had to try,” he whispered.
Synthia led him to a darkened set of stairs and the two disappeared quietly from sight.
Five
The door to the bathroom opened, steam and warm air washing into the room, drawing Dexter’s eyes up from where he’d been constructing his thousand and twelfth pyramid of the crystal glasses. Soft clink of closure and coconut shift, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t arrangement and he was leaning back, as if he’d been that way all along, an expression of amusement painted across a sea of concern.
Shaver caught his friend’s gaze, held it for a second, and then nodded. “You heard,” he said.
Dexter turned away, reaching for the bottle, tugging free the cork almost desperately. He poured slowly, filling each glass to the rim, fighting the shaking in his hands. He slid one glass to his left, another to his right, and left the third planted firmly before him. No words. Shaver watched and waited, wrapped only in the warm towel.
Liz had taken his clothes. She’d threatened not to give them back without a wash, or a fumigation, or both. The hot scent of her filled his mind; cool air on wet skin tingled through his senses. Even his fingers, wrinkled from too much moisture, ached less obtrusively. Shaver eyed the glasses, shrugged, turned to kiss Liz on the cheek, and moved to the couch.
“He was calling to you,” Dexter said, not looking up, fingers curling around his glass thoughtfully. “He wanted it more than anything I’ve heard him want, put it all in the song—your song. Never heard Brandt play fucking Hank Williams the right way before.”
Silence folded over them for a long moment and Dexter lifted his glass, draining it in a quick toss and setting it thoughtfully back on the table, reaching for the bottle without hesitation and refilling.
Turning quickly, almost spilling his drink, Dexter fixed Shaver with a hard stare. “He wanted us all back together, man. What happened? He was calling us home.”
Shaver reached for his own glass, suddenly self-conscious as the towel tried to unwrap itself. He felt Dexter staring at him, knew the stare had nothing to do with wet hair or shifting towels, felt that stare bite deep and concentrated, drawing the moonshine up and gulping it, quick grimace of distaste before the fire rose.
“Home? Where home is isn’t for him to say,” Shaver answered at last. “I’m not a child, Dex, and neither are you. Fuck, you act like it’s all a done deal, walk off into a graveyard with a couple of lunatics and the world shifts to normal. I’m not ready for that. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready for that. That mess is Brandt’s world, let him live in it. Not long ago he was a drunken guitar player who could barely drag himself to the gigs, now he’s the messiah?”
Silence reigned for a long, tense moment, then Shaver continued. “You want to help me find the song, man, let’s just do it. We don’t need Brandt, ghosts, Synthia, or anyone else. If the song is mine, or yours, then who else do we need to find it? This isn’t Brandt’s fucking world.”
Just then, Liz popped back into
the room, tossing a pair of men’s jeans, big men’s jeans, and a black t-shirt at Shaver’s head. He watched them fly, nearly raising his hand with the drink to block the sudden assault, then remembering at the last second and taking them full in his face. Shaver slowly lowered his glass, cool drops of whiskey sprinkled over his wrist, and gripped the shirt first, turning it to read the inscription emblazoned across the front.
“Jazz is Life.” He eyed it for a long moment, shifted it so that Dex could see, and turned to Liz, eyebrow raised.
She shrugged, eyes twinkling. “You aren’t the only man who’s been here, and Sid’s isn’t the only place I socialize. Take it or leave it.”
Shaver laughed then, grabbing the jeans. “36/34? Big boy, that one,” he called out, grinning. “What the hell am I supposed to do with these, make a tent?”
“They’ll keep you warm until I sanitize yours,” Liz giggled, slipping around to sit close at Shaver’s side. She slid her hand over his still bare chest, fingers teasing soft hairs, and leaned in to whisper. “Easier to get in.”
Dexter frowned. Shaver watched his friend staring into the tiny swirling eye of his glass, as though answers would shimmer to life on that glittering surface. Liz’s entrance had shifted the moment subtly. For just an instant, the room changed; hard, cold rain splashed Shaver’s face/matted his hair to his throat and he shivered, clutched by cold, sharp notes, ringing from scattered gravestones and echoing into the depths of his mind.
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