There was too much at stake this time, and the boy on the bed behind him was the one in need. The boy, and the girl.
Wally played, and he rocked, and the walls reflected the gray half-light of the morning over and around a host of eerie shadows. The mist rising from the rain-damp streets, no longer a shapeless mass of cloud, teemed with half-seen forms and shivered with intent. They slipped from alleys, stepped from doorways in ghost-buildings that drifted over the real-world facade of the present. The skyline lowered slowly, and the cluttered jumble that was San Valencez crumbled to reveal another city, another San Valencez, or the blend of many. The sounds of automobiles passing faded slowly, then died. In the distance, a dog howled, low and mournful. The sound wailed in counterpoint to the notes of Wally’s harmonica.
Wally opened his eyes at last. He didn’t quit playing, but now he watched. His eyes misted again, and he blinked back the tears. This was his city now. Again. This was the San Valencez that had given him life and music, love and so much more. As he stopped playing, at last, the image shivered and failed, remaining only as half-seen flashes against the harsh, solid backdrop of time.
Wally rose, slipped the harmonica into his hip pocket, and turned to glance over to where Brandt and Synthia lay, huddled tightly together, sharing warmth.
“Gave you a day, maybe, boy,” Wally muttered. “Can still play their pain. Can still make ‘em quiet now and again, but not like I used to. Pretty soon, I’ll be like them, fading in and out, looking for the one who can set things right and give me rest. You be there for me, blues-boy. You be there when ol’ Wally needs another drink.”
Wally spun slowly away and moved to the door. As he went, he faded. Not like he walked through the wall, more like the wall faded, changed, and didn’t exist by the time his long strides brought him to and through it.
On the bed, Synthia murmured softly, raised her head, and blinked. She couldn’t quite bring the room into focus, but something was wrong. The walls were different, the apartment larger. Someone was opening and closing the door, and yet, it wasn’t her door, but one several rooms down the hall toward the stairs. She raised herself on one arm, unable to extricate herself from Brandt’s grip.
“Wait,” she called out, struggling to sit. “Wait, I . . .”
The door closed behind whoever it was with a decisive click. The world skewed violently, and Synthia leaned over the side of the bed dizzily, nearly vomiting from the vertigo. Brandt stirred, trying to draw her closer and she batted at him futilely, managing to roll free and slip off the side of the mattress, dropping painfully to the floor on her hip.
“Shit,” she mumbled, rolling to her knees and dropping her head to her hands. Syn heard Brandt sitting up behind her, mumbling sleepily. She wished he’d wait. She couldn’t make sense of his words, and the images she’d woken to played through her mind over and over, daring her to open her eyes.
Brandt had swung his legs off the side of the mattress. She felt him close behind her, and she reached back, her palm pressing to his leg, pushing him away, and yet . . . maintaining that contact.
“Wait,” she whispered. “Please.”
For once in the history of their time together, Brandt listened to her. He grew quiet, and as he did so, the world refocused. Syn remembered the bonfire with a sudden lurch of nausea, nearly losing herself in that image, then drawing back. She could feel the smooth, polished wood of the bass where her fingers had caressed the neck, the cold, stabbing ice that had been the strings, shivering and vibrating at her touch. His eyes, that dark stranger, and the deep rumble of his voice. The music.
Syn opened her eyes with a snap. Her skin was coated in cold, clammy sweat despite the chill in the air. The walls were normal. The door was closed. Brandt stared at her with an expression that hovered between concern and bewilderment.
Syn ignored him, sweeping her gaze around the room. Nothing. Not a bit of anything out of place.
“What’s wrong?” Brandt asked at last. “What are you looking for?”
“Someone was here,” she answered softly. “Someone was here, just leaving as I woke. Didn’t you hear it?”
Brandt shook his head. “It would have taken a tank breaking through the wall for me to hear it,” he said, rubbing his eyes. Rising, he headed for the kitchen. “You got coffee in here?”
Synthia didn’t answer. She had slipped to her feet and moved to the wall, running her fingernails gently over the surface and staring intently. Nothing. It was just a wall. No ghosts, no angels . . . nothing.
She turned away, moving to the window. It was still misty outside, but the sun was fighting its way valiantly through the low clouds. Syn stopped. They were everywhere. Hundreds, thousands of them. They stood, lined up in ranks, their necks craned toward her window, eyes closed. Silent. They weren’t watching her. They were watching the window.
Behind them, the city wavered. One moment Syn saw the familiar, comfortable surroundings of her apartment, her world; the next she saw other places, more spread out, shorter. She watched as horse-drawn buggies rolled slowly down streets of cobbled stone and dirt, shifted her gaze to find men in austere, black clothing slipping out the doors of dusty saloons. Then it was morning, and the taxicabs honked incessantly at traffic unable to move regardless of the noise, and it was too much. Syn crumpled, falling by sheer luck against the arm of the chair where Brandt, and then Wally, had serenaded the street not long before. She collapsed across it, out before she struck. The sound brought Brandt on the run.
Too late to break her fall, Brandt gathered Synthia up into his arms and carried her quickly to the bed, laying her back softly. Her features were pale, death-white and lifeless. He stroked her cheek with his finger, watching to see if she would stir. Nothing.
Leaving Synthia sprawled across the bed, Brandt moved back to the window. He glanced outside again. There was nothing to see but the damp, gray streets. Traffic moved slowly. The rain was gone, and the sun shone through the spotty cloud cover in bright beams. They shone like spotlights, illuminating small patches of the waking city. Brandt stood and watched for a long time. Something had changed. He felt a release of pressure, as if some burden had lifted, but nothing looked different. He glanced at the guitar case, then back out the window.
The pain wasn’t gone, just diminished. Muted. With each passing moment, he felt the infinitesimal expansion of that pain, the synchronization of additional voices complicating the rhythm.
Behind him, Syn stirred and he turned. She had rolled to her back and was moaning, her arm drawing up to flop across her brow and her eyes still closed. Beautiful.
Brandt stepped closer, sitting on the edge of the bed at her side.
“What happened?” she asked, her eyes fluttering open.
“Was hoping you’d tell me,” Brandt answered. “I was in the kitchen trying to scare up some coffee.”
“I . . .” Syn laid back on the pillow with a soft thump. “I was standing there,” pointing, “by the window. I was watching the street, but . . .”
“What?”
“I’ve never seen so many. They were gathered below us, staring at the window. They weren’t watching me, but they saw something. And the street was different. Old. There were no cars, and not so many buildings. There was dust. Horses. Brandt,” she turned to him, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm, “there were wagons with horses.”
Brandt watched her eyes. Not bloodshot. Not dilated. “I just saw the street,” he said slowly. “Like always, sun breaking through the clouds.”
Syn sat up, catching the way he was examining her to see if she were stoned. “I saw what I fucking saw, Brandt. You think I passed out because of a beam of sunshine?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Brandt answered, turning and rising in a single, fluid motion and walking back to the window. “After last night I’d believe that you saw a regiment of dwarves marching down the block, but I don’t want to believe it. I don’t want . . . this.”
Brandt swept his arm
in an arc that encompassed window, and city, and his guitar case.
“I always wanted to play. I wanted to make people smile. I wanted the whole fucking rock-star-with-an-attitude fling. I wanted a few years of crazy and a lifetime of building toward that point when everyone would say I sold out and I’d know I was growing up.” He turned slowly back toward Syn, who was sitting on the edge of the bed now, watching and waiting.
“I wanted you.” He said this last very softly, his features losing their edge. “Always wanted you, but figured I wasn’t getting anywhere, why drag you nowhere with me? Why even try? Now I’ve dragged you into this.”
Syn rose shakily, stepping up close beside Brandt as he turned to the window once more. “You didn’t bring the angels, Brandt, they were always there. You helped me start to see them as more, as a truth instead of a private insanity. You helped them see me for the first time. I don’t know where this will end, but you stayed last night when things got bad. You saw through the darkness and dragged me out of it. You stood up for things you didn’t even understand. You might never have had the fame, but for what it’s worth, you’ve got me.”
She kissed his cheek softly and leaned in close.
“I just hope someone we didn’t count on doesn’t have us both,” he answered, turning to slide his arm around her shoulder. Syn shivered and snuggled close, and they both stood watching as the sun burst through the clouds at last . . . sliding slowly across the day and glistening off the last of the rain and mist.
Shaver clutched the newspaper clipping tightly as the three of them marched side by side down the street. It was an unfamiliar neighborhood, dark and unfriendly. The buildings were squat and dark, set back from the street and draped in shadow.
“This can’t be the place,” Dexter said nervously. His hands pattered against the soft denim of his jeans, slapping counterpoint to their every step, making timing work where there was none, matching Liz’s shorter strides to Shaver’s impatient ones with practiced ease. Blending. Setting a framework, even for their footsteps. Patterns.
Neon letters, some lit, most not, spelled “12 Bar” in crusted pink. The doorway was dark, darker than the streets with their elongated shadows and dim, too-late-for-sunlight, too-early-for-moonlight illumination. Deep inside that darkened pit, light flickered. As the three of them stopped, staring, the sounds of soft laughter and clinking glass emerged.
“This is the place all right.”
Just then, as if to punctuate Shaver’s words, a single harsh chord rippled from the shadows. There was power in that sound, reverberating through empty alleys and out into the damp night air. Shaver felt a shiver lodge deep in his heart.
“Yeah,“ he breathed. “This is the place.”
He stepped forward into the shadows, and there was nothing for Liz and Dexter to do but to follow. The darkness swallowed them, drawing them into the dimly lit interior hungrily.
There were dozens of low-slung tables, anchored to the floor, some with more than their fair share of damage. Half a dozen of the rough surfaces held drinks, half-empty, glistening with condensation. Dark shapes and darker shadows, dim lights that barely cut the fog of cigarette smoke. In the vague, smoky interior of the club, nothing was more than a vague shadow of reality. Except the music.
Shaver slipped up to the first unattended table and slid into a seat, eyes glued to the stage. Liz melted in behind him, drawing her chair up closer so that her breasts pressed against his back and her arms circled him protectively. Dexter took a seat opposite the two of them. He watched the stage, a half-hopeful, half-distrustful expression warring on his thin features.
The lights were dimmed on the stage, but shadowed figures moved about slowly. The old, dusty speakers hummed, ground-wire loose somewhere deep inside equipment no one cared enough to repair. It was impossible to make out the features of any of the band members. The guitarist had long, waving hair. He might have been black, but again, impossible to tell. The bassist was tall, so tall he looked surreal and out of place, hovering over the others like a giant insect, his instrument hugged tightly to his chest.
Nothing could be seen of the drummer. Every now and then drumsticks fluttered, dim light glittered, and a ripple of rhythm sifted through the smoke-clouded air. No sign of a vocalist. No sign of a waitress, either, for the longest time. Then, lazily, a woman wound her way through the empty chairs and swirling cigarette smoke. She was nearly beside Dexter before they could make out her features.
Tall, thin, so thin she seemed about to melt back into the smoke, the waitress stood on spindly legs, accented by a skirt no longer than the width of Shaver’s hand, fingers pressed tightly together and wobbling atop spiked, five-inch heels. Her hair was teased back carelessly, blonde and streaked with the colors of several different attempts at individuality blended to total anonymity. Her makeup was too heavy, her eyes too vague. She clutched her order pad loosely, an afterthought in a thoughtless appearance.
“Drinks?” she asked. Her voice was lifeless, whispered over double-rouged lips and nearly too soft to hear.
Shaver watched her, shifting his mind and attention from the stage with an effort. Dexter leaned forward, slapping a ten-dollar bill on the table.
“Beer,” Dex said. “Three of them, cold.” As the girl moved away, he whispered, “In clean glasses, if you have any.”
The girl turned back and popped gum she had been chewing so listlessly it took them by surprise. Liz clung to Shaver’s arm, and Dexter sat up suddenly.
“What kind?” she asked, her expression never changing.
“Cold,” Dex answered. “Just cold.”
The waitress watched Dex for a few moments longer, deciding if he was kidding, and finally turned, making her way back through the smoke and gloom toward the bar.
“Miss Personality,” Liz said softly.
“Hey,” Shaver laughed, “if you worked a dive like this, you might not be too cheery either.”
Liz didn’t answer. She just leaned closer, and Shaver shifted his gaze back to the stage. The harsh tones of instruments and amps being warmed up, tuned, and adjusted echoed from the shadows. It was crazy, in a place this seedy, to anticipate as he did, but something in the air, and the sound, called to him. He was aching for the music to start. His fingertips itched and throbbed.
“Why are we here again?” Dexter asked. His fingers drummed nervously on the tabletop, shaking the surface lightly and reverberating through the club.
“Because I heard they were good,” Shaver said, “and that they were breaking up. We can’t just go for anyone if we rebuild the band.”
Dexter didn’t answer. His own thoughts on “rebuilding the band” had been spoken and spoken again, argued and ignored. Shaver was set in his course, and with Brandt and Synthia lost to the world, the choice was Shaver, or alone. Dexter wasn’t going to make it alone. He’d end up counting cracks on the sidewalks from one city to the next, or counting the bubbles in an endless parade of beers until his mind and body rejected him.
The shriek of feedback screeched from the stages as someone stepped too close to the microphone too quickly, amplified instrument in hand. All their eyes shifted and suddenly a single, dim spot was shining on the stage. The man who stood there was tall and slender, his hand wrapped tightly around the mic, cord double-wrapped around his wrist. No way to see his eyes, but his smile managed to glitter in the dim light, as did his hair, white—shimmering and long, falling over his shoulders in silvered waves.
Sometime while their attention had been diverted, the soft shimmer of cymbals had risen to silence the hum of voices from the sparse crowd. Moments later, a deep, throbbing bass line insinuated itself between the ripples, driving the beat, but not distracting from it. The drums grew stronger, shifting to snare, rippling across the snare and into the deeper strung toms.
The guitar bit into the backbone of the music and it was that moment, precisely, that the vocalist chose to laugh softly.
“Welcome, friends.” He hesitated, sca
nning his audience, then continued, “And everyone else. Welcome.”
Dexter turned to Shaver, but his friend never flinched. Liz was leaning forward, her chin on Shaver’s shoulder, her arms wrapped around him tightly, as if she was afraid he would be pulled away in some direction she couldn’t follow. With nothing else to concentrate on, Dexter began slowly, and meticulously, to shred his napkin.
“It is early,” the vocalist went on, “but I urge you to lean back, slip a little closer to those already close . . . dig the sound, and enjoy the drinks. Don’t forget our lady friends totin’ the happy juice, and don’t forget, the band is always thirsty.”
The guitarist, on cue, launched into a flurry of flickering notes, deep minors and shimmering, half-lead, half-rhythm riffs that dragged their attention away from the microphone just long enough to set up the next moment. The drums shivered to silence. The bass, first joining the guitar, then dragging it to a halt, echoed through the room. Nothing. There was no sound, no motion. Everyone in the room was still, captured easily by the perfection of timing and the exquisite “staging” of the moment.
“I feel your pain.”
The words were whispered, yet with the amplification, and the reverb, they echoed, reverberating from the walls.
“I am your pain.”
Shaver wasn’t certain he’d even heard the words spoken, because it was that precise moment that the bassist chose to blast into existence, followed like a puppy by the guitar and chased through complicated backbeats by the drums.
The music carried them away, simply and completely. Before they knew what had happened, the vocalist was at the microphone again. He pulled it close, leaning in and reaching up to press a dark, black fedora over his eyes before uttering a sound.
Shaver drifted. He felt Liz pressed tightly against him, clutching his arm and leaning in tight. He sensed that Dexter sat very close beside him, but the sound he heard, the music that invaded his senses, spoke to him alone. Hank. Pure, unadulterated blues, honky-tonk-rhythmed pulse of depression, seeping in deep. Shaver closed his eyes . . . wanted to close his ears. It was too much. Tears streamed slowly down his cheeks, and he blinked, squeezing Liz’s hand hard.
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