A Song for a New Day

by Sarah Pinsker

  I pulled out my phone, muted since before soundcheck. I had a dozen messages and missed calls, mostly from the label. An email, also from the label, saying they’d been trying to call.

  My phone buzzed in my hand. Margo at the label, texting. Cancel your show tonite. Tell me u got this.

  Silva’s phone chimed as well. He looked down, then back at me. “The production company wants to know if you’re playing. They say it’s up to you.”

  I glanced at the clock again. “If doors open at seven, people are probably already on their way here.”

  “We’ll do refunds, or promise tickets to another show. If they’re listening to the news, they’ll have turned back by now.”

  I wandered over to where I’d left my tea. Condensation beaded on the underside of the saucer I’d used to cover it, and dripped when I lifted it. The tea was even more bitter than usual when I sipped; I’d forgotten to stir in honey. I added some, watched it stick to my spoon, then grudgingly dissolve, like it was trying to hold on to its shape.

  I wished Gemma was still with us to make the decision. She worked for the label, so she would have followed their instructions. They’d never ask us to cancel if they didn’t think we had to; they were all about pushing through and playing, regardless of weather or health or whatever else had been thrown in our way. For them to tell us to cancel, it must be serious. They had insurance. As Silva said, the theater would give refunds or reschedule us or give tickets to another show. We’d have a chance to play here again, on a less somber night, to a fuller house. There’d be other, safer opportunities. If we played, it might be for nobody at all, or for ten people who felt awkward in a giant empty theater.

  Or it might be for ten people who needed a lift tonight, who wanted music to make them forget the news, or make sense of it. Maybe there were people who wanted to defy the “Please stay home” order, to show they weren’t going to let anyone make them afraid. How could we deny that, when we had the power to give it? No answer seemed the right one.

  “Don’t look at me,” Hewitt said when I turned in his direction. “You’re the boss.”

  April and JD shook their heads as well, telling me it was my decision. I had no logic in me; the only picture in my head was that one tiny shoe in the rubble. What was I supposed to do with that image? I couldn’t weep over a number, but I could weep over a shoe if I let myself. A shoe could wash me away if I didn’t have something else to do, something else to think about.

  I wanted to play, but I didn’t want to force them. “Somebody say something. You’ve never held back opinions before.”

  JD studied the posters on the walls. “Who are we to keep the staff here if they want to get home to their families? Or to put them at risk if there’s a legitimate threat? Let’s call it off.”

  “I think enough of them would be willing to stay,” Silva said. “And I’ve been here all day. I don’t think there’s a big risk.”

  “We walked right in,” April pointed out.

  “Nobody else did.”

  “Would your bosses be pissed off if you paid to keep staff here and nobody came? Nobody bought drinks?” Hewitt had been a bartender.

  Silva scratched his head. “I think it’d be okay. The thing is, if we hold the show, I’m not sure the people who stayed home as instructed would get their refunds. I guess we can work something out, under the circumstances. I suppose people are as safe here as anywhere.”

  “Was that an opinion? Do you want us to play?” I tried to read him, but gave up. “I don’t know you well enough to tell.”

  “Not an opinion. Sorry. This is all you.”

  I tried another tack. “How many staff do you need to keep here to hold the show, knowing a lot of ticket holders won’t show? Could you let the ones who are scared to stay go home?”

  He thought a moment. “We wouldn’t want to lessen security. Other than that, we can get by with one person at the box office, one bartender. If you don’t mind the lights and monitors staying static, I can let most of my crew go home.”

  “So you’d be willing to stay yourself?”

  “I’m here. I’d stay. And since it sounds like you’re leaning that way, I’ll say I always prefer having a show to explaining to a bunch of angry people that they shouldn’t have come.”

  “Okay. We’ll play. I want to play.” Saying it made it even more true. I surveyed my bandmates for affirmation I’d made the right choice. April gave me a thumbs-up. Hewitt grinned.

  Silva pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt and asked his staff to meet him in the lobby. I glanced at my silent phone. A repeat message from Margo, and two more missed calls. I turned it off. Sipped my tea again. Still bitter, but bearable with honey.

  JD grabbed my arm. “Hey, Luce, can we talk for a sec?”

  “Sure. Oh, do you mean in private?” Privacy wasn’t usually a consideration in this band; we’d given it up months ago. The others had settled on the couch and looked immovable. I motioned toward the bathroom. “Step into my office.”

  The space wasn’t made for two people. He sat on the closed toilet, and I leaned against the sink.

  “I’m trying to stay on board,” he said without preamble, “but I don’t know if I can do it.”

  “What? Why didn’t you say that a minute ago?”

  “I didn’t expect everyone else to agree to do it. I didn’t want to be the bad guy.”

  “There are no bad guys here. I wanted opinions and nobody gave any.”

  “I did. I thought someone else would agree with me. It’s not safe to play and I don’t want to be here. I have a family.”

  “We all have families.”

  “Yeah, but I actually like mine. I want to see them again.”

  I ignored the dig, built on more made-up stories. “Nobody’s going to do anything. We’re not famous. We’re at a not-so-famous theater in a random town.”

  “You say that, but somebody called in bomb threats to the hotels here last night.”

  “The whole state got bomb threats, not bombs.”

  “And today there were actual bombs. I thought you said there wouldn’t be any hard feelings if we didn’t want to play.”

  “That was ten minutes ago, before everybody agreed.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I can’t play.”

  “We can’t do the show without bass.”

  “I’m so sorry, Luce. I’ll go back to the hotel, or sleep in the van, or clear out entirely if you want me to.”

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say to convince him. Hewitt and April looked at me when I stepped out, and I shook my head. Why had he spoken to me in private, anyhow? It wasn’t like they wouldn’t find out a minute later. He couldn’t sit in the bathroom forever. Wouldn’t want to, if he was that scared.

  I went to find Silva, to tell him we wouldn’t be playing after all. Out in the lobby, a woman was unpacking our merchandise. We carried some with us, but since Gemma had gone home, the label had been shipping the bulk of it to venues—everything except the new T-shirts that had disappeared into the shipping ether—and hiring local fans to run the booth.

  “Hi, I’m Luce.”

  “Alaia Park.” She jotted a number on the side of a box, looked up, and smiled. She was older than me, maybe midthirties, with jet-black hair framing her face. When she spoke, she tucked one lock behind her ear. “I expected you to be taller than me.”

  “The video was filmed from a low angle. I get that a lot. Did Silva already talk to you? You were okay with being here tonight?” I asked her. I’d already shifted into past tense, resigned to the decision JD had made for us.

  “Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting for this for weeks. I love your music.”

  “You’re not scared?”

  She bit her lip. “I’m a little scared, but I’m also scared some semi driver will fall asleep and cr
oss the median while I’m driving home, or somebody will ignore a stop sign when I cross the street, or I’ll step on a snake while walking my dog, or I’ll catch some terrible virus from a public bathroom. All of which seem more likely than somebody attacking this place tonight.”

  I signed a poster for her: “To Alaia, who is brave.” She let her fingers brush mine when I handed it back to her.

  * * *

  —

  I found the narrow stairway to the sound booth.

  Silva tucked a bookmark into the paperback he was reading and folded his arms over it.

  “Better futures?” I asked, pointing to the rocket ship on the cover.

  “Different futures, I guess. The staff all want to stay, except for one bartender. I won’t need them all, but I didn’t want them to lose a night’s pay if they were willing.”

  “You’re going to have to disappoint them after all. My bassist is bailing.”

  “What? I thought they were down to play.”

  “I thought so, too, but he waited until you left the room to express his concerns.”

  “Huh.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. Damn.”

  “I’ll leave you to talk to your staff again, I guess.” I turned to leave.

  “There’s one other option,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  He gave a half smile. “I play bass.”

  He must not have had trouble reading the skepticism in my look. “I can do it,” he went on. “I’ve been playing bass longer than I’ve been running sound, by a long shot. And your songs are pretty straightforward—no offense meant. I’ve been playing you in the house for a week now, so I’m familiar with the stuff you’ve recorded, and if you give me a cheat sheet of keys and changes I’ll be good to go.”

  “Who’d run sound?”

  “The lighting tech can do both. She’s more than good enough.”

  I gave him another look. The offer was sincere. “I guess we’ve got nothing to lose, since we’re not thinking anyone’s going to show up anyway. Welcome to the band, I guess.”

  He grinned. “I was hoping you’d say yes.”

  * * *

  —

  We waited to see how many actually came out of the two thousand ticket holders. The local opening band never arrived; neither did the DJ whose show we had played earlier in the day, who was supposed to introduce us.

  I stood in the wing, behind the curtain, and watched people file in. Tried to interpret their expressions, figure out why they had showed up. The theater had assigned seating, so some sat too far for me to read their faces, but body language had a longer wavelength: grim, weary, wary. A couple near the front laughed and joked with exaggerated movement, trying too hard. The rest were quiet, far quieter than usual. Most nights, canned music filled in the wait time, but what to play on a night like this? Any choice was a statement, to be judged too upbeat, too downbeat, too heavy, too disrespectful. None of those options were right when there was a tiny shoe in rubble three thousand miles away.

  The house lights were off, so I had no idea of the size of the audience, though I knew from their movement in the dimness there were at least a few people out there. I wasn’t sure if I’d have made the same decision in their shoes, to risk being out in public.

  Except I had; I kept forgetting. Some part of me kept fooling the rest of me into thinking I hadn’t had a choice. Music wasn’t a choice as far as I was concerned, even if I hadn’t managed to say as much to my band. Playing music was the fire that kept the monsters at bay. Nothing could touch me in the middle of a song.

  The audience had a choice; they had come. Checking their phones, murmuring numbers and updates to each other, shaking their heads, but present. Maybe they wanted my guitar to keep them safe, too.

  April walked up behind me.

  “What if they don’t like us?” I whispered.

  “They like us, or they wouldn’t be here,” she whispered back.

  Hewitt appeared from the wing, looking grim. “They’ve grounded all planes. Schools are canceled tomorrow.”

  “Damn,” I said.

  He waved his guitar at me. “I’m going to go out and tune one more time for both of us. When we’re ready, you’re going to come out there and start playing, and we’re going to make people forget what’s outside this room for a little while.”

  I peeked out from behind the curtain again, then nodded. I still hadn’t thought of anything worth saying. No words could be more appropriate than the four bars of guitar noise starting “Block Letters.”

  Hewitt tuned my guitar one more time, then his. The others took their positions, Silva the soundman standing in JD’s spot. The room was eerily quiet. Normally there’d be cheers, clapping. I panicked. We should have had someone introduce us. I should have come up with something to say. I had no idea what they wanted from me.

  My band looked in my direction. Waiting, watching as I stood paralyzed. As the numbers from the news hit me, a wave of numbers that were also names, names I didn’t know, people. People who had gone out to a baseball matinee and hadn’t come home. In all the fussing over whether to play or not to play, I had locked that image away from myself. Had these people done the same? Numbly gotten in cars, driven to our show because it was what they were supposed to do tonight? Or did they want more from me?

  I took a step out onto the stage. It was dark, except for a spotlight where I was supposed to be.

  “You got this, Luce,” April whispered. I walked past her, to where my guitar and my spotlight waited. I put my hand to my brow to shade my eyes, strained to see the people scattered among the empty seats. They sat quiet, waiting. Waiting for me.

  I stepped to the mic. “Come closer. There are plenty of empty seats up front.” Then, “Please.”

  Nobody moved for a moment, and then one person in the back stood. Her chair closed with a creak behind her. It was so quiet every step echoed as she walked to the third row and chose a new seat. Another pause, then others began to move, as if she had given them permission. I strapped on my guitar while they rearranged themselves.

  When the shuffling and creaking stopped, April counted us off. I hit my distortion pedal and played. Four bars of noise scaffolded on the solid frame of an A chord and its cousins, all of us building onto it with muscle and bone and blood. I almost forgot to come in with the vocal, the guitar felt so good in my hands.

  With the song came the realization. The audience wasn’t here for mourning; they had come for elegy. That was within our power.

  We had chosen our set carefully. No “Timebomb,” no “End Days.” Tried to keep to the upbeat stuff, other than “Blood and Diamonds,” which was uptempo but dark, and which they’d expect no matter what. Really, it didn’t matter what we played. Silva locked in with April as if they had been playing together for all the months JD had been with us. We butchered “Don’t Even Think About It,” the new song, but it was Hewitt who forgot the change we’d made at soundcheck. It came around by the end, though. What mattered was that we were there and they were there, a conspiracy against despair.

  The ovation surprised me. I toweled my neck, turned to the band. “Do you guys mind if I do one alone?”

  “It’s your show,” Hewitt said.

  “Thanks—can I use your acoustic?”

  He passed it over. I put my own guitar back on its stand.

  “Can you bring the house lights up, please?” I asked into the mic.

  We saw them for the first time for real. Maybe fifty people out of two thousand seats, all crowded to the front.

  “If you get the gist and want to sing along, feel free.” My lone voice felt enormous in the silent room. I hadn’t played this cover in years, but it was the kind that came to my mind on a night like this. A few voices joined in, then more. When the song ended, I gave a little salute and ho
pped off the front of the stage.

  “That’s it,” I said. The house lights rose, again without music. Hewitt came to take his guitar from me.

  “Go on,” he said. “I’ll pack up.”

  I spent the next thirty minutes chatting with the people who’d come. Sold some T-shirts, signed some records, but mostly hung around and talked. Everyone was reluctant to step back into the ugly world outside.

  “Thank you for playing. I couldn’t sit at home alone tonight,” one woman said.

  “I drove an hour to get here,” said another. “I’m glad I did.”

  More so than usual, they all wanted a piece of me, a moment. I tried to give the time they needed. One after another, they each gave their variation on that story, and then wandered out into the night.

  * * *

  —

  One thousand, three hundred, and twenty-three people died in the stadium bombs. Five more—all janitorial employees—died in another bomb in a shuttered mall while we were onstage.

  A couple of years later, a journalist worked out that our show was the last large concert. They had to stretch the definition of large to make it work, but I guess they went on the theater’s size, and the fact that all the stadiums and arenas and concert halls went dark that night for good.

  The journalist didn’t know it, and I didn’t bother to say, but I think we probably had the last two shows, if you wanted to count the dance party in the hotel parking lot in the early hours of that day. I tended to always think of the one whenever I thought of the other. Making music in the darkness, then music against the darkness. The decision to play for the people who chose to go out instead of hiding in their homes. They’d have years and years for that.

  All that came later.

  That night, after the audience straggled out, after Alaia boxed up and counted our remaining merchandise, after her hand lingered against mine again far longer than necessary for passing a pen from one person to another, she and I stole a moment in the dark balcony. Hewitt called for me once from the bottom of the stairwell, and we giggled and shushed each other to keep from giving ourselves away. We leaned into each other, me and the woman who mistakenly thought I was the brave one. She wanted me, and I wanted someone to coax me from my head for a few minutes. Maybe that was what she’d come looking for, too; we didn’t talk.