A Song for a New Day

by Sarah Pinsker

  Still, she had to go. If she framed it as a chore, an inevitability, it became a thing she’d have to cope with, rather than a thing to avoid. If she didn’t go, she didn’t talk to the bands. If she didn’t talk to the bands, she didn’t sign the bands. If she didn’t sign the bands, she didn’t have a job. The company would decide she’d taken the job fraudulently and bill her for her magnificent hotel room, and she didn’t have the money for that, so she had to go. No other option.

  She didn’t go. Seven p.m. passed. She was a fraud. A cheater. A shirker. A chicken. A liar. A thief. Eight p.m. It was raining. She’d be forgiven for not wanting to go out in the rain. Wait until Wednesday, unless it rained Wednesday, too.

  Her mother had told her to put herself in a mental bubble, though she’d be horrified to know her advice was being used to go to the 2020. Her father would tell her to go with her gut, stay safe in the hotel, come home. Nobody else in her life would bother to make the case. Aran, maybe, if he didn’t laugh, but she had asked him enough already. She had to be the one to convince herself.

  At nine o’clock she dumped all her clothes onto her bed. Closed her eyes, tried to picture what the audience at the 2020 had worn. This could be her do-over, her chance to blend in. She’d be the last person down the stairs instead of the first, coming in this late. If she stayed in the back, she’d keep out of the crush.

  She put on her Hoodie, realized she’d forgotten to charge it, and took it off again. She’d have to do without. Stuffed her wallet and phone into a small bag, then realized an umbrella made sense, too, and repacked into her backpack. Another advantage SHL and hoodspace had over real-life excursions: everything you’d ever need fit into a bag of holding.

  City rain bounced off surfaces instead of settling into them like farm rain; it stained the buildings and sidewalks gray and grayer. She splurged on a single-cell to keep from getting soaked, and to delay dealing with other people for as long as possible. This way she wouldn’t be lying to her mother when she said how she’d traveled. The backseat was more worn than the one she’d taken to her orientation, and smelled like artificial flowers on top of fried chicken.

  She spent the short ride psyching herself up. She was a woman alone in the city. How cool was that? Had she ever in her life imagined herself someplace like this, doing something like this? I belong here, she repeated. I’m here to help people. To bring music to the masses, musicians that deserve to be heard. I will walk into that building as if I have the same right to be there as everyone else.

  Alice was lying on the couch watching another prerecorded band on the living room rig when Rosemary opened the door. “You again?”

  “Do you know everyone here?” Rosemary asked in return.

  “Yes, and you don’t belong.”

  “I’m not police. I told you.”

  “Fine. You’re not police, but you’re something. I’m sure of it.”

  “I can’t imagine you give this hard a time to every new person who shows up. I just want to hear some music tonight. Please?”

  “You’re not going to be tuning for Luce tonight?” Alice smirked, and Rosemary’s cheeks warmed. Before she could defend herself, the woman pointed toward the front door. “You can come in when someone else vouches for you. Not Aran Randall, not Luce. She’s way too trusting.”

  “Is Joni here? Joni would . . .”

  “Joni’s not here.”

  “I don’t know how you have anybody here at all if this is how you treat people.”

  “This is how I keep us from getting shut down.”

  “Look, I already know where you are. If I were a cop, I’d have busted you already, wouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t know, but you’re not welcome without an escort.”

  Rosemary knew she’d been beaten; she left the way she had come in. What were her options now? Head back to the hotel, admit total defeat. Troll the web for uploads, hope to find the next Victor Janssen somewhere in hoodspace.

  She caught movement in the corner of her eye. A man on the opposite side of the street, lit by a streetlight, lifting a rifle. She shrank back into the doorway in panic, trying to make herself invisible. A second look showed it wasn’t a rifle; he was closing an umbrella. He had a little girl with him, five or six years old. The rain had stopped for the moment.

  Something rattled, and she looked down to see her hand shaking, knocking against her bag, the buckle of which knocked against her own umbrella. An umbrella looked like a gun at the right angle, in the right moment, but it wasn’t a weapon. Nobody was trying to hurt anybody here. It was some guy trying to get his kid home. She had no reason to overwrite him with her own groundless fears.

  She would have given up and gone back to the hotel if she hadn’t mistaken that umbrella for a gun. Somewhere inside her the shame of her own paranoia hot-wired a new determination. She was here for a purpose. She wanted to be good at her job, and being good at her job meant finding music that couldn’t be found by someone sitting in their bedroom with a Hoodie. She’d been given a chance to do something new and different with her life. She wouldn’t allow herself—or Alice—to squander it.

  Where did Alice get off keeping her out, anyhow? Assuming Rosemary was other than what she claimed to be? Never mind that her suspicions were correct; that didn’t give her permission to make snap judgments about people she didn’t know.

  She reversed her steps from a few nights before, rounding the corner into the darkened alley. The precise backyard count from the corner to 2020 escaped her, but she recognized the chain-link fence, the garden, the steps to the back door. The gate’s padlock was in place this time.

  A broken link at the top snagged her pants cuff and raked her leg when she clambered over. Her plan to land lightly on her feet was upended, and she dropped headfirst into the paved yard, pants still caught like a trophy fish. She stayed that way for ten seconds, or ten minutes, eyes closed, head spinning, before getting one leg under her and hopping to free the other. When it pulled clear, she lost her balance and fell backward again, this time into the soft garden soil.

  The whole sequence had gone much better in her mind when she’d looked at the padlocked gate. She examined the muddy, torn mess she had made of herself and did her best to wipe the dirt off with a sodden sleeve. Her head rang with a mild urgency.

  The back door was unlocked. Two people stood in the kitchen, drinking water and arguing in low tones. They gave her an odd look, but didn’t question her presence. Alice the door dragon still sat in the front room, guarding the entrance and maintaining her charade of a person lounging at home watching canned StageHolo shows at high volume. Nobody stood between Rosemary and the basement stairs; all she had to do was convince herself to go down there. Given the trouble she’d gone to, she wasn’t turning back.

  She opened the door to the basement and was greeted by noise cut short, then clapping and cheering. A good time to slip in; time for a new song to begin.

  * * *

  —

  Rosemary had hoped the rain might keep people away, but if anything, the basement was more packed than it had been for the previous show. A new musty scent mixed with the sweat and cat pee odors for which she had already prepared herself. Wet dog? Wet clothes. Wet clay. Wet everything.

  She lingered at the bottom landing. Nobody was going in or out, and she was more than happy to stay in that spot, with easy escape at the ready. She didn’t know how long the band had been playing already. Luce stood onstage, tuning, her hair flattened to her forehead with sweat. Rosemary swung around to inspect the alcove where she’d spent the previous show: nobody sat behind the merchandise table. She hadn’t been needed after all, as Joni had said.

  “One-two-three-four!” shouted Luce, and the room changed again. Rosemary turned her attention to the stage. She expected “Blood and Diamonds,” but this song sounded nothing like that; a different genre altogether, even with the famil
iar voice cutting through. She hadn’t believed it was the same person, couldn’t reconcile her mental image with the ordinary-looking woman she’d met. Luce’s ponytail flipped and bucked as she sang, punctuating her lines. A fierce ponytail. A hype man of a ponytail.

  Craning her neck, Rosemary identified the whole group from the diner. They all looked different now. The laid-back teasing had been replaced by something knife-edged. She wasn’t sure what could be dangerous about music, but that thought lodged in her mind, and once there, it didn’t shake.

  She had loved music her entire life, even if the live type had never been an option. She thought she knew what music sounded like in a fair number of forms: the stuff her parents had introduced her to, the songs she had found on her own, the life-changing Patent Medicine show, where she’d felt for the first time like she was inside a song, that a song was a living thing. Magritte’s performance in the SHL tanks, compelling even in isolation. The bands from the other night, each special in their own way.

  This was another thing altogether. Loud, for one. The guitars swallowed every inch of space in the room, filling the air, replacing the oxygen in her lungs. She put her fingers to her ears, but the guitars kept coming. The kick drum rose up through her bones; the bass mimicked her pulse, or her pulse mimicked the bass.

  People danced all around her. They held the inches they had carved from the crowd, but moved within that space, some bouncing on their toes, some shifting their torsos, their hips. She moved, too; the song demanded it. It blocked everything else out.

  The song ended, but the drums kept going, rolling forward then shifting to a new beat, with a new urgency. The audience adapted. Rosemary found herself moving forward with the crowd, pressing toward the stage, dancing, dancing with real people, in real life. The bubble her mother had told her to imagine had formed around her; she was in the crowd, but untouchable. She had space.

  Except thinking about the bubble made her think about the reason she had needed the bubble, which made the fear real again. She hadn’t noticed that her baseline panic had subsided as she listened, but now she noticed its return, a tidal wave that had sucked the ocean miles out to sea and now returned it as a solid wall.

  She stood in the middle of the basement, surrounded. If she fell, she’d be trampled. If someone shouted “Fire!” they’d crush each other in the rush for the stairs. The music held her upright, but she was no longer dancing. The exit was too far. Her knees buckled and the music stopped, or the music stopped and her knees buckled.

  “What the hell?” someone said, above the crowd noise.

  Hands grasped her arms and forearms, reached under her armpits, pulled her to her feet. She didn’t know whose, tried to slap away whatever stranger was touching her, but they dragged her toward the stage area. The song stopped short and the musicians cleared to the sides. She found herself sitting on a buzzing amplifier.

  The bassist stood over her. “Hey, this is the woman from the other night.”

  “There’s a first aid kit in the kitchen, under the sink,” Luce said. “Somebody grab it for me?”

  “I’m okay,” Rosemary said. “I’m okay.”

  “You are not okay. You’re bleeding from at least two places, one of which is your head. Did you get beat up?” To someone else: “Did anyone see what happened to her?”

  “No, I’m not bleeding, I—” She put her muddy palm to her head; it came away bloody.

  Luce glanced at her, then spoke into her mic. “We’re going to call it for tonight, friends. Sorry. See you next time. Thanks for coming out on a rainy night.”

  She turned to Rosemary. “Can you walk?”

  Rosemary nodded, though she wasn’t sure.

  An aisle formed through the crowd, and Luce and someone else helped her up the basement stairs. At the top, someone pressed a plastic box into Luce’s hands, then they rounded a corner and climbed another flight. Alice in the background saying, “Shit. I told that kid not to come in tonight, maybe thirty or forty minutes ago, but she wasn’t bleeding when I talked to her, I swear. I don’t know how she got downstairs.”

  Luce fumbled with a lock on the top landing, touched a small box mounted on the doorframe and put her finger to her lips, and then they were on the second floor.

  If the first floor was sparse, this room was the opposite. The same basic furniture categories, an entirely different effect. Hardwood floor with a plush throw rug under a low table. Bookshelves full of actual print books. A deep purple couch. Scarves draped over the lampshades. She went to check her Hoodie to see if this was the Chelsea Hotel 1967 Veneer from SHL headquarters, then remembered she’d left it at the hotel. Momentary panic: did she still have her bag? Amazingly, yes.

  The walls were a warm red-purple, with white trim. They were lined with pictures, dozens of pictures, snapshots of bands caught in midsong, sweaty close-ups, blood-covered guitars. The guitar picture made Rosemary touch her head again.

  “First things first, let’s get you cleaned up before you bleed all over my furniture. Unless you think you need a hospital? You don’t have one of those biometric tattoos, do you? The ones that call your doctor if you get a boo-boo?”

  Rosemary looked at her hand, the blood, the mud. She realized she was supposed to answer. She hadn’t been in a hospital since the pox. Her case had been relatively mild, the fever worse than the nerve pain, but she remembered the other kids clawing at their faces and arms, screaming, babbling from fever. And before that, the emergency room full of adults whose moans had unsettled her far more than the crying children. She shuddered. “No hospital. I’ll be okay. No tattoo.”

  Luce gave her a close look, then nodded. Led her down a short hall and into a small bathroom, and put enough pressure on Rosemary’s shoulder to encourage her to take a seat on the closed toilet.

  “How about I’ll clean this out, see how deep it is. If it needs stitches, or if you’re still loopy when I’m done, we’ll reconsider the hospital idea. I’m pretty sure you have a concussion, and whatever got your leg had teeth. Should I be worried about rabies? Werewolves? Zombies?”

  As she talked, Luce opened her first aid kit and laid it on the sink rim. She put on gloves and opened a packet of antiseptic wipes. “This is where you tell me what happened.”

  “I, uh, I climbed a fence, but I caught my leg on the top, and I must have landed on my head, but I didn’t—ow!—I didn’t realize it? So I guess I landed harder than I thought, and then—ow!— I guess I wasn’t thinking straight, and I came inside, and it sounded really good and—ow! Would you stop poking at my head?”

  “Almost done.” Luce tossed the wipes in the garbage. “It’s not that deep, but I made it bleed again. Head wounds always bleed worse than they are. I can stitch it if you want.”

  “Does it—does it need stitches? Are you a doctor?”

  Luce laughed. “I used to be certified as a nurse assistant, and I did a year of actual nursing school when I was trying to sort myself out, but more importantly, I’ve cleaned up my share of musicians. Head meets headstock, hand meets ceiling, drumstick projectile. Anyway, I’ve seen worse. I think you’ll get by without stitches. It may scar either way, but it’s at your hairline, so it won’t be too noticeable. You’ve also got an impressive lump, which is what bothered you when I poked it, not the cut.”

  “No stitches.”

  “Fair enough. In that case, can you hold this gauze for me while I tape it shut?”

  Rosemary let Luce guide her hand to her head.

  “Let’s take a look at your leg now. Your pants may be a lost cause.” She inverted the pants leg and tugged it up Rosemary’s calf, then grabbed some more wipes. “Also, let’s go back to the part where you said you climbed a fence. I’m assuming you mean my back fence, and I’m helping you after you broke into my club, after you ditched me the other night, after I vouched for you with Alice?”

  That summed it up pre
tty well, so Rosemary didn’t say anything.

  “Have you had a tetanus shot recently?”

  Rosemary nodded, peered down at her bloody leg, then looked away. “My parents have a farm. We keep current on tetanus.”

  “Okay, good. You’ve got a puncture I’m going to flush out, but I won’t stitch this, either. Then there’s the question of the concussion. I don’t suppose you have anybody who can come get you, keep you awake?”

  “No—I don’t know anybody here.”

  “Right-o. I guess we’re going to be best buddies tonight.”

  Rosemary opened her mouth to protest, to say she needed to get back to her hotel, but Luce shut her up with, “Unless you’d rather hang out with Alice?”

  “No, I’ll stay here,” Rosemary said. “What does Alice have against me, though?”

  “Now, or before? Because now she’ll add sneaking past her to the list. Before, I think she didn’t trust you. Now I’m guessing she really doesn’t trust you. Hang on—let me find you some clothes.”

  Luce washed her hands, then left Rosemary in the bathroom. Rosemary listened to footsteps down the hall, then to a hollow knock in the pipes under the sink.

  Luce returned with a small pile of clothes. “Shorts or sweatpants? Anything else I own won’t fit you.”

  “Sweatpants, thanks.”

  Luce handed her Option B and left Rosemary alone in the bathroom to peel off her ruined pants and ease the sweats over the bandage on her leg. She washed her face and dried it with toilet paper to keep from bloodying a towel, then made her way out to the living room, where the musician had collapsed across the couch. There were two water glasses on the table. Rosemary assumed the fuller one was for her, and drained it in a single gulp. She chose a worn velour recliner and sank into it.

  “Don’t get too comfortable. We’re staying up.” Luce’s voice came from deep within the couch.