A Song for a New Day

by Sarah Pinsker

  19

  LUCE

  Where Is My Mind

  It took the kid so long to change and make her way out of the bathroom that I almost went in again after her. It gave me enough time to wonder what I was doing. I should have insisted on taking her to the hospital; it was the responsible thing to do. When I thought back on mistakes I’d made, more than one had started from not taking somebody to a hospital when they needed it. Still, she was so insistent. Terrified. So I settled into the couch to wait, and eventually she wandered out of the bathroom, downed a glass of water, and sat. I told her we were staying up.

  “Is that medically advised? Is that a thing people do?”

  “What some people do is go to the hospital and get a CT scan, but I get the not-wanting-to-go-to-the-hospital part. Hence my solution.”

  “Isn’t there a concussion app I can use?” She reached for a Hoodie she wasn’t wearing, a panicked expression crossing her face. She definitely wasn’t operating at full capacity.

  “Anything like that depends on knowing your baseline function, sweetie. I’m guessing you don’t have that recorded anywhere.”

  Rosemary shook her head, then stilled it, looking like she regretted the motion.

  “If you think you might puke, I’ll grab a bucket. Anyway, the staying-up thing’s probably been disproven for twenty years, but I think the main point is to make sure your brain isn’t swelling or bleeding, by interacting with you. If you start slurring or dropping thoughts, I take you to somebody who actually knows what they’re doing.”

  “You sure there’s no such thing as an online CT or something else from this century?”

  “There’s no such thing as an online CT. Anyway, if you disappear into one of those ridiculous hoods, I won’t be able to tell how you’re doing. So, Rosemary, tell me about yourself. What are you doing here in our fair city?”

  Rosemary picked gravel from her palm. It left tiny indents. “I’m here for the music.”

  “Why here? Why not New York? You could see a dozen bands a night.”

  Rosemary shuddered.

  “Ah. Too many people? That’s why you left the other night, too?”

  “I thought I’d be able to handle it. I need to hear the bands. I had no idea . . .”

  “That’s what Joni said.”

  “Joni mentioned me?”

  The kid looked delighted; she didn’t have much of a poker face.

  I wasn’t about to tell her Joni had said she was cute. “She said she didn’t know how you were going to reconcile your issue with crowds, but you seemed cool unless you’re a cop.”

  “You people take a lot of convincing. I’m a little sick of the questioning. Tell me . . .” Rosemary scanned the walls, clearly looking for a change of subject. “. . . How did you end up here?”

  I rolled back to a sitting position, debating what to say, as I usually did when anyone asked anything remotely personal. Even now, after all this time, it felt too raw. “After the . . . After we couldn’t tour anymore, I was at a low point for a while and I wanted to find a way to be useful. Then there was a bump in my royalties, enough to buy this place, and I found a way to be useful that was a little more my style.”

  “You own it? The whole building?”

  “I do,” I said, with no small pride. “It’s nicer than it looks. Good bones. I keep it a little decrepit for deception’s sake, and I bought the vacants on either side so there’d be nobody to complain about noise. Anyway, music doesn’t make any money anymore if you don’t do StageHolo, so I thought I’d give nursing a shot. Except I wasn’t much good at it. I could handle the people part, but not the chemistry and math.” At Rosemary’s obvious alarm, I added, “And the practical. I was good at the practical part.”

  “So what did you do instead? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “A bit of this, a bit of that. I work a few days a week taking care of two adult brothers with developmental disabilities. Nothing as secure as nursing would have been, but I’m still here, and I still have this place, so I guess I’m doing okay.”

  “You’re doing okay? What you’ve got here is amazing.”

  I smiled. “Thanks. It makes me think I’m making a difference.”

  “Making a difference?”

  “For the music. For the city. For the people who come twice a week looking for connection.”

  “Is that why they come? Connection?”

  “You tell me. You came here from wherever you’re from, looking for music you’d never heard before. Maybe that’s about songs, but you can get songs online if that’s all that matters to you. You’re here for something more, the same as we all are. A chance to create something.”

  As I said it, I thought it was true. I found myself deeply curious; as curious as I’d been about anything for a while. She’d clearly stepped out of her comfort zone, and it meant enough to her that she hadn’t let Alice dissuade her. Something about her made me feel a kinship. I was pretty sure she was a lot older than I’d been when I left home, but she came across every bit as cloistered. Did you feel it, too? Did a song call you and claim you for its own? I’d met a lot of musicians since then, but none of them ever used those words.

  “What’s in it for you?” Rosemary asked.

  Her eyes were closed, or she would have seen the disappointment in my face; she’d asked the wrong question. “I thought I said. The people. The connection. The music.”

  “Sorry, that came across strangely. I guess I’m asking this because I’m not a musician myself—do you play to make them happy, or do you play because it makes you happy?”

  “I guess . . . it’s . . . it’s a little of both. I love to play. I love connecting with other musicians onstage. I love that the audience pushes me to write new material because it’s the same people week after week, and they trust I’ll never bore them, but I do miss the new audiences. I miss winning over people who’ve never heard me before. So I guess I play to make these few people happy, and sometimes if I’m lucky it wears off on me.”

  “When you were onstage tonight you looked like you were exactly where you were supposed to be. Like you were a character in a video game who absorbed every single bit of energy you were offered, and you were all powered up, and it was just sitting there under your skin ready to be released. I looked at you tonight and I thought, ‘I’ve never been that complete in my entire life.’ I don’t know where I’m supposed to be.” It was an intimate admission. I could tell if I mocked her now, she’d leave and never come back.

  “Complete. I like that word.” Rosemary exhaled as I continued. “I suppose that’s true . . . This isn’t for public consumption, okay? I don’t think I’ve ever told this to anybody here. I grew up in a huge family, with a bunch of siblings. I shared a room with three of my sisters, two older and one a year younger. I loved them more than anybody, but there was part of me that I knew I couldn’t share with them. I don’t know why I knew that. It was something I knew wasn’t allowed, and it got all tangled up in my mind.

  “My first crush was on a melody—you wouldn’t know the song. It was klezmer, Phrygian, this Jewish song that still lights me up. I thought at first it was the clarinet player, and people would understand that. Then I realized it was the sounds that came out of his clarinet, mixed with the sounds from the rest of the band, and I wanted to be part of the music itself, and that was never going to be allowed, and there was so much that must be wrong with me. Then I saw a woman playing electric guitar, and I got even more confused, and it wasn’t until I figured out who I was, who I couldn’t be if I stayed, until I finally got to play guitar with a band, with all that power and noise, with people shaping the same sounds at the same time, making something together . . . like I’d spent my entire life in a country where everyone spoke a different language than I did, and suddenly I was home. I never put a word on it like you did, but . . . I hope you find it somewhe
re, whatever your thing is.”

  I paused and looked down at my hands, which were forming chords on their own. “There used to be a musician named Neil Young—have you heard of him?”

  Rosemary shook her head.

  “He was this crochety old man by the time I started paying attention to music, but he used to go out on tour with this raggedy garage band called Crazy Horse. He’d play these ridiculous solos. He said to play a guitar solo all you had to do was grab the neck of the guitar and start wailing on the first note you found. If it sounded good with what the others were playing, you hung on it for a while longer. If it didn’t, slide one fret up or down. When you got bored of that note, move to another one and start the same process. I guess I’m looking at this period of my life as one extended Neil Young solo. A note that’s still working for me, for now, because it fits so well with the chord around it.” This was officially more than I’d talked to anybody about anything in a long time.

  “I’m not entirely sure I understand.”

  “You’re a captive audience, sorry. And really, I’m supposed to keep you talking, not the other way around, but you don’t sound impaired. I’ll chalk ‘I don’t understand’ up to a faulty metaphor, not brain injury.”

  Rosemary stifled a yawn. “I still have doubts about this concussion theory.”

  “No yawning! The night is still young.” I stood, stretched, and left the room to get a snack and some tea.

  When I came back, she was standing, too, examining the photos on the walls. They were mostly pictures of bands playing downstairs. She stood in front of the only picture of me; my body facing the camera and my face in profile, sweaty, hair plastered to my face and arms, looking at someone just out of the shot, smiling. I wasn’t sure who I’d been smiling at, or anything about the night it was taken as different from any other night, but I liked it. It looked like the inside of my head when a song lifted off.

  “Why do you hide that?” she asked when she noticed I’d returned. She pointed at the framed platinum record peeking out from behind the bookshelf.

  I put down the tray I’d brought, piled with crackers and cheese and apple slices, and two mugs of tea, and climbed into my cozy couch again. “Because it’s irrelevant. I mean, I wouldn’t have this place if it weren’t for ‘Blood and Diamonds,’ but the award, the context it was given in, was a little weird. The gold record—you can’t see that one from where you’re standing—came during the tour, and I got nominated for a bunch of awards that all got canceled later that year when people started dying. The song was years old by the time it went platinum, and only because of a nostalgia piece. A journalist figured out we played the last show Before, did a big article, and the next thing you know, the song is charting again, higher than the first time. If I got half that attention for one of the new songs, like ‘Choose,’ I think I could make a real difference.”

  “How?”

  “It’s the best song I’ve ever written. I think it speaks to something that’s going on. The feeling that you want to create something but you don’t have the tools, you’ve lost the language.”

  “Did you play it tonight before I interrupted your set?”

  I nodded.

  “If it was the one I’m thinking of, that song was amazing. I couldn’t stand still.”

  “That’s the point! We’re all standing still, and we shouldn’t be.”

  “So how do you get it out there? How do you get people to hear it?” Rosemary picked up a mug, peered into it.

  “Mint tea. From my garden you fell into. And I don’t know anymore. Anyway, the best way to hear it is live. Person-to-person transmission.”

  Rosemary warmed her hands on the mug, took a sip. “Like a virus.”

  “Fear is a virus. Music is a virus and a vaccine and a cure.”

  “Live music only?”

  “No, but that shared experience is special. Being in a room with other people when something happens that will never happen the same way ever again.”

  “What about StageHolo? Is that the same?” Rosemary hid her face behind the mug, breathing the steam.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve only seen Alice’s living room rig. I hear Hoodies are immersive, but I don’t know how that can replace what we do here. I guess it already has, pretty much everywhere. Doesn’t it give the opposite message, though? That people should stay isolated?”

  “My first live musical experience was SHL, and it was fantastic. I felt like I was there.”

  “How does it compare now that you’ve been to a real show? When a song blew your mind, did you and the person beside you turn to each other and grin because you knew what you had just shared?”

  “No,” Rosemary admitted. “And the drums didn’t play in my bones the way they do here. But it beat the hell out of anything else I’d heard ’til now, and it brings music to lots of people who live in places where there isn’t any.”

  “Right! But they’d have music if people hadn’t been conditioned to stay inside! If it wasn’t illegal. It’s a cycle. It’s ridiculous to still have congregation laws ten years after the guys who caused most of the trouble got put away. People are social.”

  “People like being safe.”

  “The two are not mutually exclusive.”

  Rosemary sipped her tea. Again, I couldn’t decide if I’d been wrong about her.

  * * *

  —

  By the time I let Rosemary leave, the sun was testing the edges of the drawn curtains. We stood at the front door, suddenly awkward despite the night’s conversation.

  “Promise me you’ll get checked out if your head goes wonky. Blurred vision, dizziness, altered thinking, bad headache, anything like that.”

  “Will do. Thank you for keeping an eye on me, I guess.”

  “My pleasure. It could have been way worse. You could’ve been a total ass and I’d still have been stuck talking to you all night.”

  Rosemary squinted and smiled. “Thanks, I think? Um, this might sound stupid, but am I allowed back here? After breaking in, I mean? I’ll pay the eight dollars for tonight.”

  “I’ll tell Alice to take you off the blacklist. Then you only have to work on the crowd phobia.”

  “Thank you!”

  I reached out an arm. Rosemary stared for a minute before she understood. “Um,” she said. “I’ve never hugged anyone who wasn’t family before, not in real-space, and even my parents aren’t much for hugging.”

  My arms dropped to my sides. “I’m sorry. Hug not required. Not everyone likes them.”

  “No, it’s okay. I just didn’t know what to do.” She mimicked my gesture, and we wound up in a weird, brief half-embrace, shoulder bouncing off shoulder, before she ducked out the door.

  20

  ROSEMARY

  Come See Me for Real

  Back at her hotel room, Rosemary lowered herself gingerly onto the bed. She didn’t remember the last time she’d stayed awake all night. Her body existed as one giant ache, and her eyes begged to close. She wanted a bath, even if it ate a few days’ water credits, but she didn’t recall if Luce had told her not to get the cuts wet. Or was that stitches? Casts? How were you supposed to know if your thinking was altered when you were this tired?

  She lay back for a minute, then groaned and reached for her Hoodie.

  You didn’t check in, the first message accused. Please report.

  She missed knowing the person on the other side of her work correspondence. SHL handled her by group. If she needed something tangible, she called Logistics. If she wanted a supervisor’s opinion, she called Recruiter Management. If she ran into someone who didn’t want to sign the standard contract, she’d call Legal to negotiate. Nowhere a single name, a single person to trust or not trust with a question or a problem. Maybe that was the point. At least she didn’t have to put energy into talking face-to-face with a managem
ent avatar at this time of morning.

  Sorry. Spent all night talking with a singer after a show. They didn’t need to know about the fence incident or the reason she’d spent all night talking.

  Good lead? came an immediate reply.

  Rosemary groaned again. She should have waited to respond after she’d gotten some sleep. Maybe.

  Keep us posted. Sooner than later. We’re eager to see what you’re capable of.

  What was the proper response? Will do.

  She was eager to see what she was capable of, too, for her own sake. Luce had said she left home because she knew she couldn’t be herself if she stayed. Maybe, even if Rosemary was still looking for her thing, she could start with the knowledge she’d done right in taking a chance on this job.

  * * *

  —

  On her next attempt to get in the 2020, Rosemary didn’t trust that she wouldn’t have trouble until she was through the door. Alice gave her a scowl and a salute from her couch that suggested grudging approval. She supposed that was enough; she didn’t need to be friends with everyone. The company didn’t even encourage it. You are not there to be anyone’s friend. Observe. Don’t be a stranger to them, but don’t get too involved.

  But surely it didn’t matter so much. People had been so kind to her already, except for Alice. What was the harm in being friendly back? Everyone here knew each other. Maybe they didn’t all like each other, but they trusted on some level or they wouldn’t be here. Trusted that they were all here to listen, and that nobody would tell the wrong person. Even Alice was doing her job, playing her part night after night in case the wrong person stumbled in.

  So much trust and care. If that many people put their safety—their freedom, their lives—in each other’s hands, who was she to doubt them? Nobody planned to start a stampede or a fire. They were mechanics, teachers, techies, nurses, musicians. They came because they loved music, loved these bands, felt some piece of the music belonged to them.