“So get your ass out here, boy,
’Cause it’s time to get down
To the firing line
…”
Alone in the room save for her amplifier and her guitar, Christa launched into the lead. Eyes closed, biting at her lip in concentration, she made the Strat’s scream mesh with Monica’s, echoed the main melodic line of the chorus, then went off into free improvisation, climbing up the fingerboard until she ran out of frets, bending the top string so as to eke a few additional steps out of the guitar’s range.
But though, her body swaying with the waves of emotion, she threw all the passion she had into the lead, she worked to keep the energy mundane. This was a song about a woman who had been jilted. That was all. The woman was angry, and she wanted to fight. There were no cosmic dimensions to the disagreement.
Nonetheless, Christa found herself automatically dropping into some of the licks that she had planned to use when, in the final battle with the Sidh bard, this song would tear open a hole between one reality and another. Before she could reroute her fingers, she felt the floor in front of her waver almost imperceptibly. She stabilized it in an instant, and she finished the solo perfectly, but when she looked up at the control-room window again, she saw Devi watching her intently.
Did she see it
? Roger had sensed something, and so had Kevin. Did she have to add Devi Anderson to the list of those who suspected that there was more to Christa Cruitaire than harp and guitar?
The music stopped, her headphones hissed, and the engineer came back on. “Real good, Chris. You satisfied?”
She might have discarded the entire track because of her slip, but she decided not to. Playing it back would probably change the sound enough to dissipate the magic. “I am,” she said. “Let’s keep it.”
“Okay. You’re the boss.” Her headphones continued to hiss: he was keeping his finger on the talk-switch. “Uh… and I think I owe you an apology. These have been some of the most painless sessions I’ve done. You guys are pros. Sorry about that crack about girls not knowing how to rock.”
“I’m sure it’s all right, Hank,” said Christa as she switched off her amplifier. “You probably were unaware that I didn’t play my guitar with a penis.”
He laughed. “Come up and have a listen, then.”
During the initial playback, Christa was relieved to find that the magic had not been captured on the tape, but she was pointedly aware that Devi was still watching her.
She saw. I know it.
The songs they had recorded over the last three days were complete now. A final mixdown would take hours of critical listening while Hank manipulated the volume and quality of each track and instrument until they blended perfectly. But that would be tomorrow night. For now, he could give them a rough idea of the final product.
Monica was curled up in an overstuffed chair like a bleached-blond kitten. She listened, but she was content to let the others deal with the mix. She did not pretend to know about equipment or about sound quality, but she knew her voice. Alternately raging and choking off syllables with a chirp of rising sexuality, she had cut all the vocal tracks in one night.
Christa brought her a cup of coffee while the tape wound out to the end of the reel. “Thanks, Christa.” Monica looked into the cup. “No warm milk this time?”
“Ron bothering you again?”
“Well… not really.” Her nose wrinkled at her own lie.
“What’s happening?”
“He… he’s not coming to my door anymore, and he’s not bothering me at work. But he’s…” Her brown eyes flicked up to Christa, childlike, questioning. “He’s around. I know it. It’s like I see him out of the corner of my eye; but when I look, he’s gone.” She laughed nervously. “Maybe I’m just jumpy.”
Lisa had overheard. “What do you say we just go out and pound the son of a bitch?”
“Hey,” said Hank, “I said I was sorry.”
Lisa patted him on the shoulder. “It’s OK, we’re not talking about you.” She grinned. “Different son of a bitch.”
The clock said four in the morning when they left the studio. “Who’s for breakfast?” said Melinda.
“Don’t you have to sleep?” said Lisa.
“I sleep at work. Doesn’t everyone?”
Lisa was frowning. “Aren’t you worried about little things like job security?”
“Are you kidding? This demo is going to open doors for us. That job of mine is strictly temporary.”
“Get real.”
“Hey, I know what I’m talking about.”
Lisa sighed. “So do I, Mel.” She waved over her shoulder as she went to her car. “I’m out of here.”
Lisa’s exhaust steamed in the blue glow of the streetlamps as she pulled away. Monica decided to go home also, for her nagging worries about Ron were sapping her strength. “And I want to keep my job,” she added.
Devi turned to Christa. “What about you?”
Christa had students, but not until noon. “I think I’d like some food.”
“Can I ride with you? My van’s full of keys and amps, and I don’t want to haul it all over town.” Devi’s reason was plausible, but her eyes were searching.
Melinda led the way in her Mustang. Christa followed with Devi in the passenger seat. Though she had asked for a ride, Devi seemed tense, watchful, as though Christa might turn into an unexpected threat.
“Did you like the mix?” said Devi.
Christa huddled into the warmth of her Kinsale. Off to the right, the Platte River gleamed in the light of a waning moon. “I think we have something good there.”
“That last lead track was hot.”
“Thank you.”
Devi shifted in her seat. “How…” Her voice was hoarse, as though the words came forth unwillingly. “How do you do it, Christa?”
“Do… what?”
But Devi did not answer immediately. She had turned away. Her shoulders might have been shaking. Fear?
But her response was unexpected. “You’re so…” Her voice caught. “You’re so proud. You’re not ashamed of anything.”
Christa blinked. She had misunderstood Devi, misunderstood everything. “Why should I be ashamed?”
“Because…” Devi’s voice trailed off into the silence of engine noise.
“Devi?”
Devi turned back, and for an instant, as a stoplight hovered on red and finally, reluctantly, flicked to green, Christa saw behind her shell. The black eyes were pain-filled, imponderably sad, hopeless.
Devi did not speak until Christa had pulled into the parking lot. Beyond the plate-glass windows, lights were bright, coffee steamed, the waitress’s uniform was crisp.
“Whatever it is you’ve got,” she said. “I wish to hell I had some of it.”
Devi did not want the magic. She wanted instead what the magic was grounded upon: a sense of purpose, a knowledge of intrinsic power, a claim to one’s own life. Christa faced her in the dark car. “Can I help?” An honest offer. One woman to another.
“You do pretty good with walls and floors. How are you at dissolving childhoods?”
Melinda pounded on the window, and they both jumped. “Hey! You guys want to freeze?”
Devi’s wall rose again like dull iron. “We were waiting for you.”
“I’m here. I’m here,” Melinda’s teeth were chattering. “Let’s get inside. I don’t want to die before I’ve made my first three platinum albums.”
But as Devi opened the door, Christa touched her hand. “I’m here, too,” she said softly.
“Thanks. Just let me watch, huh? Maybe something will rub off.” Devi’s words smoked in the cold air, hung for a moment, and dispersed without a trace.
The telephone on Kevin’s desk was disturbingly reminiscent of the one in his parents’ kitchen. It was the same design, the same color, and years ago he had poked at its counterpart with stubby, little-boy fingers, adding grime, fingerprints, and the remnants of peanut-butter sandwiches to the patina of scratches of dust that had been forming on the device since before he was born. Today his fingers were different, but he was still poking: picking up the handset, putting it down, flicking idly at the dial.
What would he say? What could he say after almost twenty years? Hello?
Even though her tears had been wordless, Christa had continued to teach him. Angry though he might be, resentful though he surely was, he could not walk away from fifteen years of his life.
His memories now, blunted by time, tempered by Christa, seemed almost sadly funny, emblematic of a continuous, near-comic sequence of misunderstandings: the classic bewilderment of the old when confronted with the young. Once he had been sitting on his bed with the tobacco-sunburst Strat, determined to learn “Purple Haze” note for note. The record had been playing, and his fingers had been sore. His father had stumped up the stairs on legs that were bent and crooked from years of carrying sides of beef. Arms akimbo, blue eyes hard and glinting, he had surveyed his eldest son and the electric guitar.
“So, we’re playing nigger music now, eh?”
Prodding at the black phone, finally picking up the handset and dialing, Kevin actually laughed about it. Maybe it was worth a try, even after twenty years. Christa could not go back: she had as much as said so. But he could.
Dead air. Hissing. A click and the sound of a ring. They might have moved. It was possible.
But the second ring was cut short. “Hello?”
His mother’s voice. It was older now, sere with age, but he knew it. He found that his mouth was dry. “Uh… in, ma. It’s Kevin.”
“Kevin?” He wondered if his name had been expunged from the family records. A heretic. Gone forever now. “Kevin? Oh, dear God, Kevvy?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s me.”
There was no depth to the evening sky: it might have been a dark gray plate set on top of the city, or the lid of a chest freezer that had been fastened down securely, the light switching off automatically as the rubber gasket thumped into place.
Melinda’s hands were numb on the steering wheel. The car heater had been broken for months, but her job did not pay well enough for her to have it fixed. She shrugged inside her jacket: winter was not all that long. And besides, there was a chance—a good chance—that comparatively soon she would have money sufficient to replace the entire automobile.
“This is it,” she muttered as she made the turn onto Virginia Avenue. “We’re going to make it. We just are. Carl, if you can’t hear what’s on this cassette, then you’re deaf and ought to be tethered out to die.”
She believed in the band. She believed in Christa.
One break was all they needed, someone at some record company who would listen fairly to the demo. And then…
“Blammo!” She was grinning. Gossamer Axe had to start with local clubs and bars, but that would not last long. One break.
The parking lot at InsideOut was almost empty. Monday nights were usually lean, and the evening had just started. She parked close to the door.
“Hey, Melinda!” The voice was familiar, and she felt a dry trickle run down her spine. She hurried toward the entrance, hoping that the caller would figure he had made a mistake.
“Melinda Moore!”
She gave up and stood her ground. Tom Delany was waving at her from the stage door.
“How the hell are you?” He jogged toward her. “I been wondering what you were doing.” He spoke quickly, in bursts of words that ran together. “Hey, you’re done up, aren’t you? You here to see my band?”
He had not changed. “What are you on, Tom?” said Melinda.
“Little coke. Little speed. We had a party last night to celebrate our first gig.” He grinned sheepishly, his blond hair falling into his eyes despite a layer of hairspray. “Didn’t get much sleep.”
He seemed faintly ridiculous to her. “Well,” she said, “good luck.”
“You know, if you’d taken my offer last June, it’d be you playing with me.”
She nearly laughed in his face. What Tom had offered was nothing compared to what she had now. “Actually,” she said, “I’m in a band. I’m here with a demo for Carl.”
“Oh, yeah? Who’s playing guitar?”
“Christa Cruitaire.”
“Never heard of her.”
“You will, Tom. You can fucking bet on it.” She grinned at him, felt the hot contempt rise. “See you later.”
She pushed in through the glass doors and asked for Carl. The girl at the front desk examined her from beneath dark blue eyelids, asked her name, and pointed to a door at the end of a short hallway. “He’s expecting you. Just give a knock and go right in.”
Melinda stepped into a sitting room with two overstuffed chairs and a sofa arranged around a teakwood coffee table. Cigarette smoke hung in a soft haze and glowed like a halo about the ceiling lights.
She had met Carl Taylor years ago, and, like Tom, he was a reminder of a period in her life that she was trying to forget. Then, as now, he had owned a club, and he had booked the better bands. Carl was a part of the milieu, a background figure that remained constant no matter how the props and costumes changed. If you were in Denver, and your business was music, then sooner or later you dealt with Carl.
She wondered if he would remember her, hoped he would not. She had made quite a reputation…
Carl rose from a chair. “How are you, Melinda?”
“I’m okay, Carl.”
He regarded her for a moment. She was suddenly conscious of her body. Did the spandex look good on her? Was she putting on weight? Too many lines around her eyes?
But Carl seemed appreciative. “Back into music, are you?”
He remembered. She tried to shrug it off with a forced laugh. “Can’t kick the habit.” The cassette was a lump of fire in her pocket. The past was gone, over. All he had to do was listen. It was only the beginning.
He dropped an arm about her shoulders and guided her to the sofa. Maybe the spandex was a mistake, too much a reminder of the stupid girl she had once been. “What do you have for me tonight, Melinda?”
Her hands were shaking. She extracted the cassette, fumbled with it for an instant, then handed it over. “I won’t give you any hard sell. You know me too well for that. Just listen, huh?”
“That’s my job.” Carl went to a rack of stereo equipment that stood against the wall. “If I didn’t listen to demos, I wouldn’t have music, would I?” He laughed and slipped the cassette into a player. LEDs glowed, and the speakers hissed faintly.
He sat down with her while the leader ran out. She felt his eyes on her, felt his body heat through her spandex.
The tape opened with a brief improvisation by Christa, who double-stopped two-part polyphony up and down the neck of her guitar, weaving together two discrete tunes. The sound, overdriven and chorused, was massive, but the melodic lines were clean, separate, and perfectly balanced.
“You’ve got two guitarists?”
“No,” said Melinda, “that’s just Christa. And that’s live—no overdubs. She can do that on stage.”
Carl’s eyebrows lifted.
Christa’s solo ended with a series of power chords that segued into the first of a sampling of cover tunes from the songlist. Carl listened, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. His eyebrows lifted again. Melinda tried to hide her smile.
In the silence between songs, he turned to her. “The band sounds good, but that’s some guitarist you’ve got.”
“That’s Christa. She’s terrific, isn’t she? This next one is an original. It’s called ‘Firing Line.’ ”
And the speakers exploded again with sound, a burning, turbulent rhythm that leaned into each beat as though with a battering ram. Monica’s voice was a call to battle:
“
Are you surprised to see me
Standing at your door
?”
When the music faded, Carl sat for a minute. The tape ran out silently. “Well…”
“What do you think?” Melinda tried to sound disinterested, but her pride kept breaking through.
He strolled over to the stereo, rewound the cassette, took it out, and hefted it in his hand. “I think I’m going to hire a band, Melinda. This bunch that’s playing tonight: they’re due back mid-December, but I’m going to toss them for Gossamer Axe. I’ll give you girls a week, starting Friday the twelfth. If the patrons like you, we’ll talk about the future. How does that sound?”
It was happening, but it was only a beginning. “Sounds good.”
“You guys come on down to my house tomorrow night,” said Carl. “I’ll have the contract ready.”
Melinda nodded, stood up. She held out her hand for the cassette.
“How about I keep this for a little?” he said. “That’s quite a band you’ve got. I’d…”
He looked at her, smiling. Suddenly, she was glad she had worn the spandex. She was still young; she could still rock and roll. And she knew that any lines around her eyes were invisible.
“I’ve got some friends in L.A. who’d like to hear this.”
She smiled back at him.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’m having a little party on Saturday. Why don’t you—don’t worry about the rest of the band, just you—why don’t you come on by? We’ll have some fun. I’ll introduce you to some friends.”
Her hands were not shaking at all. “That sounds real nice, Carl. Thanks. I’d like that.”