Highway 285 wound into the mountains. There was only a little traffic, and Kevin kept his high beams on most of the time. The road rose to meet him, signs glowed out of the darkness, double yellow lines led him home.
Good concert, that. Malmsteen was everything they said he was, and his tendinitis did not seem to be slowing him down a bit. Kevin thought he had detected a few fumbles during the acoustic introduction to “Black Star,” but fumbles were a hazard of the trade. Out of all those notes, a few could be incorrect without hurting anything.
The feeling was the important thing. Kevin had heard critics of the young Swede insist that he was no more than a technician, an automaton who hid his lack of emotion behind a flurry of notes. But there was feeling there, and it manifested as a clean precision that lofted the guitar leads and solos into rarefied heights. If Malmsteen was without passion, then so was his idol, Paganini. Different kinds of music, different kinds of feeling. People had said the same thing of old Bach, too.
And what about me?
He thought of old Frankie, of B.B., of Clapton and the rest. What about Kevin Larkin? Where had it gone? Where was it hiding? Passion. Feeling. Making music was like making love—Frankie had said that once—but he wondered if he had ever really made love. Guilt-ridden fucking in the back of his father’s car in the hills west of Cheyenne had led on to anonymous unions and furtive partings in dark rooms above seedy bars in towns that were so similar that they had not possessed names, only vague recollections of stale smoke and sour beer, of blues drifting up from below…
Christa sat on the arm of Melinda’s broken-down sofa, swinging her feet in time to the music as she listened intently to the songs that Melinda played from her record collection. Some of what she heard horrified her, some she found amateurish and amusing, some was merely noise. But she also heard songs that made her heart pound as though she were back in the concert and listening to this music for the first time, hearing potentials, hearing magic.
She asked for more, always pushing in the direction of the violence and passion of heavy metal. Puzzled, bewildered, Melinda complied, and the hours passed, filled with everything from early Beatles to late Metallica.
The sky was lightening when Melinda finally snapped off the stereo. “I’m bushed,” she said. “I have to take you home so I can crash.”
Christa herself felt strong and free, her native attitudes and pride stretching like long-unused muscles. She recalled the prayer with which she had begun this long day, smiled. “Where does one go to learn to play rock and roll?” she said, reaching for her purse.
Melinda slid a record back into its cover. “You used to have to take your chances with your local music store, but there’s a place just opened a few months ago down on Evans. Guitar Tech. I’ve met the guy that teaches rock there. His name’s Kevin Larkin. He’s good: got a record offer a few years back. Big bucks.”
“I see.” Record contracts. Stardom. But her own goals were immediate and without complications. She did not want money or fame: she simply wanted Judith.
“Can’t figure it out, though,” Melinda continued. “He turned it down. I sure as hell wouldn’t. Anyway, Kevin’s a pro. He can teach you anything you want to know about rock.”
Christa nodded as she scribbled the names in a small notebook. “Where do I buy an electric guitar?”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Surely.”
“Do you know what you’re getting into?”
Did she? Had she known what she was getting into when she had run away from home? Or that night at the Sidh hill? Or that moment in the never-ending, static present of the Realm when she had stolen Ceis and won her way back to mortality? “Not in the slightest, Melinda,” she said. “But I know what I have to do. Where do I get a guitar?”
The morning was growing outside, and the cheap white curtains of the apartment had paled enough to show their wear and stains. Melinda chewed silently on her lip as she stared at the door to her front closet, her eyes hollow within their dark makeup. She appeared to be remembering something unpleasant. “Yeah. Right. You need a guitar.” She stood up, opened the closet, and pulled out a flat, rectangular case. “Listen: it’s hard enough to buy something even when you know what you’re looking for, and there’s a lot of rip-off joints out there. If you want, I’ll give you this. It’s a funny color, but it plays okay.”
She unsnapped the case and lifted out an avocado-green guitar. “This is a Strat. Like what Yngwie uses. An old boyfriend gave it to me.”
Melinda plunked a few strings, tuned the instrument, and squinted appraisingly down the length of the fingerboard. Christa was reminded of Sruitmor: the old harper had examined her first, crudely made harp in just this same way, peering at it from one angle, then another. He had checked the heft, the tuning, the workmanship, and then he had…
Melinda held out the guitar. “Here. It’s in good shape, even if it’s the same color as a Waring blender.”
… held it out to her.
Christa looked into Melinda’s tired eyes. Where was Sruitmor now? In the Summerland? For so long?
She took the guitar and rested it on her thigh. Her left hand fumbled for a moment as it struggled to comprehend the frets. She could learn. It would not be easy, but she could learn.
Running a hand along the supple strings, she took note of the guitar. Twenty-one frets: a little over three octaves. It was a few notes less than her willow harp, but the guitar contained the sharps and flats also, which her harp did not.
She met the bassist’s blue eyes again.
Sruitmor had blue eyes too, did he not
?
She could not quite remember. Goddess, it had been a long time.
“Thank you, Melinda,” she said. “I’ll try to be worthy of this.”
“It’s just rock and roll, Christa.” Melinda shrugged, then laughed. “I’ve corrupted my harp teacher! I can’t believe it!”
Melinda drove her and the guitar home and dropped them off with a wave as the sun rose over the eastern pplains. The sky was a deep blue, promising a fine day; and when Christa let herself into her house, the mirror in the hallway showed her a young woman with a guitar. She looked very like the girl who had faced the Sidh with only a harp of willow.
Shrouded in blue velvet, Ceis stood on the table in the studio. It said nothing, but she sensed its approval.
The highway east of Bismarck was a gray line that play ruler straight amid the gold of unrelieved fields of wheat. It receded into the distance, diminishing with perspective, turning into a vague heat shimmer just before it reached the horizon.
In the equipment bus, Lisa Donnatelli fumbled beside the seat for her jacket, fumbled some more into a pocket, and came up with a pair of sunglasses. The noon sun glared off the North Dakota plains, and though the glasses fogged the view as much as they darkened it, she grunted with relief once she had them on.
She checked the dashboard, then her watch. On schedule. The band would be in Bismarck by four, which left a few hours for setup—providing, of course, that they could find the club—and even some time to eat.
Her eyes felt dry and full of grit, her skin stretched and taut. She needed a full day of sleep in a real bed, in a real room that had a door she could lock. She had had enough of the roach-infested camaraderie of band houses and cheap motels.
But a day off was a half a week away, and for now she had to drive this endless strip of concrete with nothing to look forward to come evening save four sets in a smoky bar, abuse from the local rednecks, and two or three hours of comatose sleep.
She glanced over her shoulder. Her bandmates play dozing on cushions beside cases and speaker cabinets. One turned over, belched loudly, and pried one eye open as he scratched at a stubble of beard. “You want me to take over, Boo-boo?”
It was the most civil thing any of them had said to her since the auditions. But she shook her head. “Go ahead and sleep, Max. I’m doing all right.”
Max rolled back over and began snoring. After that argument about band funds in Fargo, she was not sure she felt safe enough to sleep among them. Anyway, driving was like drumming: once you got in a groove, it was easier to continue than to stop.
But was it maybe like living, too? She had been on the road now for six weeks, playing one tiny bar after another, and she had nothing to show for it save a dozen broken drumsticks and some extra lines in her face: a repeat of the tour before that, and the one before that and…
Sometimes, in the middle of endless drives like this, with the sun burning down on the plains and the interior of the bus turning close and stifling in spite of open windows and a cooler full of soft drinks, she found herself drifting off into daydreams about nine-to-five jobs and lifestyles in which she did not have to worry about money, a place to sleep, or strapped bandmates plotting to steal her equipment; in which she possessed a stability and fulfillment that eluded her in this life of pickup bands and coffee shops.
“Yeah, Boo-boo,” she muttered as she reached back into the cooler and fished out a pop, “you’re going to settle down and marry a rock star someday. Sure you are. And then what are you going to do? Bang your head against the walls? All you know is drums, girl, and there pain’t no magic in the world gonna save you, no matter what your grandma said.”
Groove? Or rut? She was not certain anymore. Was there even a difference?
She was tired. She checked her watch again. Four hours to Bismarck.
Danny Larkin watched the evening fall over the Bighorn Mountains. The sky just above the peaks still glowed with the last touches of sunset and, higher up, the stars came out to shine down on the city of Sheridan.
The day had been hot, but the breeze from the north was cool, and it sighed through the balcony railings and whispered through the curtains and the screens. Danny tried to forget the sound of the traffic below, tried, in fact, to forget everything except this balcony, and this night, and these stars…
A clink of glass inside the apartment brought him back. “Benji?”
“Right here.”
“Would you fix me another drink?”
Benji examined him through the screen, sipped at a glass of soda water. “I’d like to hold you to two, love.”
Danny sighed. Benji slid the screen open and stood behind him.
“It’s pretty tonight.”
“Yeah.” Danny lifted his glass and let the last of the alcohol slide down his throat.
Benji put a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Just thinking about the seminary. I can’t seem to get it out of my head these days. I keep wondering what they’re doing there now. probably eating. Father Paul is reading in that weird Georgia accent of his.”
Benji leaned casually against the railing. His build was that of a wrestler, compact and taut; and Danny wished he could have some of Benji’s ppresence, for he himself was fair and thin, someone who, even after a year and a half away from the seminary, still looked like a model for the illustrations in a child’s missal.
Benji touched Danny’s head, played for a moment with a lock of his hair. “Is that all you’re stewing about?”
“No, only half. The other half is my parents.”
“That was pretty hard on you.”
“Yeah.” Danny lifted his glass again, realized it was empty, put it down. “They were so proud of me. Now I’m some kind of leper.”
He rubbed at his eyes. It was only a formality: his tears had dried up long ago.
Benji frowned. “You’re sweating. Have you got a fever?”
“Nah. Just terminal guilt.” Danny laughed, but he found that he was shaking with a sudden chill. Sweat was running down his forehead. He slumped in his chair. “It’s probably nothing.”
Benji leaned closer. “You had a good sweat last night, too. Your side of the bed was soaked.”
“I’m just tired.”
Benji poured his soda water into Danny’s glass. “Drink that. You need some fluids. You’ve been losing weight, and now it looks like you’ve got some kind of virus.” His voice was a soft, concerned basso. “Would you do me a favor, loverboy? Would you take that cute little Pass of yours and get it over to the clinic tomorrow?”
“Why bother?”
Benji touched Danny’s head again. “Because I love you, you fearful little Jesuit. Enough to coax you out of the bar scene, enough to ask you to live with me, enough to want to keep you going.” He knelt down beside Danny and wrapped him in his thick arms. Together they watched the last light fade from the sky. “Do it for me.”
When Kevin Larkin got to the guitar school on Monday morning, he found a note tacked to his office door.
Christa Cruitaire—3:30
, it said in Dave’s backhanded printing.
He plucked it off, walked round the corner, and stuck his head into Dave’s room. The sandy-haired teacher looked up, as did an equally sandy-haired girl with an acoustic guitar on her lap. She blinked at Kevin with big blue eyes as though this rocker with the long hair and the ragged denim jacket were exactly the sort of person that her parents had nightmares about.
“What’s this?” Kevin waved the note.
Dave squinted at it through his thick glasses. “Oh, her. Some girl who wants to play guitar like that Malmsteen guy you’re always raving about. She called first thing this morning.”
“She coming in?”
“Three-thirty, like it says. You had an opening then.” Dave leered at his student for a moment, then turned back to Kevin. “Stay out of her pants, Kev.”
“Huh?”
“We all know about rockers.” He looked at his student again. “Don’t worry, Rae. I’ll rotect you.”
She nodded. “Right,” she said resignedly. “That’s all I need.”
Kevin started back toward his office. “Don’t believe a word of it, Rae,” he called over his shoulder. “Folk guitarists are all animals. Why do you think there are so many folk?”
He glanced at the slip once more and then stuck it on his wall. It was to be expected, really. A virtuoso like Malmsteen could not possibly give a concert without triggering someone’s interest. When Chris Parkening had played at the Denver Center a few months back, the school had received numerous calls about classical lessons. With Malmsteen, it was metal.
Another head-banging teenager who wanted to conquer the world with an electric guitar and a Marshall stack. Interesting, though, that a girl would be so inspired.
Reverently, he hung Frankie’s guitar on the wall. “You’re still the best, old man,” he said. He plucked a string with his fingernail. “We’ll see what you can teach me today, huh?”