Trader

by Charles de Lint

  She knew dozens of musicians, watched them play, went to their gigs. Some had better stage rapport than others, some had better musical skills, but all of them made the performance seem so effortless—the way it only felt for her when she was alone, playing in her room. That was real freedom, she thought. That was when the past finally lost its hold on you and you could move on. The trick was getting there, stepping through, into that freedom.

  “So how’s my favorite redhead?” a voice said.

  Zeffy started, then smiled when she turned to find Geordie Riddell leaning up against a lamppost nearby, fiddle case in hand, smiling back at her. She hadn’t even realized that she’d stopped walking.

  Geordie was his usual scruffy self, frayed jeans, scuffed shoes, ragged Indian-print vest over a short-sleeved, collarless white shirt. All charm, when he smiled. Something tender in his eyes, even when he was angry, which wasn’t often. He had the same even temperament as Jilly, a laissez-faire that seemed inborn rather than cultivated.

  “How would Amy feel if she heard you say that?” Zeffy asked.

  Geordie laughed. “Good point. What I meant was, how’s my favorite redheaded guitarist?” His gaze shifted from her face to her instrument. “Got a gig?”

  This was so embarrassing, Zeffy thought. She felt caught out. Here was Geordie who made his living busking, teamed up with Amy more often than not, fiddle and Irish pipes, the two of them a unit, if not a romantic item. He was going to think that she was such a phony. But it was too late now to pretend she was here for anything else.

  She shifted the weight of her guitar case from one hand to the other. “I was thinking of...you know, playing a little music in the park.”

  Geordie looked away to the lunch crowd that was congregating around the War Memorial.

  “You could do okay,” he said. “It’s a pay week and a nice day—always a good combination.”

  When his gaze returned to hers it was utterly guileless and Zeffy realized that she’d been projecting her fears again, deciding beforehand what somebody thought instead of waiting to see what they were actually thinking. As if Geordie would ever be so small-minded.

  “Do you think so?” she asked. “I’ve never done this before so I wouldn’t know.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “I’m kind of nervous, actually.” She laughed, but was unable to keep her apprehension from showing. “And that was the understatement of the year. If you want to know the truth, I’m semi-terrified.”

  “Don’t be. If it gets bad, just close your eyes and pretend you’re playing for friends. The worst people can do is simply keep on walking, which, when you come to think of it, is better than playing to a room that’s sitting there, glaring at you, wondering when and if you’ll do something they like.”

  “I suppose. Luckily, I’ve never had that experience. My worst gigs are those where basically nobody shows up.”

  Geordie winced. “I hate those. Especially when you’re playing for the door.”

  “And of course they never ask you back.”

  “Not that you’d want to go back.”

  They both smiled at the shared experience, but only because there was enough time and distance between them and the actual events. Zeffy remembered, as she was sure Geordie did, just how devastating those nights were. Even when you knew it wasn’t your fault—bad advertising, a big sports event or concert on elsewhere, folk act booked into a hard-rock club—you still felt like such a personal failure.

  “I’d set up over by the fortune-tellers,” Geordie said. “See? There are some open spaces to the left of where they are. Don’t get so close you’ll drown them out, but don’t go so far that you lose out on the spillover of people drawn to them.”

  “You think so?”

  He nodded. “And a word of advice: If you get a biggish crowd—which, having heard you play, I don’t doubt you will—play through to the end of the song and then take a break, retune or something. The cops are pretty good here about letting us busk, but they don’t like having too many people crowding around, blocking the path. Irritates the people who paid for their vendor’s permits, if you know what I mean, and then the cops’ve got to deal with their complaints.”

  Zeffy was still blushing over his compliment and missed some of what he was saying.

  “I need a permit?” she asked.

  “Officially, yes. Unofficially, just be cool about it and no one’ll hassle you.” He pushed away from the lamppost. “Gotta run. Amy’ll be waiting for me at St. Paul’s.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “No problem. Hey, if you ever feel like working the theatre queues with me or something, give me a call. I can never seem to get anybody to work evenings—mostly because they want real gigs. But it’s fun, and the money can be good.”

  Zeffy flashed on how she’d been joking with Tanya earlier in the morning. She could just imagine her roommate’s reaction to her playing with Geordie—never mind that she’d met him before Tanya ever had and neither of them had ever expressed any romantic interest in him until Tanya had last night. Tanya always had this fear that people were going to steal away her boyfriends.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m just kind of doing this to warm up for a gig I’ve got this weekend.”

  Geordie laughed. “What did I tell you? Everybody wants their name on the marquee; nobody wants to play the streets.”

  Zeffy sighed. She hoped he didn’t think that she considered herself too good for that sort of thing.

  “It’s not that,” she started, but then she realized she didn’t know how to explain.

  “I understand,” Geordie told her. “Really I do. Truth is, I’d rather play a club, too, but when the gig’s not there, I’ve still got to pay the rent.” He grinned. “Besides, I’m such a little music slut. I don’t care where I play, so long as I get to play.”

  Zeffy had to laugh. “Well, maybe we could try it sometime. I’d have to learn some of your tunes.”

  “So call me when you’re free.” He looked at his watch and put on a look of mock horror. “Amy’s going to kill me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you from—”

  “I’m kidding. You know how long it takes her to tune those pipes of hers. She’ll probably still be fiddling with her reeds when I get there.” He gave her a jaunty wave and set off for the bus stop. “Say hi to Tanya for me. I had a great time with her yesterday.”

  “That’s what she said, too,” Zeffy called after him. “You should call her,” she added, deciding she might as well do her bit to seeing her roommate’s love life get back on a more even keel.

  He was a half-dozen yards away, but Zeffy could still see the flush that rose up from his neck to color his cheeks. She knew just how he felt, how the shyness made everything close up inside. But she also knew you couldn’t let it rule your life.

  “Really,” she said. “She doesn’t bite.”

  And you’d be good for each other, she added to herself.

  But Geordie only blushed more furiously and made his escape.

  She watched as he caught the #12 heading west on Bunnett, then turned to face her own ordeal. Her happiness at meeting up with Geordie slowly drained away. Yes, she knew exactly how he felt, but she was going to follow her own advice, which meant she wasn’t going to let the butterflies get the better of her.

  Squaring her shoulders, she hoisted up her guitar case and headed for the open spot near the fortune-tellers that Geordie had pointed out to her. She felt almost sick by the time she got there, but was still determined not to give in to it. Dropping her knapsack on the grass, she opened her guitar case and took her instrument out. It was all she could do to stop her hands from shaking with all the bored business people watching her from nearby benches. Their hands and mouths were busy with sandwiches and hot dogs, French fries and drinks, deep-fried zucchini, muffins, ice-cream bars and every sort of lunch dish and confection available from the food carts nearby, but their gaze
s were all on her. Curious. Watching her every move as she fumbled through the business of getting into tune.

  Welcome to the dinner club, Zeffy thought as she finally stood up. Her guitar was tuned and there was no other excuse at hand to stop her from starting her first song except that she thought she might die. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. A little extreme, though. Maybe she should just wish to be about an inch tall so that she could creep away through the short grass behind her and not be seen.

  Enough, she told herself. You’re just making it worse.

  She took a deep breath, closed her eyes and launched into a cover of “This Far From Home,” a song she’d learned from the album of a Vancouver singer-songwriter, Susan Crowe. One verse in, still singing about the metaphorical temple that held the writer’s past, she realized it was a bad choice. Great song, but she couldn’t give it the kind of powerhouse delivery that busking required. The piece needed a sound system so she could lean into the dreamy flow of the words and music without straining. It was a late-night song, smoky club times, whiskey-voiced, a bittersweet remembering of times long gone to which one couldn’t return.

  Out here, in the open air and competing with the traffic over on Palm Street and the lunchtime crowds, her performance sucked. She heard her voice quaver on the chorus and hated what she was doing to the piece. It deserved better than this. She took the song to the end of its chorus, ended with a repeat of the last line.

  Now what? she thought, her mind gone blank. She knew hundreds of songs, but couldn’t remember a single one. It was as though she’d never spent all those hours, painstakingly learning the chords from records, leaning close to the speakers to decipher an errant phrase or word.

  And then she made the mistake of opening her eyes.

  She could feel herself freeze up as she looked around herself, gaze nervous, stomach doing little flip-flops. The people sitting nearby seemed way too interested, leaning closer in her direction from all sides while those on the further benches didn’t seem to be aware that she’d ever begun or stopped. A couple of guys walking by gave her the once-over that had nothing to do with her music. All her guitar case held was the handful of coins she’d tossed in to spike the pot—a gentle hint as to what those passing by could do with all that loose change weighing down their pockets.

  Think, think, she told herself, and could only come up with a song she’d learned from an old Elvis album, “That’s All Right, Mama.”

  Well, why not?

  She started in with a shuffling skiffle beat, avoiding bar chords so that the sound of the open strings would carry and ring, opened with the chorus, drew the air from her diaphragm, pulled it up through her chest and aimed the lyrics at the other side of the far benches. The boom of her voice startled her as much as it did the people having their lunches around her. But it was a good surprise, she realized, eyes still open, gaze sliding from one face to another. It woke smiles, started feet tapping. By the time the chorus came around again, she knew she had them.

  Singing the Elvis song reminded her of Kirsty MacColl’s “There’s a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis,” so she segued into its opening chords, followed that song with a bouncy version of the Jazzabels’ “El Diablo.” To her surprise, people were actually stopping to listen. Coins were landing in her guitar case, even a few bills. As the crowd she was drawing swelled, she felt brave enough to try one of her own more up-tempo pieces and realized halfway through the song that she was actually having fun.

  Busking seemed so different from playing on stage. She supposed it was the lack of pressure, the fact that people were ambling by, stopping for a bit, then walking on. She wasn’t on a stage, under a spotlight, the audience expectant. She wasn’t locked into the knowledge that the sound system would amplify every mistake she made along with the bits she got right. Here it was come-what-may. People could listen, or walk on. And the weather certainly helped. The day was beautiful, putting her in as much of a good mood as most everybody else seemed to be feeling today. It woke a devil-may-care attitude in her, had her playing with her phrasing, jazzing up her instrumental breaks with a bit of scat.

  Tanya had been right, she thought as the crowd reacted to the finish of her song with a round of applause and smiles. She played one more song— Cock Robin’s “El Norte” to go with her T-shirt—then took a break to let the crowd disperse. She tried to be casual, glancing into her guitar case, but she couldn’t hold back a grin when she saw all the money lying there. There had to be at least twenty dollars.

  “Don’t hear many girls with a voice as big as yours,” a man said as he dropped a couple of bills into the case.

  “Thanks,” she said, still grinning.

  She wasn’t quite sure how she should take that. She supposed it was a compliment, well meant for all that it seemed a little backhanded. Right now it didn’t seem to matter.

  “Do you know any Salt ’N Pepa?” somebody else asked.

  “No,” she said. “But maybe this’ll do.”

  The crowd had lightened enough for her to feel she could start playing again and she jumped into the only rap song she knew, Luka Bloom’s version of “I Need Love” that he’d gotten from LL Cool J. She’d had to change the lyrics around a bit when she learned it to make the song fit a woman’s point of view, and this was the first time she’d sung it in public, so she wasn’t sure it would work. It was also a little harder to project her voice on it than it had been with the last batch she’d just played through, but this time she’d had the foresight to take it up a key, hoping her voice would carry farther under the theory that if you couldn’t sing louder, you could always sing higher. It seemed to work.

  “I love you, lady!” a young skateboarder yelled before kicking a foot against the pavement and riding off into the crowd. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen.

  Zeffy blew him a kiss and those people standing close enough by to make out the lyrics laughed. She got through another short set before the crowd grew too big again and she had to stop once more. It happened quicker this time, and more quickly the next. By the time she stopped her fourth set, she’d only been able to do three songs before she got worried about how many people she’d drawn, crowding the sidewalk in front of her, swaying in place with their lunches in hand, listening.

  Maybe she should quit while she was ahead. A recent glance at the contents of her guitar case had her itching to count her take. She thought she might have almost seventy or eighty dollars in there.

  It seemed like she’d picked the right time to decide to stop. The crowds were thinning anyway, people heading back to their offices, lunch breaks over. But it was hard to give it up. Playing like this, loose and easy, had given her a buzz she hadn’t felt in ages.

  “You’re not all done, are you?” a fellow asked as she turned her guitar case around, ready to start transferring her earnings to her knapsack.

  She looked up at him, smiled. He was a nice-looking young man, late teens maybe, or early twenties, casually dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, baseball cap pushing down his dark brown hair.

  “’Fraid so,” she said. “For today anyway.”

  The words surprised her. But it was true. She wanted to come back. She’d had too much fun not to. She did realize that part of her success might be because of her novelty. She was new here, something a little different. But while she wouldn’t turn down the money she’d made, she realized it wasn’t the money that had given her the buzz. It was the sheer pleasure she’d gotten from playing.

  “So you’ll be here tomorrow?” the fellow asked.

  “If it’s not raining.”

  He got up from the bench where he’d been sitting and dropped a dollar bill in her case.

  “Well, I’ll see you then,” he told her. He started to walk away, then paused. “You know, you should be thinking about playing in some of the clubs.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tomorrow, she thought as she watched him leave, she was taping a poster for her gig on th
e lid of her guitar case. Free advertising wasn’t going to hurt.

  She finished packing up, then hoisted her knapsack to her shoulder, the weight of all those coins surprising her. Better than tips any day. At least here she felt as though she’d really earned the money. Half the time at the café it was more like people added their gratuity by rote. It didn’t matter if they thought she’d done a good job or not, they simply did it because it was expected.

  Picking up her guitar case, she wandered down the path, smiling her thanks when one or two of the fortune-tellers complimented her on the music.

  “Come back any time,” one of them said.

  He sat on a stool behind a small table covered with astrological charts. It all looked terribly complicated to Zeffy.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  The man grinned. “But don’t be too good. You want to leave a little money for the rest of us.”

  “Don’t you listen to him,” the dark-haired woman reading Tarot cards at the next spot over said. “You were bringing us business. I did more readings in the couple of hours you were playing than I did all day yesterday.”

  Zeffy smiled and continued on, past the fortune-tellers, over to where the craftspeople were set up. There were people selling jewelry and pottery, sketches and paintings, clothing, baskets, painted-paper boxes—there was even a leather-worker making shoes and belts on the spot. One man had an elaborate display of handwoven cotton scarves and little finger puppets made from what Zeffy assumed were remnants from his larger weaving projects. Her gaze moved from his table to the man sitting on the ground next to him, a scruffy dog curled up against his leg. The dog regarded her nervously, before dropping its head back onto its forepaws.

  Zeffy smiled when she saw the funny little stick people the man was carving. He had a haphazard pile of twigs and bits of roots stacked beside him and was busy pulling features and humorous stances out of the found material with a small knife, using judicious bits of carving to amplify a nose here, eyes there, dancing legs, a big grin...whatever worked.