Trader

by Charles de Lint

  Zeffy sighed. Maybe there was something to be said about having some discretionary funds.

  She held the case between her legs, arms wrapped around its neck in a loose embrace, and stared out the window as the city blocks went by. How many years would it take for her to save up and buy an instrument of this quality? She still couldn’t believe that Trader had just up and lent it to her with only her old guitar for collateral. It was going to be such a treat to play it today. Then she had to smile. Anyone who knew anything about instruments wasn’t likely to toss any change at her case this afternoon. They’d figure if she could afford a Trader, well, she didn’t need the money, did she?

  New passengers came, went or stayed, an ever-changing array as the streetcar stopped and started its way across town, from mailmen, high-school kids and street punks to older women going shopping, young mothers with toddlers in tow and Scandinavian and Filipino nannies with their infant charges. Two schoolgirls settled in the seat behind Zeffy, giggling about what someone named Cheryl had said to her boyfriend. In the seat ahead, two punky-looking girls of the same age, but with half-shaved heads and multiple earrings, gossiped about a knifing they’d witnessed in front of a club in Foxville the night before. When the streetcar stopped at the north gate of Fitzhenry Park, she and the two old men with the chessboard disembarked amidst a bustle of women, strollers, and infants. The punky girls got off as well, still talking about the knifing, except now they were commiserating over the fact that they hadn’t got back to the club in time to see the band that had been slated to play that night.

  Zeffy could only shake her head. Neither of the girls could have been much more than seventeen. Not many years separated her from them, and she’d been just as dedicated in making outlandish fashion statements at that age herself, but she couldn’t imagine a time that she would ever have had such disregard for the victim of an attack as they’d witnessed last night. Had neither of them thought to stay and help the poor woman?

  The whole situation just depressed her and she quickened her pace so that she wouldn’t have to listen to them. Now, if it had been Johnny who’d gotten stabbed...

  Catty, she told herself. Don’t think about him or Tanya any more today.

  But when she got to the area around the War Memorial, she couldn’t stop herself from looking for him. She wasn’t sure how she felt when he didn’t seem to be around. She wanted to give him a piece of her mind—the nerve of him stringing her along the way he had with that stupid story of his— but some part of her also wanted to see him again.

  This is so stupid, she thought.

  There was no one in the spot where she’d played yesterday, so she decided to claim it again today. It had certainly proved lucky for her so far.

  Except for meeting Johnny, she amended, and felt irritated all over again that she couldn’t get him out of her head.

  Tanya had been right about one thing last night: he’d got his hooks into her, no question. Charmed her in the same way he seemed to mesmerize everybody else. She didn’t know how he did it. Even someone like Tanya, who knew he was stringing her along, still seemed so ready to forgive and forget. And as for herself...Zeffy sighed. She’d been immune to him before, so what had changed?

  Taking the Trader out of her case helped her focus on something more pleasurable. She’d never played an instrument as good as this before. It was like the wood had a soul of its own and they were collaborating on the music, instead of it all having to come from her. She wondered if he’d lend it to her again some time so that she could use it to record a demo.

  It was so easy to tune it, so easy to call up the music from its strings. Remembering the conversation of the two punky girls, she started off playing Richard Thompson’s ironic “The World Is a Wonderful Place,” knowing that half the people who stopped to listen wouldn’t get it, but she didn’t care. She sang it anyway. By the time she was through the song, the sheer pleasure of playing the guitar had swallowed her melancholy. She played a couple of more cheerful songs, then switched to an open tuning for an instrumental that she’d written years ago and hadn’t played in months.

  It was either the guitar, or she was simply on today, but the tune had never sounded so good. The crowd she’d drawn seemed to appreciate it as well. Gaze on her fingerboard, she was startled at the end of the piece when she looked up and saw the size of it. The crowd gave her a round of applause and she felt a hot flush rise up her neck to color her cheeks. It was still hard to get used to people liking her music.

  Remembering Geordie’s warning yesterday, she played one more song in the same open tuning, then took a break. Coins clattered in the case, along with a handful of one-dollar bills. She smiled her thanks and sat down on the grass to put the instrument back into a standard tuning. By the time she was done, most of the people had drifted away. She stood up and was about to start playing again when her heartbeat did a little flip.

  Here came Johnny Devlin and his dog. They were both still fairly scruffy, but at least the dog appeared to have had a bath. She knew she should blast him for how he’d taken her in with his oh-so-earnest delivery of that outrageous story of his, but she was in too good a mood to spoil it with an argument. So she smiled at him and was completely unprepared for the blast of venom that came out of him.

  “Where the hell did you get that?” he demanded.

  “I bet your pardon?”

  “Don’t give me that crap.”

  He started to reach for the guitar, but she pulled it out of his reach, swinging it on its strap so that it hung at her back. Her good mood fled and she glared at him, every bad thing she remembered about him rising up in her mind.

  “I don’t know what the hell’s the matter with you today,” she began, “but don’t even think of touching this guitar.”

  Johnny let his hand drop, but the anger stayed in his eyes, a smoldering fury that might have scared Zeffy if she wasn’t so angry herself. Beside him, the dog stood trembling, picking up on his mood. Zeffy’s heart went out to the animal, but not so much that she wasn’t ready to stand her ground.

  “Do you have any idea how much this instrument is worth?” she asked.

  “Do you have any idea what it means to me?” he replied.

  “I don’t see how it can mean a bloody thing. I doubt you ever saw it before this moment.”

  “So he just gave it to you.”

  Zeffy shook her head. “Not that it’s any of your business, but he lent it to me until he could do a fret job on my guitar.”

  “Until he does a fret job for you?” Johnny repeated. He shook his head and gave a mirthless laugh. “So I guess that means you can have it forever.”

  “You are so pathetic.”

  “At least I know how to repair a guitar. I’d love to see your boyfriend manage.”

  “First of all, Max isn’t my boyfriend—I only met him yesterday.”

  “When he, out of the blue, lent you this priceless guitar.”

  Zeffy glared at him. “And second of all, he was inlaying this guy’s name on a mandolin neck when I got to his shop.”

  “This guy.”

  “Some guy named Frank,” Zeffy said. “What’s the difference?”

  “And he told you Frank was a guy?”

  Zeffy nodded. “We were talking about the inlay. I thought it was kind of neat, having your name on the neck of your instrument, but he thought it was a bit of a joke.”

  “I would never laugh at someone wanting their name on one of my instruments.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Zeffy asked.

  “A person wants their name on an instrument I make for them tells me just how much they respect my work. That it’s not just some monetary investment for them, but something they’re planning to keep and play for the rest of their life. Who’d laugh at something like that?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Zeffy told him. “I mean, it wasn’t like he was mocking this Frank guy. We were just...talking.”

  “Right. While he
was doing the inlay on ‘Frank’s’ mandolin. You saw him actually working on it, of course.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “And then you made such a wonderful impression on him that he just gives you my guitar.”

  “Not your guitar,” Zeffy said. “His guitar. And he only lent it to me.”

  “I would never lend that guitar,” Johnny told her. “Not to anybody.” Zeffy rolled her eyes. “Oh right. Mr. I-Switched-Brains-With-Max-Trader. How could I forget? Of course it’d be your guitar, wouldn’t it?”

  “You’ve played it,” Johnny said. “Would you just lend it out to a stranger?”

  “That’s not the point. The point is Max made the guitar, not you. He decided to lend it to me, not you. This has got nothing to do with you except for this delusion you’re dragging around with you to explain how screwed up your life is.”

  “You’re right,” Johnny said. “I didn’t make that guitar—just the neck, and I still haven’t got it right either, though I’ve gotten pretty close. Janossy made the body before he died. The perfect guitar body. I’m hoping that, before I die, I’ll be able to fit it with the neck it deserves—the one he’d have made for it, if he’d been given the time.”

  “Janossy...?” Zeffy began, but then it clicked and she knew who he was talking about.

  Sandor Janossy was to guitars what Antonio Stradivarius or Nicholas Amati were to violins. You were about as likely to find an old Janossy guitar at a rummage sale as you were a Strad—and for the same reason. What most people didn’t realize about Stradivarius violins was that they were never lost in the first place. They were bought by the aristocracy in the 1700s and remained in the hands of people who understood what they had ever since. All those violins that could be found at swap meets and the like, with “Antonio Stradivarius, 1720” plainly visible when one looked in through the F-hole, dated back to the days of patent medicines when advertisers could put whatever they liked as a label on their product, make any outrageous claim at all.

  Janossy guitars were all accounted for and changed hands with price tickets that made even a Trader seem cheap. Zeffy remembered that Max Trader had studied under Janossy for almost a decade—right up until the time Janossy died. All of which only meant that Johnny had done his research well. He had the information and the facts; unfortunately, his basic premise was unsound because no matter what he tried to get people to believe, Max Trader was still the luthier, and he was still the loser.

  “Yeah, well, it’s all really interesting,” she told him, “but it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference, does it? I’ll admit, you were so convincing yesterday, you had me half-believing you, but you only get to jerk my chain once.”

  “I’ll jerk more than your chain,” Johnny said.

  He took a step toward her and started to reach for the guitar again. Zeffy backed away.

  Oh shit, she thought. If the guitar got broken...

  “This guy giving you a hard time?”

  She felt so grateful for interruption, more so when she saw that the man who’d spoken had been in the crowd listening to her yesterday—one of the people that had seemed particularly appreciative. Clean-cut and cleanshaven, he was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his early twenties with a wide face and honest eyes. He wore chinos and a short-sleeved shirt with a nametag sewn above the pocket that read HANK.

  “He’s trying to take my guitar,” she told him.

  “It’s my guitar,” Johnny said.

  Hank stepped in between them, making Johnny back away from her. Johnny’s dog pressed tight against his leg, shivering and shaking and looking more miserable than any animal should have to feel. That just made Zeffy even more angry.

  “Look, fella,” Hank told Johnny. “Why don’t you take your problems away and then nobody’ll get hurt.”

  “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business,” Johnny said.

  He tried to step around Hank, but Hank would have nothing of it. He stiff-armed Johnny in the chest, making him stumble back. Every time Johnny tried to get his balance, Hank pushed him again until the dog got in Johnny’s way and Johnny stepped on its paw. The dog squealed and Johnny fell down, tripping over the animals back. He lost his grip of its leash and the dog scurried a few yards away where it cowered, chest against the ground. Johnny came up swinging.

  He didn’t get a chance to connect with Hank. In all the excitement, neither Zeffy or either of the combatants had noticed the approach of a pair of policemen. The taller of the two grabbed Johnny’s arm and gave him a push that knocked him back down onto the grass again. The other stepped in front of Hank, who held up his hands.

  “I was just trying to help the lady,” he said.

  “Let’s see some ID,” the policeman told him.

  “You, too,” his partner said to Johnny. “Let’s go. On your feet.”

  Hank took his wallet out and passed over his driver’s license. Johnny got up and made a show of checking his pockets.

  “I—” He cleared his throat. “It looks like I left my wallet at home.”

  “Somebody want to explain what this is all about?” the officer holding Hank’s driver’s license asked.

  They all started to talk at once until one of the policemen made everybody stop. He got the story from them one at a time. Hank started, explaining how he’d seen Zeffy and Johnny arguing. Before Zeffy could say anything, Johnny told the policemen that the reason they’d been arguing was because of this song she’d played, it was stupid, he knew, but it always drove him nuts and she went ahead and played it anyway. All Zeffy could do was look at him, wondering where this was going. But then she realized that Johnny wasn’t about to get into the ownership of the guitar—maybe even he was beginning to realize that no one was going to believe his crazy story. She was tempted to tell the truth, to tell the cops he was crazy and just let them haul him away, but she relented. It wouldn’t cost her anything to go along with him and more to the point, he was going to owe her one now, big time.

  “That’s pretty much what happened,” she said. “It was supposed to be a joke, but it got out of hand. I didn’t think he hated it that much.”

  “Uh-huh.” The policeman turned back to Johnny. “So where do you live?”

  “I …”

  In for a penny, in for a pound, Zeffy thought.

  “He’s been staying with my roommate and me,” she said, coming to Johnny’s rescue again. She gave the policeman her address. “Just until he gets a job.”

  “Aw, Jesus,” Hank said. “Isn’t this typical? And here I thought she really needed a hand.” He looked at the policemen. “Can I go?”

  The officer with his license nodded and handed his ID back to him.

  “I understand what you were doing, stepping in the way you did,” he told Hank, “but next time, call an officer to deal with the situation.”

  “You got it,” Hank said, and beat a quick retreat, fading into the crowd that had gathered to watch the entertainment.

  The officer who’d knocked Johnny down turned to Zeffy. “Can I see your busker’s license?” he asked.

  “I...”

  Zeffy’s heart went still. Now it was her turn to hesitate, but there was no one to step in and give her a hand. Then the other cop gave her a break.

  “Forget about it, Tom,” he said. “It’s too nice a day.” His gaze moved from Johnny to Zeffy. “Put it down to my being in a good mood and liking your music, lady. But I’m warning you. Either of you start something up again and we’ll run the pair of you in. Understand? I’m not that nice a guy.”

  “Yes, sir,” Zeffy said. “Thank you.”

  Johnny nodded and the policemen continued on their beat. Turning his back on Zeffy, Johnny went over to where his dog was still cowering in the grass and soothed it, stroking its fur and talking softly until it stopped shaking. He collected his end of the leash and stood up, walking back to where Zeffy was standing. The crowd around them had broken up and drifted off. “You owe me for this,” Zeff
y told him.

  “I owe you?”

  “I saved your ass.”

  Johnny shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think you’re just feeling a little guilty about what you and your friends are doing to me—that’s all.”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this.”

  “Believe it.” He sighed. “Christ, we both know what’s going on here. What else is part of the deal for you—besides my guitar, I mean?”

  “Johnny, this is getting way out of hand. I’ll admit you’ve never been my favorite person, but you’re acting seriously crazy and I really think you need some help.”

  “You’re right about my needing help. You’re just wrong about what kind I need. And my name’s not Johnny.”

  “Have it your way,” Zeffy said.

  Maybe keeping the cops from dragging him off hadn’t been such a good idea, she found herself thinking. Not when he was this out of it.

  “Nothing’s going my way,” Johnny told her. “But that’s going to change.” Oh-oh, she thought. “What are you going to do now?”

  “If you’re not involved with what’s happening to me,” he said, “then you’ve got nothing to be afraid of. It won’t concern you. But if you are, you’d better warn your boyfriend that I’m coming for him.”

  “All I’ve done is borrowed a guitar and listened to your wild stories.”

  “Okay. So here’s something else you can add to those stories: This ‘guy’ Frank whose mandolin your friend is supposedly working on is actually a woman named Frankie Beale. She plays in a bluegrass band called the Oak Mountain Girls. I just hadn’t gotten around to finishing her whole name on the neck. Her number’s in the book and you can ask her.”

  “I’m not going to call up some stranger just because you’re trying to convince me that—”

  “And the other thing,” he went, not letting her finish, “is take a look inside that guitar you’re holding and see what it says on the maker’s label.”