Down Beat

by Max Henry

  “So make me one,” I leer. “I dare you.”

  “Rick,” Toby warns. “Now’s not the time.”

  “No.” He spins on my brother. “Now is the perfect time. I’m fucking done wearing it for everything he does. This asshole either steps up, or steps out.”

  “Out it is then.” I thrust both middle fingers at the idiot and back away to grab my shit from the locker room.

  I’m done. Finished.

  Fucking over being primped and preened as Wallace’s prize show pony.

  What’s the point of doing all this if you spend the hours between salvaging what’s left of your mind to survive another round under the lights?

  I want to pick up a guitar because I long to, not because I’m scheduled to.

  I want to remember what it’s like to do this for the love of it, to give up everything and go without because this is where my passion lies.

  As crazy as it sounds, I fucking envy Tabby and her basic, broke life.

  Because after all is said and done, at least she still has a hunger for this. A love for the music.

  A fucking darn sight more than what can be said for me.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Tabitha

  “Wish You Were Here” – Pink Floyd

  The tour ended three months ago. I put Kendall in charge of my Facebook page the day they wrapped up, neglecting my profile and staying off all other social media so that I could avoid any news of what they’re doing now.

  How the album launch went.

  If he tried again.

  His name is banned in our apartment, the space my safe haven from the stress that follows me everywhere day to day. I don’t listen to the radio. I’m careful not to deviate from my saved playlists in Spotify. I turn my head when I pass the magazine rack in the stores.

  The closest I came was the start of one of their songs playing on the streamed radio that gets piped through the local convenience store. I set my purchases down on the nearest shelf and walked out.

  It’s not that I want to avoid him, it’s that I need to. I kept in touch with Toby after his phone call, living the tour vicariously through his texts and calls. The bitter irony was, by the time I gave in and agreed to talk with Rey, he didn’t want to talk to me.

  He broke down mid show, so Toby tells me. Snapped and walked out. They had to fight to get him to play the final concerts, and even then I’m told they had to refund several hundred tickets for people who complained about the sub-standard performance and the crude things he was saying between sets.

  Strangely enough, your fans don’t enjoy being told they’re a bunch of demanding sheep.

  I screwed up. I did what I thought was right, and I totally let him down. He didn’t find a reason to fight. He found a reason to give up.

  I completely misjudged him.

  He told me that he wanted change, and that made me think that all Rey needed was a push in the right direction. After all, when you lose the thing you love, isn’t that supposed to give you incentive to fight for it?

  I guess not when your mind is as fractured and incomplete as his.

  It took a week before I could look at my violin after that news, another five or so days before I could string together more than a few bars. After all, how could I blissfully continue to play the very thing that had cemented my decision to walk away from Rey? I felt like a traitor loving the instrument knowing what that had done to him. But piece-by-piece, day-by-day I found that fighting girl who brought me to this point in life, and I managed to get two songs composed.

  Two songs that give me hope that perhaps, just maybe, I can combine my classical training with a more modern twist and create something new and catchy.

  “I’m going out tonight with Sarah from college, remember?”

  A least Kendall seems to have her shit together. She slowly edges herself back into more of a social life, not letting my hermit lifestyle dictate hers.

  “I haven’t forgotten. Are you having dinner before you go?”

  “Probably not.” She flits through the living room, a dress slung over her arm. “I think I’ll grab something on my way to hers if that’s okay.”

  “Yeah. No worries.” I’ll probably consume my staple diet of cereal and head to bed early to try and bleed music.

  “Oh, I forgot.” She ditches the dress over the back of the armchair, and then dives into her purse. “I cleaned out the mailbox today and there was something for you.”

  “Yeah?” Another reminder for my overdue credit card, no doubt.

  Kendall Frisbees the envelope onto my lap, retrieving her dress before she disappears to get ready. I lift the formal-looking correspondence, and check out the sender’s address.

  BMM

  Who the hell is BMM?

  The whine of the hairdryer starts down the hall as I slip my thumb under the lip and rip it open. A single folded sheet resides inside, and its only when I pull it out that the weight of the paper seems odd. I fold it out, my stomach knotting at the clearly music-orientated logo at the top, and then threatening to flip in on itself when I see the extra weight was a check.

  What the hell?

  I seriously can’t breathe. The empty envelope tumbles to the floor as I rise and hustle to the cracked window for some fresh air. The figure on the check can’t be right. It has way too many digits before the decimal point. Way too many.

  My hands shake with such violence as I bring the letter up, that I drop it to my side again and focus on steadying my breathing. One, two… in and out. The page still rattles as I hold it, but at least the words aren’t a blur. I skim over it, absorbing the important details.

  Song title: Another Time Around

  Writers: Reymand James Thomas, Tabitha Sally Reeves

  What. The. Fuck.

  Royalties owed for first quarter sales/streams

  No. Fucking. Way.

  I can’t read any more.

  The letter and check flutter to the ground as I narrowly avoid twisting an ankle in my haste to get to my phone. “Kendall!”

  I holler her name again as I unlock the screen and punch through to the Spotify app. Come on, come on, come on. “Kendall!”

  “I’m coming.” She skids into the living room, her shoulders dropping. “Jesus. I thought you’d hurt yourself.”

  “I have.” My thumb slips and hits the wrong song. I growl and smack the right one.

  My one.

  The phone clatters to the coffee table as I fail to set it down properly, my hands shaking violently as the bars of music I wrote that last night in the hotel, the ones I trashed in a rage before I left the next day, play back at me.

  Only, they’re not on a violin. They’re haunting in their melody, played on an electric guitar.

  “Why are we listening to this?” Kendall whispers, edging closer.

  Rey’s voice cuts in. I lose all hope of hearing this through from start to finish the first time without losing it. “Oh my God.”

  “Tabitha.” Kendall snatches my phone, spinning it to face her. “Why are you playing their song? Ah! You stupid girl. What are you doing, babe? This is why you’ve avoided it. Shit. Why we’ve avoided it.”

  “You know this song?” I blubber from the floor.

  Her eyebrows peak. “Well, duh. It’s only as popular as that one they played us at the theater.”

  “How would I fucking know?” I holler.

  She shakes her head, lips flat. “True. Fuck, I’m sorry.” Kendall folds to her knees, kitted out in only her lingerie. “They added it as a bonus track to the new album. Why are you playing it though?”

  I scramble across the floor on all fours, shuffling back to her on my knees with the letter and check. She looks them over as my chest tears apart listening to Rey sing, her eyes slowly inching wider and wider.

  “Whoa.”

  “Right?” I cry. “What the hell?”

  “How did you not know you wrote a song? One of their songs?” She sets the papers on the table beside my phone. />
  I reach over and hit Pause, the song having moved on to the next one. “I wrote the music the day before I left, for myself. But I hated it. Told Rey I forced it, so I threw it away.”

  “He salvaged it.”

  “He had to have.”

  “Isn’t that plagiarism or some shit?” She frowns.

  “Only if he didn’t give me credit, but babe”—I shake the check at her—“he gave me credit.”

  “Well then, tell me you’re going to send him a message to say thank you,” she says with a laugh, pushing to her feet. “It’s the least you can do, you goose.”

  “I just… I can’t believe he did that.”

  She sets her hand on her hips. “You’re mad about it?”

  “No! I’m blown away. I just.…”

  “Didn’t think he’d do something that nice since you were such a bitch?” she teases.

  I chuckle. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

  “Fuck, babe. Message him now. I mean it.” She thumbs over her shoulder. “I need to get ready, but I swear to God I need to know what he says before I leave.”

  What the hell would I say to him? Thanks for being so awesome after I was such a cow? “I need to think on it.”

  “Well, don’t leave it too long, because, babe, if this isn’t the man confessing his love for you, then fucked if I know what is.”

  “He used my music. It’s hardly love. He could just be an opportunist,” I reason with her.

  She gives me a hard stare and sighs. “Play it again, Tab, and for fuck’s sake, listen to what he says.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  Rey

  “Ordinary World” – Duran Duran

  “First quarter payments went out yesterday,” Rick tells me as he follows me into my private room. “Ironic really.”

  “What is?” I drop into the plush armchair by the window. Going to miss this comfy fucker.

  “That she finds out the truth the day you’re discharged.”

  I did the rehab. For kitty. And fuck me sideways if it wasn’t exactly the break I needed. I expected a daily regime of pills and twice-weekly Kumbaya sessions. But it wasn’t anything like that. Apart from the visits to the counselor every week, you’d be excused for thinking it was a compulsory stay at a resort.

  “You ready to go if I duck out and do the paperwork?”

  “Gagging, my good man. Get me the fuck out of here.”

  I said it was the break I needed, not that I enjoyed it.

  “I’ll go sign the gazillions of fucking forms then and meet you out front.” He pulls his phone out after it starts to ring, answering as he disappears down the hall.

  I survived the last week of the tour high as a goddamn kite. I barely slept, living it up in my final free days with a mainly liquid diet before signing on to become sober.

  I put the band through hell, most of all my brother. Thing is, I can safely say without a doubt that if it weren’t for Toby I would have found a way to try again. Jump off a balcony, walk in front of a train—with the mindset I was in, I wouldn’t have given a fuck if it weren’t quick and painless, as long as it worked.

  But he stuck by me, going without sleep I’m told, all to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid. I love that stupid motherfucker, more than I’ve ever told him.

  One of the many things I plan to rectify once I’m on the outside of this goddamn clinic.

  I have a shitload of work to do to get my career back to where it was. I sabotaged what I had, and I did it in spectacular fucking fashion. Like the shooting star I was, I burned too bright and hit that bottom kitty talked about, and fuck did it hurt. But amidst the chaos, I also wrote what I think is my best song yet.

  Her song.

  I drove the guys crazy, keeping them up every fucking night while I sat in the hotel room with my guitar banging out the verses. I literally played until my fingers bled those first nights after she left, determined to not only get it right, but to get it perfect.

  She’d cut me off, refused to answer my messages, and set her phone to send my calls direct to voice mail.

  That song was my goddamn message in a bottle, and today, it washed ashore.

  I pull my phone out and open Instagram to take a final shot from my room. I make it an artsy selfie, doing the whole looking-at-nothing trick as I gaze out the window. Set the filter to a black-and-white one, and fuck me if it doesn’t look semiprofessional. Got yourself a backup talent right there, you dumb fuck.

  I post the picture with the caption “Home time” and then rise to grab my bag. I hesitate when my gaze settles on the bulge created by my notebook. I wrote a dozen new pieces, some of which need polishing, but that isn’t what has me undoing the zipper to pull the hardback out.

  Nope. I flick through to her song and then park my ass on the edge of the chair one last time while I read it over. Only this time I don’t read it with my critical eye, picking holes in my choice of words, or places where I could have tightened up the flow. I read it with her eyes. I put myself in kitty’s shoes and try to imagine how she’ll feel when she hears these lines. Because she will hear them. Angry, sad, or happy: however she feels when she gets that royalty check, I know she won’t be able to help herself.

  Back at the start again,

  That’s where you and I stand.

  Only this time is different.

  Because you won’t hold my hand.

  I stepped into the shadows,

  Not afraid of what was to come.

  You stepped out into the light,

  Said you were afraid of losing the sun.

  I don’t hold it against you.

  I could never look at you with hate.

  Only regret that when I saw your pain,

  It was already too late.

  One road becomes two,

  Your time with me is through.

  One road became two,

  It was the only thing left to do.

  Today I’ve reached the end,

  Because yesterday I hit solid ground.

  Tomorrow I rise again,

  Because forever is where you’ll be found.

  Come at me running, baby,

  Come at me running …

  Come at me running, kitty.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Tabitha

  “Angel” – Theory of a Deadman

  “Best hangover cure ever,” Kendall mumbles around her bowl of Fruit Loops. “How did you go?”

  I cradle my second mug of coffee for the day, unable to sleep, yet also failing to find motivation to do anything with my early start.

  “I didn’t send him a message.” I know that’s all she wants to hear about.

  “Why the fuck not?” She swipes the milk on her bottom lip away with the back of her hand. “What stopped you?”

  “This.” I set my palm over my heart. “I love him for doing this for me, babe, but it changes nothing.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Positive.”

  I spent the night lost in the internet black hole, looking up every scrap of information I resisted the past three months.

  He relapsed. He crashed and burned, performing the last show of the tour so drunk that he forgot the lyrics to one of the songs. And even though the reports tell me he went to rehab like instructed, nothing indicates that his fire doesn’t still smolder beneath the calm surface.

  “Maybe in time,” Kendall offers as she lifts her bowl to drink the leftover milk.

  “Yeah. Maybe.” I drag my phone over and tap through to check my emails.

  Perhaps there was a reason why I held strong, after all? “Wow.”

  “What now?” Kendall asks, setting her empty bowl in the sink.

  “I got an email from that agent I signed on with last month.”

  “And?”

  “They’ve got me an audition for the philharmonic.” Is this fate telling me to stick to the plan, to keep working on myself?

  “You don’t seem hugely excited by it.”

 
I glance at Kendall as she leans her elbows on the counter beside me. “It wasn’t really what I wanted.”

  “But it’s good, right?”

  “If I can get a spot, then it’s steady income. Not great, but steady.”

  “So?”

  “So, it’s not the solo career I dreamed about.” It’s not the fantasy of working on an edgy modern mix that’ll set me apart and make me successful.

  She twists her lips, shoulders heaving with a sigh. “I guess you have to ask yourself what lengths you’re willing to go to, to get exactly what you want.”

  Moreover, if I could live with settling for something less.

  “Go to the audition,” Kendall suggests. “It can’t hurt to see what happens.”

  “I guess not.” Although the thought of becoming one of many, seated for the same shows over and over, already has me dying on the inside.

  I’m not selfish; I just know what lit my fire. And it was that independence to play what I wanted, what I felt best suited the audience I had. It was being able to move around the stage as I played, lost to the piece. It was the freedom to express myself in a way that is true to who I am.

  Still—independence doesn’t pay the bills. Stubbornly holding out for that one niche opportunity doesn’t feed me week to week. Sure, I’ve just received an unexpected lump sum thanks to Rey, but that won’t last long with all the creditors knocking on our door.

  Time to grow up, Tabby. Time to swallow the bitter pill that is admitting my parents were right: I can’t make a career out of playing my violin.

  At least not as a solo artist.

  “The audition is Thursday night,” I read aloud to Kendall. “Apparently I can play what I want, as long as it’s one of the traditional pieces.”

  “Go. Knock their socks off.” Kendall places a kiss to the top of my head before making her way to the hall. “It’s a stepping stone, babe. Not the end.”

  Maybe not, but then why does it feel as though by doing this I finally shut the door on everything I worked for the past four years?

  My gaze drifts to the check, sitting on the end of the counter ready for me to bank today. I should say thank you. No matter how I feel about the guy, Rey has helped me out more than once now without any real return. Heartbreak and regret are no excuse for bad manners, really.