Devil and the Bluebird

by Jennifer Mason-Black

  She didn’t feel hungry as she followed Jed out, just kind of sick, as if she’d bitten into something moldy. How could it be a game if the rules kept changing? No one ever stopped play in a soccer match to tell the players they had to run in the stands instead of on the field.

  She couldn’t talk, her feet ached every time she settled in a spot for more than fifteen minutes, and she didn’t really know where she was going. And now she couldn’t even give anyone her name. Except for Jed, who already had it, so she had three days to leave him or risk something bad happening.

  What would happen if she stayed? Not that she would, because the point of everything was to find Cass, not to become a groupie to some band called Mr. Chicken.

  Was it possible she was imagining everything? After all, if the devil was working as a cashier in the co-op, there should have been more suffering there.

  She tried a spoonful of soup. It was better than she expected, and she ate slowly, dipping the bread into the cup and taking small bites to make it last.

  “So, you should totally come tonight. Bet’ll think it’s fun to have you along, and you can crash with us. She’s taking care of her aunt’s place while she’s away, and there’s tons of room. How many days have you got, to get where you’re going?”

  She held up three fingers. It made sense to go with Jed to Albany, and it couldn’t hurt anything to crash one night there and skip paying for a motel room.

  “What do you say, then?”

  She gave another thumbs-up. Her voice had been gone less than two days and already she hated the gesture. She needed a reversible sign: yes on one side, no on the other.

  “Cool. I’m excited for you to see us play.”

  He turned the music back on, and the miles rolled away.

  Bet’s aunt lived outside of Albany, in an old farmhouse surrounded by trees stripped bare for the coming winter. Blue shutters flanked its windows, and flower beds full of dry brown stems followed the winding driveway. As they pulled in, the door of the side porch flew open and a woman came running out.

  Bet laughed breathlessly as Jed picked her up and spun her around. She was small and curvy, like a snowwoman with curly brown hair and glasses. She was a good six inches shorter than Jed, and when they kissed, she stood up on her toes and leaned against him, his hands on her hips.

  Blue looked away. She always noticed details even when she felt she shouldn’t. Big Eyes, Cass had always called her, circling her own eyes with her fingers. “You’re like an owl, always watching.” And Blue would raise her shoulders as if fluffing her feathers, until Cass would laugh and call her a freak.

  “The guys aren’t here yet?” Jed took a step back from Bet, hands still on her hips.

  “Vik said they’d be here by five. We’ve got the place to ourselves.” She put a hand on the flat of his stomach. He took another step back.

  “Bet, this is, uh—” He waved a hand at Blue and she emerged hesitantly from the car. “This is Blue. I picked her up near Boston. She was hitching with a guitar, and she’s got laryngitis, so she can’t talk. I told her she could crash here, that you’d be totally into it.”

  For a moment, the look in Bet’s eyes was anything but inviting. It passed quickly, though, and she smiled. “Totally. That’s cool. Blue, right? I love your name. You really can’t talk at all?”

  Blue pulled out her notebook.

  Sorry! You really OK with me staying?

  “You kidding? It’ll be fun to have company. Have you heard their music? They’re so good.”

  In the car. They’re great!

  “Great” might have been an overstatement. Mr. Chicken sounded good in a forgettable way, everything clean and lacking in what Mama would have called a beating heart. “Someone really good,” she’d always said, “someone who’s making art, not making noise, you can hear the rhythm of their heartbeat under the music. They leave something of themselves in the lines, enough that you have to open yourself up to hear it.”

  What Jed had played for her had been smart and catchy, but it hadn’t caught hold of her and demanded that she listen. Not that she’d ever say that to a musician, especially not before a gig.

  “I think they’re about to break through. Really.” Bet’s eyes shone. “They so deserve it.”

  Deserve. Whatever it took to make it big, Blue didn’t know that deserving played a part.

  I hope so! I them.

  Interesting how much easier it was to lie on paper than it was to lie out loud.

  Bet set her up in a guest room with a single bed covered by a white cotton spread. There was a print of a Wyeth painting on the far wall, and a braided rug on the floor.

  “This is the quietest room in the house, in case you want to sleep before four in the morning. They get pretty buzzed after a show.” She paused, ran her hand over the nubbly bedspread. “But maybe you know what that’s like.”

  She’d fallen asleep more nights than she could remember with Mama still awake and talking with Tish, her feet propped on the old lobster trap that served as one of their few pieces of furniture. “Takes a while to come down, if you do your show right,” Mama had said. The coming down, Blue had loved it. It hadn’t mattered where they were; it just felt like home.

  You don’t play? Sing?

  Bet smiled, as if at a joke. “Me, up onstage? No way. They’d laugh.”

  Just 4 fun?

  “Nah. I don’t have anything when it comes to music.” There was another pause and the sound of a door creaking open in the space between them. Blue thought of the flyer, of Jed’s summary of Bet’s thoughts on art and categories.

  You drew the rooster?

  A wide smile, a pair of dimples deepening in her cheeks. “Did Jed say something?”

  She wanted to say yes. Jed had said plenty of things about Bet, just not that one.

  It looks like you. Not that you look like a rooster! Just like something you’d draw. Make sense?

  “Cool.” She looked a little sad, but mostly happy. “Mr. Chicken really did look like that. He had this long green tail. He was a hero. He died trying to save the hens from a couple of dogs running loose.”

  So good! Do any other stuff?

  At the sound of a car on the gravel drive, Bet slipped away to the door. “That’ll be the rest. I should go see them.”

  Blue didn’t follow her out. She heard whooping, the thud of doors closing, and a drumroll of skin on metal as someone played the hood with her hands. Her window looked out over the backyard, though, and she was content to watch the stretch of shadows across the lawn.

  After a while, Blue went looking for everyone. She counted five newcomers in the living room. The three guys blended together, and in her head she labeled them by their instruments rather than their names.

  The backup singer, Jill, was striking—tall, with high cheekbones, and long silver earrings; her straight black hair looped back from her forehead in a pair of thin braids. She sat between Bet and the lead guitarist’s sister, Meena.

  Meena wore her thick black hair loose and smoked one cigarette after another. “You a cheerleader tonight?” she asked Blue, knocking ash into a plastic cup filled with water.

  “She can’t talk. She’s got a sore throat,” Bet filled in for her.

  “Well, you can be the one that does tumbling instead of cheers,” Meena said.

  “Tonight. You. Me. Right?” The drummer pointed at Meena with a drumstick.

  She blew smoke out in a long, steady stream. “Jesus, not as long as there’s breath left in my body.”

  Jill rose. “I’m going outside. Too much crap in the air in here. Want to come, Bet?”

  Bet hesitated, then shook her head. Blue followed Jill out onto the back deck instead.

  Jill lay back in a lounge chair, one long jean-clad leg crossed over the other. “Chris is an ass, and his drumming sucks. Jed only keeps him around because they went to high school together. You know how those things go.” She waved her hand in front of her face. “You really can�
��t talk?”

  Blue shook her head and pulled out her notebook.

  Just a temp thing.

  Jill studied her. “You must be a singer if you’re that protective of your voice. Most people would whisper anyway.”

  She shook her head again, then touched her hand to her throat. She imagined the emptiness beneath her fingers and suddenly longed to sing. Jill reached out and took Blue’s hand, turning it over to look at her ring. “That’s pretty.”

  Tx! It was my mom’s.

  “Jed said you were a musician. What do you play?”

  Guitar.

  “What kind?” Jill kept her pale blue eyes focused on Blue’s face.

  Guild.

  With that, she’d passed some test. Jill nodded. “Nice. Year?”

  1968.

  “These guys . . . Jed has real talent. The others . . .” She shrugged. “I deserve something better than backup for them, but it’s tough for a woman singer, unless you’re lucky. You know all this shit, right?”

  Jill didn’t watch for an answer—just leaned her head against the cushion, her eyes on the sky as it deepened to purplish blue.

  Mr. Chicken was the second band out that night. The first, Ask Rosie, had an enthusiastic group of followers; but they played a stale mix of covers and uninspired originals. The bar pushed to overflowing as Mr. Chicken’s time drew near. The crowd was a bit older and a lot hipper. The increasing energy in the room lifted her with it.

  The real shock came when they took the stage. Presence—Blue had come to understand it watching the old footage of Dry Gully. Lots of decent musicians didn’t have an ounce of it. They could play something with feeling, but they couldn’t translate it into commanding a crowd.

  Jed could. He was perfect, from the moment he stepped onto the stage to the last motion of his hand as he left. The crowd would have held its breath indefinitely, had he asked it to. Jill, her voice rising over his in effortless harmony, was far more than backup. Her voice was the current that electrified them.

  When they left the stage after their final encore, Bet pushed her way out toward the back. Meena followed, and Blue moved to join them.

  A scent—unpleasant, charred, hot—stopped her. There was no sign of fire or smoke, and no one else looked concerned. The woman in the red dress had given off a similar scent . . . But this had an unfamiliar bitterness. She drew a deep breath, trying to track the seared odor. It took a while to push her way through the bodies, the smell growing stronger with each step. In the far back corner, where it filled the air, she found a man seated alone.

  He had dark brown hair in a nondescript short cut, and he wore a blue cotton dress shirt, unbuttoned at the neck. His face was the kind some girls would find attractive, though Blue found it bland. He didn’t at all resemble the woman in the red dress; and yet she didn’t know anyone else drenched in Eau de Flame.

  The man glanced at her, then returned to the papers in his hand. She walked up to him and ripped a piece of paper out of her notebook.

  Why are you here?!

  If the devil could steal someone’s voice with a kiss, surely it could look like a man or a woman. Except . . . the face of the woman in the red dress—and the woman in the co-op—had been real. Lived-in.

  Her uncertainty rose as the man looked at her note without interest. “I beg your pardon?”

  Changing the rules again? What now?

  “I don’t believe we’ve met, and I don’t have a clue which rules you’re referring to. If you auditioned at some point and didn’t get in—well, I’m sorry, but we have very few spots. Keep practicing. Hard work makes stars.”

  She’d been ready to walk away. But a metallic sparkle shimmered in his eyes, a flash of undiluted glee. Her heartbeat quickened.

  It’s not me, is it? Who called you then?

  “Called me? Really, I think you have things confused. We look for talent, we’re not called by it.” Around them the crowd had begun to thin, the staff wiping tables and stacking chairs. They clearly didn’t smell him. Could they not see him, either?

  She heard Jed’s voice behind her, and the man stood, holding out his hand. Blue’s pencil dropped from her fingers. So he wasn’t invisible.

  “Good of you to see me. I’m John Rathburn.” The man held out a business card. Jed took it without a glance. “We’re very impressed with what we’ve seen of Mr. Chicken. As I mentioned to you over the phone, Vineyard Productions is in charge of casting for a number of high-quality, reality-based network shows. We think you’d be perfect for Major Chord. We’ve chosen nine acts to date. We’d very much like for you to be the tenth and final one.”

  No one spoke for a moment. In the silence, Blue searched for her pencil, to no avail. Then Jed shouted across the room to the others. All around them the burnt odor filled the air, but no one else seemed to notice, or to care. More and more she felt crazy, seeing things no one else did, believing things that made no sense. She had to be wrong about this.

  She walked away. First to the bathroom, where she waited at the end of a long line. Then, passing through a room almost emptied of people, she headed outside. Above her, the stars shone brilliantly. Few cars remained in the parking lot. The bartender and a couple of waiters leaned against a beat-up sedan, red glowing under their cupped fingers from time to time as they smoked. Jill stood with them, taking in the sky.

  The bartender grinned at Blue and offered his cigarette. She shook her head. He shrugged. “You with the band?”

  She nodded, felt for the missing pencil again. Her hands still trembled from before.

  “Blue’s got a sore throat.” Jill moved close, linked an arm through hers. The way Teena used to. “Either of you have something she can write with?”

  The bartender shrugged, looked at the waiters. “Talia, you got a pen in your shit heap of a car?” The woman beside him, her pale hair slicked back in a ponytail, stretched lazily. A warm, sweet scent drifted off her as she reached into the front pocket of her black pants and pulled out a stubby, zebra-striped pencil.

  Tx!

  “Jesus, you were hot tonight,” the woman said.

  Jill pulled Blue’s arm a little closer. “Some nights, you know? Some fucking nights, the world is yours.”

  The bar door opened and Jed and Bet came out. Bet looked upset. Jed leaned down to whisper to her, something that brought a smile to her face but didn’t ease whatever made her cross her arms in front of her.

  He looked up and saw them. “Jill.” He ran over, Bet following at a walk. “We did it!” Jed’s jubilance skipped across the cars, rang out into the endless sky. “Tomorrow afternoon we sign a contract to appear in Major Chord. Big time, Jill. That’s where we’re going.”

  The bartender gave a wolf whistle as the waitress clapped. Blue just stared as her anxiety returned. If the man in the blue shirt was the same as the woman in the red dress, what would it mean for the band if they signed a contract with him? Were they doing the same thing she had—making a trade—and if so, did they understand the rules?

  Jill gave Jed a disbelieving look. “Are you serious?”

  “There’s a few little things to work out, but starting next week we’ll have free food and housing, free lessons with pros, free exposure on national TV—”

  “And a one-in-ten shot at winning a contract and a million dollars,” the drummer, appearing from nowhere, broke in. “Big fucking time, baby.”

  “What kind of little things?” Jill’s eyes flicked toward Bet, who looked even more miserable.

  “Um, stupid things. Just little made-up things to make it flashier.”

  “Like?”

  A deal. Blue could feel it in the air. What would they lose?

  “They think we need a little more of a hook, so . . . It would just be pretend.”

  “You and Jed, all boyfriend and girlfriend,” the drummer said. “All romantic and shit.”

  “You serious?” Jill kept looking at Bet—only, Bet looked away. If Blue could see the hurt there, surely J
ill could, too.

  Time dripped, one single perfect drop, the glow of the cigarette in the dark, the flicker of streetlight, silence where Jed’s breath should have been, had he not been holding it. Hush, the kind of hush that must have surrounded her at the crossroads as well.

  Then Jill stopped looking at Bet. “A million bucks and a record contract? I’ll pretend to be anyone’s girl for that.”

  A whoop from Jed as he leaped forward, spun Jill in the air, her hair a shower of black. The drummer playing air guitar, everyone dancing.

  Almost everyone. Blue watched Bet as she tried to shape a smile. The man in the blue shirt was no good. Blue was sure of it. He’d promised them what they wanted, but she’d bet anything they didn’t know what they’d be giving away.

  They stayed up all night. Blue hung out on the deck with Jill, watching her drink vodka and cranberry juice, and counted the stars.

  “I’m twenty-seven, you know,” Jill said finally. “Time to make something happen. I’m pretending to be his girl on TV—big deal. It’s not like I’m marrying him or anything.”

  Blue nodded. The noise from inside had died back a bit, the spaces of quiet filled with the low thrum of the bass. It had been three months since she’d last spoken with Teena, seven months since Cass. Here, listening to Jill, being close, felt like standing in the sun on the first warm day after winter.

  “It’s mostly Bet that I feel bad about. I love her, she’s great, but . . .” Jill swirled her drink. “She feels a little left out of the whole scene with the band. And she hears all that shit that Chris, the drummer, talks, and . . . It makes things seem different than they are. I told her I’d never sleep with Jed. It’s true, I wouldn’t. This thing for the TV, it’s just for show. Who cares what people see on the outside, right? It doesn’t matter.

  “The thing is . . . she gave up going to Italy on an art scholarship this year to be with Jed. They made a deal they’d go together instead. They’re supposed to leave in three weeks. She’s got to know a chance like this is more important. It’s not like Italy’s going to vanish.”