Old Flames, Burned Hands

by McGregor, Tim

  “Sarah… “

  “Hear me out,” Sarah held up her hands as if calling a time-out. “I need to spend more time looking after mom. You know she’s getting worse all the time and I’m stretched thin as I can get between here and her house. I’m not just asking for you to pick up more days in the box, I need help running this place. Scheduling and the books and the clients, all of it.”

  Tilda chewed her lip. The last thing she wanted was to let Sarah down, not after all this. “What about Chloe? She’s always begging for more hours.”

  “Chloe’s sweet as all getout but the girl’s in outer space half the time. I need someone I can trust when I’m not here. Or called away at a moment’s notice, which is happening more and more.”

  “Mom’s that bad?”

  “She’s getting worse all the time. I got a call from her neighbour last night. She was in their backyard pruning the rosebushes, insisting they were hers. I don’t know what I’m gonna do—” Sarah’s lips pursed into a corkscrew.

  Tilda squeezed Sarah’s hand. “Aww, honey. I’m sorry. Must be hell to go through that.”

  “I’m not playing on your sympathies, honest. I’m just overwhelmed and I can’t figure out what the right thing to do is.”

  Tilda contemplated Sarah’s hand. Strong and ropey from years of digging into other people’s flesh. Her hands looked old and hard to reconcile with the face. She wondered if her own hands looked like that too. “I think you know what the right thing to do is. But the guilt is clouding your decision. You’d be helping her, honey, not hurting her.”

  “I know, I know.” Sarah took her hand back and quickly wiped away a lone tear. “Nevermind all that. Will you think about taking a bigger role here? Just think about it, talk to Shane. That’s all I ask.”

  “I will.” Tilda turned for the door. “Try and come to the show tomorrow, yeah? I could use a friendly face in the crowd.”

  “Won’t Shane be there?”

  “You know what I mean.” Tilda winked as she disappeared out the door.

  TEN minutes past eleven and Tilda tiptoed upstairs, looking forward to crashing into bed. Dinner had been spectacularly unremarkable. Molly morose and uncommunicative, Shane blathering on about work, the same complaints and gripes she’d heard a hundred times before. No one had inquired about her day. Which was fine, she had been far too distracted for much convo anyway. A knot slowly building in her guts about performing tomorrow night and the only relief was to get her butt out to the studio and practice. Re-ordering the set list for the sixth time, she put each song through its paces, flubbing lines or progressions on the first try but nailing it all by the second. Technically at least, every note was there but the delivery seemed off. Perfunctory and without warmth, like her heart wasn’t in it. The lyrics just words that meant nothing. They rhymed, that was all. Chalking it up to worries, she put the guitar down and locked the garage door.

  She slipped into bed physically exhausted but her brain still idling in overdrive, unable to gear down. Shane already asleep, dead to the world. The man never had trouble sleeping. He didn’t even read in bed anymore, just dropped his head onto the pillow and he was gone. Sometimes she hated him for that. Snoring away in bliss while she stared at the ceiling and tried to cool her brain and unravel the knot in her belly. The numbers on the clock glowing red in the dark. 11:42.

  She was not going to waste half the night trying to lure sleep in like a shy pony. It had been two weeks since the bed squeaked and there was always one sure-fire way to bring sleep on. Her hand slid down the waistband of her pajamas and between her legs. Kneading until she was wet. Shane snored on. Flipping back to a memory of them in a motel room somewhere, a wet and ragged session where they had almost eaten one another whole. The memory raised her temperature but it plateaued and the nagging thoughts infiltrated her concentration.

  You’re gonna screw up tomorrow’s performance

  Too rusty

  Too old

  Chasing the thoughts away, she reached down and slid open the bottom drawer on the nightstand. The vibrator was small and as innocuous looking as a tube of chapstick. Clicked to stealth mode, it was powerful but silent. Flipping through a back catalogue of scenarios, she imagined her eyes bound by a blindfold, hands tied at the wrist. An unseen lover clawing and biting at her, making her do things. The lover never said a word. She didn’t even know if it was a man or a woman. All she felt was the hot breath on her skin and the sting of a palm as it smacked hard across her ass. Greedy hands and a hungry mouth.

  You’re wasting your time

  You’re in debt and going down with the ship

  Take the job offer

  Tilda gritted her teeth as the scenario in her head fizzled away. Few things were as much of a buzzkill as money woes. But she was getting close and desperately wanted to sleep afterwards. She conjured back the fantasy but it felt lukewarm, like she’d already worn out the high notes. Her wrist was getting sore so she switched hands, desperately scrounging for fire in her fantasies, memories, anything.

  Her hair being tugged, a fist twisting it up around his wrist and pulling hard. The room dim and stale with the smell of beer and cigarettes. A band room, backstage somewhere. She had lost the skirt but still had her boots on. Those heavy black ones she adored so much, the heels lethal. He was on top of her, hammering her like his life depended on it. They shifted around on that disgusting old sofa and she straddled him. Gripping his cock and guiding him in. She was almost there when the door opened and a man walked in but he didn’t retreat or even apologize. The faceless stranger just watched and Tilda didn’t stop and then her muscles seized up rigid. It was only as she shuddered to a finish that she looked down to see who she was fucking in that old backstage room.

  She shouldn’t have looked. She should have kept her eyes closed until the fantasy faded away.

  Tilda rolled onto her side and fluffed the pillow, feeling the tension unstring from her muscles as she tossed the chapstick back into the drawer. Sinking into the mattress, sleep crept in with promise. A slight unease lingered at what her memory had dredged up in those last moments.

  So long ago. She was surprised she even remembered that night.

  IF SHE HAD BEEN PAYING attention, she could have predicted disaster. As it was, Tilda was distracted and on edge and missed every warning sign. It had begun at the breakfast table.

  “Maybe you should take the job,” Shane said. This after she’d woken to the same knotted guts she had bedded down with and telling Shane about Sarah’s offer.

  “It would be full-time,” she’d replied. “Maybe more because of Sarah’s situation with her mom.”

  “We could use the income.”

  Like she hadn’t thought of that already. She flipped the eggs, letting the spatula bang off the counter a little too hard. “Of course it would, but I’d have no time to work in the studio.”

  He nodded his head, conceding the point. Molly said nothing, leaning over her breakfast with her hair draped over her face like a ghost in one of those Japanese horror movies. Her way of keeping out of the conversation.

  She slid the plates onto the table and sat. He picked up his fork and said “We have to do something, honey. We’re barely keeping current.”

  The debt load they carried. House upside down, even in this overheated market, the line of credit. An elephant that followed them from room to room, waiting to crush both of them under its sheer tonnage. A careless move and it could roll over the wrong way and flatten them all. Just thinking about it drove a swarm of panic into her belly. Ignoring it didn’t help but arguing with Shane about it didn’t seem to make a difference either.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said finally. “Business is still slow. I’m worried this year will be worse than last. We got to start knocking down the capital before it snowballs any further.”

  “Maybe you can sell some shit.” Molly’s voice issued from behind the tangle of hair.

  “Language please,” Tilda snappe
d. “And take your hair out of your breakfast.” She stifled the urge to brush the girl’s hair away herself. Molly excelled at finding new and inventive ways to drive them both bonkers. ‘If you applied a fraction of that creativity towards school, you could win yourself a scholarship,’ she had scolded more than once. Parental platitudes rolled off her tongue with alarming ease, like she’d been waiting to employ them her whole life.

  She looked down into the dark surface of her coffee. “What’s left to sell?” she asked, to neither in particular. Shane’s motorcycle was sold off long ago and their second car liquidated, the proceeds barely denting the capital. Like dropping a stone down a bottomless pit, there was no telltale ping that sounded bottom.

  “What about some of your gear?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just the stuff you don’t use, like that old Fender amp that needs fixing. It’s vintage, right?”

  “We’re not doing that.”

  “So it’s just gonna sit there? Okay, then what about the spare mixing board that’s out there? That Rickenbacker’s gotta be worth a lot. And the Gibson SG, the one you never let anyone touch?”

  Tilda backed off as if scorched by a hot element, unable to defend the gear hoarding in the garage. Shane wasn’t a musician, he didn’t understand. All of it was useful but to him it was just stacks of knobs and dials gathering dust.

  Everyone bent to their breakfast, the clink of utensils against plates filling the vacuum of conversation. Maybe she was being too obstinate. The old SG she had picked up for a steal in Detroit about ten years ago. It was a beautiful guitar and made a hell of a racket whenever she wanted to crank it up and rattle the glass in the window panes but, practically speaking, she had little use for it. It would, without a doubt, fetch a good price. Looking up from her bowl, she shrugged a tiny shrug. “Maybe the Gibson could go.”

  He offered a shrug of his own. “Unless you wanted to start an AC/DC cover band. You’d look really cute in a schoolboy uniform.”

  “That’s perverse,” Molly said, munching away.

  “Do you even know who AC/DC is?” Shane countered.

  “All that old stuff in the garage,” the girl said. “You’re like one of those hoarder people.”

  “That’s enough, honey.”

  Molly looked up, eyes barely visible through the fall of hair. “What are you clinging to? The glory days. Let it go.”

  Another spell of silence spilled across the table. Molly could do that, remain silent and detached until she fired one across the bow. A zinger that cut to the bone and killed all conversation. It was like living with a ninja assassin.

  Tilda cleared the table as Shane scolded their daughter for being rude.

  “I wasn’t being rude,” she heard Molly say. “I’m just being honest.” The girl got up and left the kitchen, shuffling her feet across the floor like an octogenarian.

  Tilda startled at Shane’s touch as he came up behind her to set his plate in the sink. “Don’t pay her any mind,” he said. “The kid’s crazy.”

  “I’m not clinging to anything.”

  “I know. That’s just Molly. She sees a chink in your armour and strikes.”

  “Why doesn’t she do that with you?”

  “She has other ways to drive me up the wall.” He swept her hair out of the way and kissed the back of her neck. “Are you ready for tonight?”

  Another shrug. “I don’t know. I guess so.”

  “I can’t wait to hear you play again. It’s been a long time.”

  “What does that mean?” A little too sharp.

  “Easy. I just mean I love watching you onstage.”

  He squeezed his arms around her and she felt the length of his body along her back, pressing into her. She tried to remember the last time they’d had sex.

  “You’re not nervous about tonight, are you?”

  “Nah, I’m fine.” She turned her head to kiss him and he was off, a playful smack to her bottom. A total lie of course. She was petrified.

  THE front bar of the Cameron was humming when Tilda and Shane arrived, bodies drifting by ones and twos to the backroom. Her gear was already back there, soundchecked earlier in the evening when the place was empty. Her jitters had ebbed off then, strumming to an empty room and waiting for the sound guy to nod but with the bar filled, the jitters roared back with a tingly vengeance. They all looked so young, this hipster crowd, and she felt out of place. Old. Past due.

  And out of practice. She hadn’t played a gig in over six months. She was rusty and nervous and could not get focused.

  Despite dithering over what to wear for more than an hour, cursing her tired clothes and hating every pair of shoes, Tilda had to fight the screaming urge to run home and change one more time. Everyone in the room was so put together and so coiffed. Especially the men, primped and gussied as they were. When had that happened, she wondered, when men preened and fussed more than women? She felt frumpy and underdressed, an imposter waiting to be outed.

  “Jesus.” Shane tried to flag the bartender’s attention. “Is it just me or do these people look like high school kids?”

  “I think it’s us.” The tequila shot did nothing to calm her gut but she ordered another quick. The sound guy waved at her from across the room. Time. Oh God.

  She’d done this a million times before, she reminded herself. No big deal. Like that did any good. Strapping on her guitar and looking out at the half-filled backroom, she took a breath and broke into the first song without any stage banter. No one wanted to hear you prattle anyway, just hit ‘em with what you got or get off the stage. Being in the song was breezy, it was the moment after that was killer. Performing, you were protected. Standing alone on stage between songs, well, you might as well be stark naked. No one but Shane clapped, no one but her husband even watched. Everyone in the room was either chatting away or staring wanly into their phones. She struck up the second number without a word. Then the third and the fourth. Shane sat at the back, giving the occasional thumbs-up. She tossed the set list she’d drawn up and broke into a couple foot-stompers she hoped would wake everyone up. Halfway through the seventh song, a buzz seemed to rise up in the room. More bodies drifted in and snatched up the few remaining seats. She thought she had finally broken through but when the song ended, she looked up to see the headlining act waiting at the wings.

  Billie Rose and the Sidewinders were a rockabilly troop renowned for tearing the roof off clubs. Billie herself looked like she’d stepped straight out of a 50’s juvenile delinquent movie. The bad girl in leopard print with a snarl to rival the King’s.

  Tilda unplugged and said ‘thank you’, her only address to the crowd, and then stepped off the stage. Shane was there with a big hug, effusing over her set but it felt empty. Forced even. The jitters that had soured her gut earlier curdled into a black poison. By the time Shane got her a drink, Billie and the Sidewinders kicked in and blew up. Even more people crushed into the backroom as Billie let out a rebel yell with her mammoth pipes. Girl could sing.

  They sat through two songs. Tilda said she needed some air and squeezed through the crowd and pushed through the side door to Cameron Street. The night cool in her lungs after that humid room. She had just had her ass served to her on a plate by a girl half her age with twice the talent. Quadruple the stage presence and boatloads of moxy. All she wanted to do was leave but she’d have to wait until after Billie’s set to collect her gear.

  The world doesn’t owe you a response, Tilda remembered. It was something that Chrissie Hynde had told her backstage at a festival years ago. It doesn’t matter how much blood and sweat you put into a record, the world doesn’t care. They don’t have time. You got to make them care. It was wisdom that Tilda learned and relearned as she carved out her path in music. But it was exhausting and she wasn’t sure if she was up for the fight anymore.

  Driving home afterwards, Shane had filled the Pathfinder’s cabin by complaining about parking like an out-of-town relative. Grou
sed about spending so much just for the privilege of leaving your car on the precious street after dark.

  “Honey?” she said, watching the lights of Queen pass through the glass. “Enough about the parking, okay?”

  Little else was said on the drive back. Less arriving home and checking on Molly, whose door was shut. It wasn’t until they were brushing their teeth that Shane told her she had given a great show but those kids were too sloe-eyed to appreciate it.

  She didn’t want to talk about it.

  Crawling into bed. When Shane turned to her, she knew what he wanted but any of the heat generated that morning had gone cold. His arm snaked round her waist and his lips touched her collarbone. Already hard and pressing up against her hip.

  “You okay?” he asked when she didn’t respond.

  “Just not in the mood.”

  “You might feel better if we do.”

  “I doubt it. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” He eased off, gave her cheek a kiss. “I thought you were fantastic tonight. I’d almost forgotten how beautiful your voice is when you belt it out like that.”

  She turned off the lamp. That makes two of us.

  SLEEP was skittish and when the numbers on the clock clicked over to 5:00 AM, Tilda got out of bed and tiptoed downstairs. The sting from last night had lost none of its power, needling her like a thistle under her skin. Crossing through the mudroom, she went out the backdoor to the yard with her keys in her hand. It was quiet in that eerie stillness before the sun came up, before the city awoke. She unlocked the door to the garage.

  The guitar case lay just inside the door where she’d left it last night. She’d almost thrown it across the room she was so disgusted. Not just with herself but with the entire thing. The nerves she had suffered, the self-doubt that nibbled constantly at the walls of her mind like woodmice chewing insulation. The frigid apathy of the audience, so typical of this city, their toddler-like attention spans and unquenchable need to be entertained. The audience, Tilda had thought more than once in her time in the trenches, were like a cadre of leeches, draining the performer dry before tossing aside its husk to demand another. Voracious and insatiable, fickle yet rapacious. And yet she, like so many others, threw herself willingly before its altar like a virgin sacrifice hurled into a volcano.