The Musician

by Douglas Gardham

  Ethan squeezed between some teenagers who looked mesmerized by the playing of this girl who didn’t look any older than they were. Syd’s fingers were weaving up and down the neck of her Gibson. Blinding flashes of the morning sun reflected off the ivory body as she moved. Her guitar looked mammoth resting against her thigh in front of her. Music flowed from her fingers as if the guitar were part of her body. The crowd, mostly older teens and twentysomethings, seemed awed by the guitar aficionado in their midst, as if they were seeing a Joni Mitchell or a Neil Young en route to celebrity. Ethan was inspired while watching her play. She was in her element. Then, as if interrupted by his presence, she looked up and saw him. Her reaction was immediate; she drew in the melody and brought the song to what seemed its natural conclusion. The amp echoed her final notes.

  The small crowd clapped, whistled, and shouted their pleasure, tossing coins into her open guitar case.

  “I’m afraid my time’s up,” she announced to groans of disappointment. “But,” she added, nodding at Ethan, “I’ll leave you with this.”

  People turned as Ethan shook his head, his nerves once again on edge, but he couldn’t say no. He had to perform.

  “We’re part of the Release,” Syd said, adjusting the position of her guitar. “We’re recording our first songs across the street. Come out and see us sometime, and buy our album when it comes out.”

  Ethan made his way forward as Syd spoke. As he turned to face the crowd gathered around them, Syd started to play “The Angel.” He was about to wave her off to play something else but stopped. He wasn’t ready, but the moment was here and now. The show must go on, Ethan. The words came to him as if Mila were standing at his side, whispering in his ear. But as he started to sing, he saw her—not Mila but the woman from their night at Benny’s. He felt something more than just familiarity. It was an old feeling, a feeling of comfort, like seeing a close friend after a long absence.

  It was the feeling of love.

  CHAPTER 29

  Wednesday, November 28, 1984

  If there was an autopilot to performing, Ethan engaged it. Though the piano was missing, Syd played their new arrangement. Ethan watched the woman move along the back of the crowd. On starting the second verse, he caught her eye. There was that instant of recognition that one desires more than the other but both know it. Syd played on, working the song like a master beyond her years. Ethan sang as if his miscues in the studio had never happened. He looked from the woman to Syd, who was gleaming with the joy of performing well. Her eyes signaled him to turn back to the crowd. There seemed to be even more people; people stopped on their way to work, school, or breakfast, captivated by the unexpected spectacle. But Ethan searched only for the eyes he had fallen for.

  Unbelievably, they were gone. Two unknown faces filled the spot where he’d seen her. Panicked, he scanned the many faces that surrounded them, but the face—the eyes, the smile—had vanished. Had he imagined her? It seemed too much of a coincidence for her to be there without having any way of knowing he would be, yet he felt certain his eyes had not deceived him. She was real. He had seen her. She had seen him, only to vanish like a wisp of smoke moments later.

  As he sang the last words, Syd wound through the last guitar riff. His eyes darted from one person to the next, trying to find the lost brown eyes and the person they belonged to. The crowd clapped and hooted as Syd played the last chord.

  “Thank you!” Ethan shouted, hearing Syd reiterate the same words. Coins plunked into her guitar case like large pellets of hail.

  As the crowd dissipated, Ethan’s eyes met Syd’s.

  “You should have done this before we started recording,” Ethan said, nodding at the money in her guitar case. “Look at that.”

  Syd looked back at him, her eyebrows raised. “What do you mean?” she said. “There were only a few coins in there ten minutes ago. This is for you.”

  Ethan shook his head. “Yeah, right.”

  She unplugged her guitar as Ethan bent down to collect the money, thanking those who passed by dropping more coins.

  “Did you see her?” Syd asked, squatting beside him.

  “See who?”

  “Ah, come on. You didn’t see her?”

  “See who?” Ethan repeated, pretending not to know whom Syd was talking about, afraid the answer would trick him again.

  “The nurse woman from Benny’s,” Syd said.

  Ethan smiled, still hesitant to admit whom he thought he’d seen but relieved he could trust she was real.

  “You saw her too?” he asked, turning around and looking again, hopeful she might reappear. The sidewalk where they’d performed was nearly clear. Two teenage girls were walking into Nancy’s Restaurant. They were wearing shorts and T-shirts in the unseasonably warm weather.

  “Only for a moment,” Syd replied. “I knew I’d seen her before but couldn’t remember where. When I remembered, she was gone.”

  “Strange. Why would she be here?”

  “Stalker,” Syd joked.

  Ethan looked up to see Gus waving at them urgently from across the street.

  “Fuck. What now?” he said.

  Syd didn’t reply. She picked up the few coins he’d missed and set her white ES inside the case, cradling it like a piece of fine china.

  “You think you can sing ‘The Angel’ now?” Syd asked as they crossed the street. “That was quite a performance. Talk about recording. That was the one.”

  Performing live was different from the confines of the studio. It was like the difference between talking to someone he liked and talking to someone he didn’t.

  “It’s different out here,” he said. “It’s like I’m someone else.”

  “Then fucking close your eyes and imagine.” Syd laughed as they stepped onto the opposite curb in front of the studio.

  “It’s like I feed off who they want me to be,” Ethan replied, surprising himself with his response.

  “Then pretend you’re who they want,” she said. “Like an actor.”

  Ethan stopped. Her words hit him with an unexpected suddenness. Like an actor. He was back at the hospital. He saw the tunneled corridor and the gray tile floor he’d shuffled down too many times. “How’s the Actor today?” someone asked.

  “You know what?” he answered, somehow jerking himself back from where his mind seemed intent on taking him. “You’re fucking right.”

  Syd smiled and pushed on the front door of Focus Sound.

  Raj was leaning against the doorframe of the console booth when they came in. His right hand was on his hip in a fed-up stance.

  “We’re gonna do ‘The Angel’ again,” Ethan said before Raj had a chance to speak, “and if it’s anything like we just played, you’re gonna be happy.”

  Raj stood upright and shrugged as if to say, “I doubt it.” Losing Raj would put an end to their biggest break to date and, worse, Randolph’s confidence.

  Gus pointed at Greg, who was still crashed on the couch.

  Ethan shook his head. They’d deal with Greg later.

  “Let’s get the show on the road then,” Raj said, pushing open the door to master control of their future. “We’ve only a couple of hours left.”

  Ethan followed Syd into the recording room. Her Gibson would replace the twelve-string Martin. Ethan walked to the microphone, not the piano.

  Ethan watched Raj behind the glass glance at the piano and back at him. Ethan didn’t respond and stared at the six-inch black-fabric disk in front of the mike, which had replaced the big black foam ball.

  Ethan turned to Syd. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  He closed his eyes. Syd started to play. The music sounded just as it had on the street. Ethan started to sing.

  “Here lies an angel …”

  CHAPTER 30

  A Place without Time

  Her hair fell through
his fingers like the white sand on the beach they’d walked along. Like the beach, it seemed natural that they were there together. She was magnificence in his arms.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “Been?” Ethan replied. “What do you mean?”

  Something wasn’t right; something was missing, like a family photo with all the eyes removed.

  “You’ve been gone a long time.”

  “I have?” he said, suddenly realizing that the person he thought was with him couldn’t be.

  “Ethan, I’ve been searching for you,” she said, her brown eyes melting him from the inside out.

  Ethan paused and looked around. He was in a room he recognized—the cinder block walls, the chains hanging from the walls, the chair—but he couldn’t remember the name of the person in the chair.

  “I know you recognize me,” she whispered, “but you don’t remember me, do you?”

  “What do you mean?” Ethan said. “I’ll never forget you.”

  “But you have, sweetie,” she said. Her soft hands were on his cheeks. “There’s something missing, isn’t there?”

  Ethan turned his head and again looked around the room he was standing in. Behind him was a bed with a small table beside it. There was a commode. A name much more appealing than a toilet. They weren’t his words, but he knew them as if they were. The man sitting in the chair wore only a white T-shirt smeared with brown stains and blood. A towel lay across the top of his legs.

  “You’re singing now,” she said.

  “I’m in a band.”

  “You’re a beautiful singer,” she said, smiling, “and you sing pretty good too.”

  She was no longer in his arms but standing beside him.

  “But it’s not your singing, Ethan,” she said. “It’s how you bring songs to life. You are the Actor, Ethan.”

  At first, he found the scene strange, but as he looked more closely, he could see everything was intentional. People he didn’t know stood around, watching them. There were wires, lights, and equipment—equipment the likes of which he’d never seen before. He saw movie cameras. People were moving about, busy in what he could only describe as chaos. Many eyes were watching him, almost touching him, but he liked it; he loved it. He was there for their entertainment—to make them happy.

  There were people around a man sitting in the chair in front of him. The chains from the wall were fastened to the man’s arms. The towel across the man’s thighs was gone.

  “Keep searching, Ethan,” she said.

  He could no longer see her. He turned, but she was gone, along with any chance of her name.

  “Keep digging,” she whispered, as if her lips were beside his ear, and he felt her breath on his skin. “Dig deeper, Ethan. Find me.”

  The room faded into something else.

  He was singing words to a melody and then nearly screaming, You’ve made me do this to you! It’s all self-inflicted! But the words were in his head.

  Then he heard his voice singing, “With eyes still watching, her voice still sings.” He sang as if the words were the last he would ever utter.

  CHAPTER 31

  Wednesday, November 28, 1984

  “Ethan! Ethan!” Raj shouted through intercom. “Un-fucking-believable! Where did that come from? Ladies and gentlemen, we have ourselves a star!”

  Raj was jumping up and down in the control room, doing a shake-and-shimmy routine behind the console. It was strange for Ethan to open his eyes to such exuberance. Everything looked a little fuzzy, as it did when waking from a deep sleep. He looked over at Syd. Her smile said it all.

  “I’m with Raj,” she said, her voice quiet with respect. “Where the fuck did that come from?”

  Ethan shook his head. He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember even singing. Only the last words remained on his lips: “her voice still sings.”

  He felt awkward stepping back from the black fabric disk he’d sung into. He turned and walked to the door, feeling like a stranger in the room.

  Gus was standing outside the door when he came out.

  “Couldn’t take my eyes off you,” Gus said. “Like something from the fucking cosmos.”

  Greg was rising from the couch, looking no less haggard, as Ethan tried to come to terms with what had just happened.

  Randolph coming in the front door cleared his head.

  “Ethan, what’s up?” Randolph said, closing the door. His hand was extended. Ethan shook it. Dressed in a tailored navy suit with a burgundy tie loose around the unbuttoned collar of a white cotton dress shirt, he was leaning forward, a posture Ethan had come to recognize as intent. Randolph had things on his mind. It was the first time Ethan noticed Randolph had put on some weight.

  Before Ethan could answer, Raj opened the sound booth door.

  “What timing,” he gushed, his cheeks rounded into a smile. “Ethan just blew us away.” Ethan’s hand was still in Randolph’s. “It’s a bit ballady, but what a song.”

  “Ballady?” Randolph repeated, his eyebrows rising. “Is that a real word or industry lingo?”

  “It’s my word. It’s a Rajism.”

  Everyone laughed. When things worked, everything worked.

  As his head cleared, Ethan introduced the others to his friend. They all shook Randolph’s hand. Greg was last, straightening the waist of his jeans as he stood up from the couch. He looked as if he needed to sleep for a week. Ethan couldn’t help but wonder how Greg was going to drum to anything.

  “How are the songs coming?” Randolph asked. He still looked and sounded anxious, as if something else were on his mind. “Is the ballady one of them?”

  Ethan was about to answer, but Raj jumped in.

  “The ballady will make the cut. It’s pure fucking magic.”

  Raj talked fast. He seemed anxious to Ethan, probably not wanting to interrupt the roll they found themselves on.

  Ethan stared at Raj as he spoke, reminded of the hospital, where Randolph would tell him things he had done in his other world. There was only a feeling, no memory of having been there. He wondered whether an actor felt that way when hearing someone describe a movie he or she had been in—the watched as opposed to the watcher.

  “You broke into falsetto while Sydney matched you note for note, up, up,” Raj said, his fingers mimicking his voice, rising higher and higher in the air in front of him. Syd nodded. Raj shook his head. “Those moments never come twice.”

  “I want to hear the song,” Randolph said. “Sounds perfect for when Avery knows something’s up—a perfect contradiction.”

  William Avery, Ethan thought, from Browning Station. Sadly, he still didn’t have a copy, and the book was why they were there.

  “So what else have you got?” Randolph asked, looking from Ethan to Raj and back to Ethan again.

  “We’ve recorded parts of four songs,” Ethan said.

  “Yeah, but there’s still tons to do,” Raj added.

  “Right on schedule,” Randolph said. “Good.”

  “Yeah, the best is ahead of us,” Raj said.

  Ethan smiled. Raj had come around.

  “We need two,” Randolph said. “The rest is gravy.”

  Ethan was doing his best to stay with the conversation, but the gap left in his memory during “The Angel” still disturbed him.

  “All four will be good, though,” Ethan said, interrupting his own thoughts.

  “That’s okay,” Randolph said, patting Ethan on the shoulder. “We need two, and if Raj is happy, I’m happy.”

  Raj turned and clapped his hands. “Okay, okay,” he snapped. “Enough chitchat. We’ve got work to do.”

  “Yeah, I gotta go,” Randolph said, looking at Ethan. “I’ve been here too long already. I was in the neighborhood and couldn’t help myself.”

  In the neighborhood? That’s
odd, Ethan thought. Why would that be? Randolph lived in Ottawa. There was no “in the neighborhood” about it. No doubt Randolph had wanted to know how his baby was coming along. Futures were on the line. He knew it. Ethan knew it. But why not call? Ethan didn’t like being checked up on, as if they couldn’t be trusted. It was like being watched—like the woman from Benny’s on the sidewalk. No, that thinking didn’t seem right. Ethan figured it best to leave the matter alone. He looked at Greg. There was enough to worry about as it was.

  “We’ve two hours before we get kicked out,” Raj said. He’d moved back to the open door of the sound booth. “Time is money, and ours is a-wasting.”

  Randolph stepped forward and shook Raj’s hand again. Ethan thought he saw a look pass between the men. It was hard to read but likely something between “We’ll get it done” and “This is pretty fucked up,” he thought. He was also sure he knew what end of the scale Raj was at, despite “The Angel.” But from what Randolph had told him, Raj always delivered. Ethan figured Raj had dealt with bands much more screwed up than the Release. He would overlook all the antics, but they had to play. How they got there didn’t matter as long as they did. Ethan realized that was all Randolph cared about too.

  “Let’s play ‘You Don’t Know What You’re Saying,’” Greg suggested, causing everyone to turn and look at him. He was standing beside the couch behind Gus. “Syd and Gus can start. See if we can get something down that the star can fucking sing to.”

  “Right on,” Raj said. “See you later, Randy.”

  Randy? There that name was again. The feeling was immediate: the heavy locked door seemed to rise beside him. Ethan did his best to push it away, stepping forward with his hand extended to shake Randolph’s.

  “Can’t wait to hear what you’ve got.”

  “You won’t be disappointed,” Ethan said as confidently as he could, his real feelings contrary to his words.