A Song for a New Day

by Sarah Pinsker

  I debated taking everything with me, decided against it, then for it, then against it again. What were the odds that someone might pull the same hideous stunt two nights in a row? I packed my gig stuff into my backpack and left the larger bag, just to make a point.

  The guys met us in the parking lot. I handed Hewitt my tour bible, and he read the address to the van’s GPS to route us. The guys had laughed at my insistence on a hard copy of our itinerary for the first few days of the tour, until the afternoon the phones had crashed but I still knew where we were going. We stopped to buy an actual atlas that day. “Haven’t sold one of those in a while now,” the convenience store clerk said. Nobody had mocked my book since then, and I loved making notes in the margins of the atlas. A childhood spent in the confines of a single neighborhood had left me a fan of maps and all they could tell.

  We drove through a cute little business district full of boutiques and restaurants, before turning off the wide street and onto a narrow one.

  “Stop the van.” I was already opening the door. “Stop, stop, stop.”

  Hewitt slammed on the brakes, and I jumped out. The Peach, our destination, had an old-fashioned marquee out front. An old-fashioned marquee with my name on it. TONIGHT: LUCE CANNON. I had seen my name on chalkboards and posters, but never on a marquee before.

  A year before, when things had started moving for me, I’d made a list of all the things I wanted to accomplish in my music career. Two lists, actually: one of things within my control, and one of things outside my control. On the first list, I had line items like “learn how to play better lead guitar.” On the second, the more pie-in-the-sky stuff: clubs and theaters I wanted to headline, people I wanted to share a stage with. I had never even thought to put “my name on a marquee.” The first chance I had to open my journal, I’d write it down for the thrill of crossing it off.

  “How cool is that?” I asked nobody in particular, pulling out my phone to snap a quick picture.

  A car honked behind our van, and I waved the band on. “I’ll meet you inside.”

  Hewitt had my tour bible, which meant he’d seen the note about the loading dock behind the club. This gave me another few minutes to admire my name in lights.

  A woman walked by on the opposite side of the road with a German shepherd, heading into a park.

  I pointed at the sign. “That’s my name!”

  She smiled and gave me a thumbs-up.

  The theater looked like it had been a cinema once upon a time. The label’s PR team had sent posters, and one was displayed in a fancy bulb-framed display beside the old-fashioned ticket booth. I tried three locked doors before I found one that opened into a rotunda-style lobby with a bar. A guy in a black T-shirt with a giant peach on the back was stocking a beer cooler. He looked up when I entered.

  “I’m in the band,” I said before he asked. “Is the loading dock open, do you know?”

  He nodded, and I stepped into the theater.

  No wonder they had been pushing me to do promotionals in this town. We’d mostly been playing midsized rock clubs, but this was an honest-to-goodness theater, with chairs and a balcony and everything. A theater we were headlining. I was headlining. On a Tuesday, granted, but still a step up.

  I walked down the aisle. The house lights were on, displaying all the details: the art deco wall sconces, the carved proscenium. April staggered onto the stage from the wings with her giant bag of drum hardware, always the last thing loaded and the first thing unloaded, as tall as she was, and twice as heavy. Behind her came the other guys, with her throne, her cymbal bags, her bass drum. Everyone helped with everything, but April always grabbed the big bag herself as a point of pride.

  I made my way out to the van. Gemma had said early on that I didn’t have to help unload. “Play diva if you want. We’re on your payroll.”

  Maybe I’d have been able to get used to it, but it felt like a weird separation between me and the people I played with, even if they were hired guns. I wanted to be part of the group, but situations kept conspiring to set me apart: the solo promotion spots, their painting expedition. My own unwillingness to share much of myself. The least I could do was carry my own gear and help with theirs.

  After Gemma left, I was glad I’d already gotten them used to me stepping in alongside, so it wasn’t some weird change in procedure. I might claim some point of “That’s my name up there” privilege every once in a while, but I didn’t actually know how to play diva, when it came down to it.

  We got everything unloaded, and started on setup. Another Peach-shirted employee joined us onstage after April had assembled her kit. He started pulling drum mics and stands from an alcove and fussing with their placement.

  “Hi—I’m Luce,” I said when he paused for a moment. Step one: always be nice to the people responsible for making you sound good.

  “Eric Silva. Call me Silva. I’m looking forward to this. We’ve been playing your stuff in the house mix for the last few weeks, and I really like your sound.”

  Points in his favor. I could often tell how the show was going to go by the sound person’s attitude. The ones who didn’t want us to be there, maybe preferred another genre or didn’t go for chick singers, didn’t introduce themselves by name. When I introduced myself, they’d grunt or nod or go about their business. Those guys directed all their questions to JD or Hewitt, and talked down to April and me, or didn’t talk to us at all. I’d learned the introduction served as an easy test.

  Somebody in the booth was cycling through various gels and positions for the lights, throwing rainbows and occasionally blinding us. Silva orbited the band as we set up, placing mics and shifting monitor angles. He didn’t ask us any questions about the makeup of our band, or where we wanted the monitors, and I realized he’d actually studied our tech rider, something that put this place in the top one percent of venues as far as I was concerned. When somebody met us on the stage with all our needs and preferences attended to, I got the feeling the show would be a good one.

  The soundcheck went well. The theater had the nicest sound system we’d run into on this tour, and Silva gave us the exact monitor mixes we wanted. The room sounded like a cathedral, full and warm; it would sound even better filled with people. After Silva had all the levels set, we asked him if we had a few minutes to work on a new song I had written over the weekend.

  “Be my guest,” he said. “You’ve got two hours before the doors open and dinner’s on its way to the green room. Come find me if you need me.”

  I had gone through a fallow period at the tour’s start where I couldn’t figure out the rhythm of things. We were driving to the next town after each show, checking into hotels in the middle of the night, sleeping a few hours before I had to start the promotional cycle; everyone else got to sleep a few extra hours while Gemma dragged me to morning shows. I was haggard, getting myself wired for shows on caffeine alone, eating crap.

  After three weeks, I begged Gemma for a change, and we settled into a new schedule. When possible, we started sleeping in the town we had played, so I could get a solid night’s sleep. Wake up, try to get to the hotel gym, drive, soundcheck, play, sleep. It didn’t work if we had to be at a radio show six hours away by eight a.m., but the PR people got some promos rescheduled for lunch shows instead of morning, and worked it out that I called in for others.

  The previous Saturday, in the hours between soundcheck and show, I’d sat down to write for the first time in the entire tour. An idea had wormed its way into my head while I drove. I got most of my ideas behind the wheel; something about the rhythm of the road lent my mind permission to wander.

  The seed had been a piece of graffiti I’d spotted along the way. DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, the sign read, scrawled on the WELCOME sign below the town’s name, the mayor’s name, and the population. Don’t even think about what? I wondered, and from there the song came, a punchy little meditation
on insularity and fear. I had written it out for the guys in the van on Sunday morning, and we had tried an arrangement at that day’s soundcheck that made me happy.

  Two days later, it sounded a little less ready than it had on Sunday, when the newness had obscured the roughness. This far into the tour, I had mostly outgrown my hesitance over telling the band what to do. At the beginning, I’d been reluctant to tell them when I thought something wasn’t working.

  “Let us know,” April had told me, when she noticed. “We’re here to make you sound good.”

  “But you’re all more experienced. You’re amazing musicians. Maybe I’m wrong?”

  “They’re your songs, right? We can make suggestions, but you get final say. We’d all rather sound good, at day’s end, right? We’ll sound better if you’re happy.”

  I’d worked on it over the following months. Developed the nerve to say when I thought someone was out of tune, or a drum fill was too distracting.

  “JD, why don’t you and April both wait to come in on the second verse?” I asked now. “The beginning needs a little room to breathe.”

  We tried it the new way. I made another tweak, a change from one chord to its relative minor. It brought a dark nuance the song needed.

  “I think that’s it,” I declared after the fourth time through. The lyrics still weren’t quite right, but nothing was set in stone until we recorded it.

  “Thank goodness,” said Hewitt. “I’m hungry enough to eat my own arm.”

  “Not our fault you don’t bother to eat breakfast,” said April. “It sounds good, Luce.”

  I flashed her a grin. “Do you guys think we can squeeze it into the set list for tonight?”

  “If you think we can get through it without messing up.” JD leaned his bass against his amp and flipped the standby switch.

  “Do you mind if I play a little more?” I asked into the mic.

  “Go ahead. Opening band hasn’t shown yet.” Silva’s disembodied voice came back to me through my monitor. “Do you need me to stay up here?”

  “No, thanks. Everything sounds perfect.”

  I lingered for a few minutes after everyone left to find dinner. Not because I had anything left to do, but I wanted a moment alone on this beautiful stage. The house lights were on again, and I looked out on a sea of empty seats, two long aisles, an elegant balcony level. I played a cover I used to play on the street, digging how my voice sounded rich and strong, my guitar muscular. It expanded to fill the space, like a liquid or a gas, pushing into the farthest corners. I belonged here.

  My phone buzzed, a text from April. Check out this green room.

  The second I walked in, I knew why she had messaged me. It was bigger than any other green room we’d crammed into on this tour. The couches were worn but didn’t look like the biohazard sites we often found backstage. A mirrored vanity table sat in the corner, promising movie-star glamour. The walls were plastered with band stickers and black-and-white 8 x 10 photos, new and old.

  “That’s not intimidating at all.” Hewitt pointed to a signed photo of Johnny Cash. He was kidding. I’d never seen him daunted by any room or any situation. He was a lead guitarist through and through, full of lead guitarist confidence.

  “Is that a bathroom? We get our own bathroom?” I asked. In most clubs we had to share a green room with one to three other bands, so there was no place to change except the public bathroom, standard model: two stalls—one clogged, one dubious, no toilet paper; more graffiti than wall; cracked mirror for putting on makeup; and no surface that looked safe to touch without a glove. This one sparkled with cleanliness, even if it was still too small to change in easily.

  “Eat something.” Every once in a while, April tried to step into Gemma’s managerial shoes for a minute. Not long enough to, say, choose not to paint the hotel room pink, but at least long enough to make sure I considered dinner.

  I looked over the spread. They’d followed our full rider; lots of places ignored what we asked for and served us pizza and M&M’s, or handed us money and told us to buy dinner. I didn’t mind the buy-dinner option—that was when we got a chance to find local restaurants, see a little of a new city.

  After that lousy night, the side table holding an electric kettle, throat-health tea, and honey and lemons looked enticing to me. Other teas and coffee for everyone else, since they all agreed that throat tea tasted like rotting licorice. Veggies and hummus, cold cuts, cheese for the nonsingers in our midst. I made myself a plate, started a tea steeping, put a chipped saucer over it to concentrate it, and settled on a couch to eat.

  “The show is sold out,” April said. “I talked to the lighting tech outside. The venue’s super happy.”

  “Awesome.”

  “If it goes well, maybe the label will book the whole next leg of the tour in theaters like this. I could get used to that. If we don’t all get fired for painting the hotel room.”

  That was probably as close to an apology as I’d get.

  Somebody knocked on the door, sharp and urgent.

  “It sounds great out—” I started to say when Silva walked in, but the sentence died halfway through. He looked distraught.

  He waved his phone at us. “Have you seen?”

  None of us had looked at any news sites since we’d gotten to the club.

  “Is it the hotels again?” asked JD.

  Silva shook his head. Didn’t offer any more.

  “Oh, God.” We all turned in April’s direction. She had her tablet out and her face had gone pale.

  She turned the tablet to face us.

  4

  ROSEMARY

  The Crash

  Rosemary spawned in a parking lot.

  The Bloom Bar’s exterior carried a strange air of both “Welcome” and “Get lost.” Daisies and black-eyed Susans overflowed from beds on either side of the door and beneath the long dark windows. The outer walls were yellow stucco, and both o’s of “Bloom” had been transformed into smiling flowers. The friendliness ended there.

  A sign over the parking lot proclaimed PATENT MEDICI E TON TE! SHL! A dry-erase board by the door said the same thing, but without letters missing. Rosemary wondered why a virtual environment pretended to run out of letters for their sign; she guessed it added authenticity. For that matter, the entire parking lot was unnecessary; just another place for people with money to show off their gas-powered sports cars and unicorn-drawn pumpkins and whatever other virtual extravagances high-end hoodspace offered. Not that she’d ever been in any hoodspace this well-developed before.

  An av perched on a stool between two doors: at least ten feet tall, sized well past human. No, not an avatar, a nonplayer bot. Rosemary wasn’t sure if he was security or a ticket taker or both. A scanner sparkled on the wall beside him.

  “Are you here for the show or the bar?” The bot’s tone was bored.

  “The show?”

  He nodded as if she had given the answer he expected, which she probably had; she couldn’t imagine that people paid for the privilege of hanging out in a virtual bar if they weren’t going to the show. Then again, there was a dragon tethered in the parking lot. People paid for all kinds of strange privileges.

  He looked at her as if she had missed something. “Thirty dollars if you didn’t prepurchase,” he said, and she guessed he was repeating it.

  “I have a code? To get in free?” Apparently her nerves turned statements into questions.

  “I’m working for SHL,” she said, attempting a sentence.

  “Paste your code here.”

  She opened her bag of holding and snagged the invitation, dropping it in front of his scanner.

  The bot waved her past. “Door on the right.”

  She guessed the left door was where the regulars went, whoever came here for the bar instead of the show. This bar probably existed in the SHL virtual landscape
even when shows weren’t going on, for subscription holders’ benefit.

  The ceiling dropped low as she entered, less than a foot over Rosemary’s head, the passage narrow and dark. She made it ten more feet before she encountered another person on another stool, this one a tiny blonde woman.

  “ID,” said the woman. Av or bot?

  Rosemary fumbled for her bag of holding again, managing to open two other apps and a screenshot camera before she flashed her digital ID. “Sorry, new Hoodie.”

  The woman was unimpressed. “Bag.”

  Nobody here spoke in anything more than one-syllable words. Rosemary opened access to her bag and waited while the woman searched it. “It’s my wallet and camera and workstation. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to bring, you know?”

  The woman gave her a strange look, enough to tell Rosemary she was an av, not a bot.

  “I’m sorry,” said Rosemary. “I know I’m talking a lot. It’s my first time here. First time at an SHL show, too. In case you couldn’t tell.”

  The woman handed her bag access back. There didn’t seem to be any point to the security rituals; maybe they added authenticity for those who remembered real places like this. Or maybe they were meant to dissuade people who brought virtual guns to virtual bars.

  As she moved past, the woman spoke. “You can only use your camera app for the first two minutes of the show. The first two minutes use a different format, so people can take pictures with the band if they want and tell people they were here. After that, don’t bother. The rest don’t photograph well. If you keep trying, people will know you’re new. Also, don’t go in the bathroom unless you’re looking for drugs or sex.”

  Rosemary flashed a grateful smile. “Thanks!” She wasn’t sure why anyone wanted to photograph a holo, or why a virtual club needed a bathroom, but she filed the information away. She blew her next moment of cool by pushing on a pull door.