A Song for a New Day

by Sarah Pinsker

  Mary Hastings sat in the first booth on the left with three other women. Two people stood behind the counter handling orders, both of whom looked to be the musician’s siblings. The crowd dispersed among the tables and barstools, but everyone chatted cross-group. She looked for a familiar face—Joni, maybe, or the singer with the keyboard tattoo, but she didn’t see anyone she recognized except Alice, who sat on a stool at the bar. She wasn’t about to go chat with Alice, so she stayed by Luce’s side.

  Luce stopped at Mary Hastings’s booth first. The other woman was tinier than Rosemary remembered. When she stood for a hug, she reached Luce’s chin, and Luce herself wasn’t tall.

  “You were awesome.” Luce sounded like a giddy fan. “Every time you step up there, I have to pinch myself. Thank you.”

  “Luce, you know I’m just happy you haven’t yet kicked this old woman off your stage yet. I should be thanking you.”

  “You have a place to play as long as I have a stage to put you on.”

  They hugged again, then Hastings sat down and Luce moved along. Here and there people waved or gave her a thumbs-up, but it didn’t take her long to slide into the last booth. Rosemary lingered, not sure if it was reserved for the band, though they had all stopped to chat.

  “Slide in, Rosemary. There are no reserved seats.”

  Rosemary moved toward the opposite bench, but the bassist from the second band got there before she did. She didn’t want to risk being squeezed between two guys she didn’t know if a third person tried to sit on that side, so she slid in next to Luce instead, trying to gauge the appropriate distance to leave between herself and the other woman.

  “Do I smell? Eh, scratch that. I probably do.”

  “Sorry,” said Rosemary. “I was trying to give you enough space.”

  The Harriet drummer—she had already forgotten names—no, Dor: D was for drummer—slid in after her, trapping her. She scooted a little closer to Luce and tried not to panic. They’d let her out anytime she wanted, or else she could always slide under the table, or onto the table and out the door. She’d never be able to return if she did that, but the option reassured her.

  The bassist across the booth pulled a flask from his jacket pocket. “To another great show.” He took a swig and passed it around. It got to Rosemary fifth. Four sets of lips—that she had seen—and four mouths’ germs. Had the pox never reached this place? No, she’d seen evidence that it had. Or maybe they had all forgotten already, or been even younger than her. Luce wasn’t younger, though, and she didn’t think any of these guys were, either. Whatever they were drinking was powerful enough to disinfect . . . or it was worth the risk.

  Tonight, for once, she wasn’t going to be her usual anxious self. She held the flask up, trying to keep it away from her lips. She spilled a little but not too much as she gulped a solid mouthful. It tasted like gasoline, but left a warm sensation in its wake. She wiped her face with her sleeve and passed it on.

  Mary Hastings’s brother came to take their order, starting with Luce. When he got to Rosemary, she said, “Chicken chili with sour cream,” remembering the last bowl. “And a glass of milk.”

  She glanced around to see if anyone mocked her for the milk, but nobody did. They all ordered sodas or water themselves; this wasn’t a bar. When the flask came back a second time, she let her lips touch it as she took a longer swig. The burn spread pleasantly.

  She turned to Luce. “Your band was wonderful. I’m so glad I got to be there. I wish everyone could see you play.”

  “Ha. You and me both, friend.”

  “The room would get awfully crowded, though,” joked the guitarist across the booth. “Poor Alice would have her hands full.”

  “First, we clone Alice, then we invite the world.”

  “Agreed.”

  They passed the flask around again. Rosemary didn’t feel altered, but something inside her unclenched. The proximity of those seated on either side grew more tolerable.

  She excused herself to go to the bathroom. Pushed through the people in the aisle with a confidence she didn’t wear every day. Maybe she could. If this person was inside her, why did she only get released with a drink and a good show? She was obviously there beneath the surface.

  Joni stood in line inside the bathroom door. Rosemary hadn’t seen a multistall bathroom since she was a kid.

  “Hey,” said Rosemary. “I didn’t see you after the show.”

  Joni shrugged. “I don’t like standing around doing nothing.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. She had dimples Rosemary hadn’t noticed before.

  They both stood in silence for a moment. A song played over a tinny speaker in the corner above the sink, and Rosemary recognized it. “Come See Me for Real” by the Iris Branches Band. She’d listened to it all the time in high school.

  Another wave of confidence washed over her. The crowded restaurant didn’t feel oppressive anymore; in this corner, it was protection. She leaned back against the hand dryer to steady herself. “So, uh, what you said earlier, about people playing the way they . . . I, uh, I like the way you play.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. You’re . . . deliberate. Careful, but sure.”

  Joni cocked her head, stepped closer. “Yeah?”

  Even bolder now. “Deliberate is nice. Quiet confidence. People who are loud confident make me nervous.”

  “Loud confident?”

  “Nervous that they aren’t nervous. As opposed to nervous like something good is about to happen.”

  “Like now?”

  “Like now.”

  They both leaned in. Rosemary’s heart quickened, and she closed her eyes. Lips brushed hers, parted hers, electric. Real lips, a real person, a touch she didn’t want to move away from.

  “You drank Mikey Lee’s hooch,” Joni said.

  “Sorry.”

  “I didn’t say it was a bad thing.” Joni kissed her again. “But are you drunk? I don’t want to think you’re drunk and doing something you’ll regret later.”

  “I only had a little to drink. I’m kissing you because of how you play your cello.”

  “What about that touching thing? I’ve noticed the flinch.”

  “I just don’t like it when I’m not expecting it.”

  A stall door swung open, and the person ahead of Joni traded places with the person leaving. Joni and Rosemary broke apart for her to wash her hands. Joni had a contemplative spark in her eye, like she was sizing Rosemary up. The far stall opened, and Joni grabbed her hand and pulled her in. Kissed her again.

  “Is this okay?” she whispered. “It’s gauche, but I have roommates and you said you’re staying with friends, and I kind of want you right now.”

  Rosemary nodded. She could say she had a bed in a room overlooking the entire city, but it might spoil if she tried to trade this moment for a different one in another place. A wrong word, an awkwardness interjected on the ride to the hotel. A chance for her head to catch up with her body and remind her she wasn’t supposed to get involved with the artists, a chance for her usual walls to reappear. Now now now sang inside her, alongside Iris Branches Band’s “Come See Me for Real.” She pulled Joni closer.

  The bathroom door opened again, and more people walked in, talking.

  “Shit,” said one of them. “Get a room, yo.”

  The toilet in the next stall flushed, and Rosemary giggled and then they both did, and Joni pressed her mouth to Rosemary’s shoulder, and Rosemary bit her own lip, trying to keep herself quiet. Running water, the hand dryer, the door, and they were both giggling, the moment gone.

  “I’m glad you came here, Rosemary Laws,” Joni whispered.

  “Me, too,” Rosemary whispered back.

  Joni kissed her again, then slipped out of the stall, leaving Rosemary reeling against the wall.

  * * *

  —<
br />
  “Your chili’s cold,” Luce said when she returned. The others at the table were done with their food.

  “There was a line in the bathroom.”

  “Ah.”

  Rosemary mixed sour cream into cold chili. She hadn’t even realized how hungry she was until she took her first bite. She worked to catch up. “So what happens next?”

  The Mosquitoes bassist dragged a hand across his throat. “It’s Wednesday night. Most of us have to work tomorrow. Sleep happens next.”

  “Oh.”

  “I can introduce you to someone from one of the collectives if you want to hang out later. I’m sure some of them will party. Or, I think you know Joni? Ask her.”

  Rosemary glanced over to see if Luce said that in a teasing way, but she didn’t seem to be suggesting anything.

  “It’s not that I need to party. It’s just been a really nice night. I don’t want it to be over.”

  “Even nice nights have to end. That’s what makes them nice. Otherwise they’d roll right into the next shitty day without anything to differentiate.”

  The bassist across the booth grimaced. “Or you can do the endless-awesome-night thing, but that takes a lot of drugs to maintain.”

  “Does anybody do that anymore?” asked his drummer, the octopus.

  They exchanged a look. Rosemary wondered if they were thinking about Aran. It’s not like that for him, either, she wanted to say, but she thought better of it.

  The bassist lifted the flask again. “To great nights with good friends, to great nights ending, to the next great night.” He passed the drink, and they all toasted.

  They all started sliding out of the booth. Joni stepped behind Rosemary as she shrugged her jacket on. “So, uh, do you want to hang out sometime?”

  Rosemary understood the question behind the question. “I’d love to see you again. Can I find you online, or do you want to make a date now? Not a date, but, you know what I mean.”

  “Let’s decide now. I’m noncomm. Well, semi-noncomm.”

  “‘Semi-noncomm’?”

  “A lot of people are completely noncomm. No Hoodie, no phone. I keep a phone for emergencies, so I can’t say I’m the real deal, but I don’t have an av or anything.”

  “Gotcha,” said Rosemary. She’d never heard of such a thing. She knew people who weren’t connected—her parents, for starters— but she’d never thought their stubbornness was part of a movement.

  “Have you walked around Baltimore at all? I have to work tomorrow and Friday, but I could play tour guide Saturday if you wanted.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Meet me here at ten a.m.?”

  A vision of the two of them in her hotel room flitted through Rosemary’s head, and she shuddered. Not yet. She nodded.

  Joni grinned, then leaned over and gave her a quick kiss, long enough to be more than friendly. “Sweet.”

  21

  ROSEMARY

  A Selection

  Curfew had long since passed. Rosemary was surprised to find the bus still running, but she supposed there were people who needed to get home even at that hour. She rode back to her hotel still feeling she’d been inoculated against her own fear. Sure, there were people out to do harm to others, but a city bus at two a.m. wasn’t where they would choose to do it. She didn’t need a bubble. She had common sense. She still chose a seat where she’d be able to watch the other passengers, where she didn’t have to come into contact with anyone, but she chose not to be concerned about the lack of barriers and compartments. Everyone was trying to get home.

  Back at the hotel, she looked out her window at the city laid out beneath her. The headlights, the hotel windows, the streetlamps capturing tiny figures then releasing them into the dark: even this late, there was still so much movement. Maybe she’d never go back. She was a different person here, and she liked this person. No other night in her life came close to this one. She was a note that hadn’t ever known it fit into a chord. The music, the invitation, Joni. A tiny involuntary shudder at that last thought, an echo, shadow lips on her own.

  * * *

  —

  She woke to her phone chiming.

  Good time for a report?

  The clock read ten a.m. She reached for her Hoodie and dragged it over her head. Happy her avatar looked work appropriate without any effort on her part, glad this wasn’t Superwally Vendor Services with its daily photos and techwear and insistence on propriety.

  The StageHolo virtual meeting spaces were meant to evoke their beautiful campuses. A green and grassy meadow, a single bench. She sat next to an avatar of a slim middle-aged white man. He had perfect chestnut hair streaked with gray, and a neatly trimmed beard and mustache. The hair showed he was high-end, reacting to the same code-wind that rustled the grass. Untucked dress shirt over a T-shirt and jeans. He didn’t introduce himself. She pulled up his information, but it only said “Recruiter Management—Generic Male (1 of 5).” More group management.

  “So, what have you got for us? Your reports have been exciting.”

  “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Tell us about the acts you’ve seen.”

  “All of them, or just the ones I think are worth considering?”

  “Whichever you want.”

  She considered. Easiest to go in chronological order so she didn’t miss anyone. Better not to mention that these were all of them, too; she didn’t know how many they expected her to have seen in eight days. “So there’s a band with this intense preacher vibe, kinda, but not religious, and the singer has this tattoo implant controller in his arm that he plays. He’s building other ones on his body.”

  “So it’s performance art? His body is his instrument?”

  “No! Well, yes, but the songs were good, too. Intense.” She flashed on Joni’s line about people playing instruments the way they made love, and then an image of this singer playing his own arm with ecclesiastic fervor. She laughed to herself.

  “Okay. What are they called?”

  “Kurtz.”

  A white block appeared in the fake sky, with “Kurtz” written on it, a question mark after it.

  “Next?”

  “The Coffee Cake Situation. It’s an awful name, I know”—she interrupted herself as Management opened his mouth—“but their sound is fantastic. The singer plays cello, and she’s absolutely riveting to watch.”

  “The Coffee Cake Situation” appeared in the air above “Kurtz.” “Do I have the order of preference correct?” Management asked.

  Rosemary considered. Both bands had interesting sounds, singers who were compelling for different reasons. She wasn’t sure if her judgment was clouded or if this was the proper order. Which band’s music had she enjoyed more before Joni had kissed her? Joni’s, she thought. The main selling point for Kurtz was the singer’s unique implants, not their songs. She couldn’t picture either band without their lead performer, and neither was about the songs so much as the sounds they created, and the ways they made people react. She had no idea which had a better chance with StageHoloLive.

  “They both have potential,” she said carefully. “Do you mind if I list the rest and then sort the order?”

  “Fair enough. Next?”

  The next night was the one where she had fallen over the fence. She skipped that one for the time being.

  “Mary Hastings. Tiny little old woman with a giant sound. She’s a one-woman band, uses lots of effects. Absolutely phenomenal.”

  “But?”

  “But I saw how much trouble it was when Magritte went off script, and she didn’t act like somebody willing to stick to a plan. They said Mary Hastings plays as long as she wants, when she wants. She’s worth it, if you want something different.”

  “I’ll pass that along to Specialty Acts. Maybe there’s a niche for her somewher
e.”

  The name “Mary Hastings” wrote itself on the white square with a line through it and an arrow beside it.

  “Next?”

  “The Handsome Mosquitoes.”

  “These bands are better than their names?”

  “I promise. These guys are really talented. Poppy, um, anthemic. The singer’s a good-looking guy with an amazing voice and a ton of charisma, and the band is really tight.” She didn’t mention they had been Aran’s band, the former Patent Medicine. They were excellent. They deserved another chance.

  “Nice. Did any of the acts you’ve mentioned look like they have habits that might keep them from fulfilling obligations?”

  “I didn’t see anything that rang any alarm bells for me. The bands were on time. This scene is about the music, not any side benefits, I think.” She was echoing something someone had said, but it sounded good.

  He flashed a smile. “Ah, those are great when you can find them. Was that the last one?”

  “One more.” She paused. “Do you remember ‘Blood and Diamonds’?”

  “Of course. Hell of a song.”

  “Yeah, so, I found Luce Cannon. She’s playing here, under a different band name. She’s amazing.”

  “Saving the best for last, huh? Wow. Nice job, Rosemary.” The management avatar shimmered a bit, like it was vibrating with excitement. “That was a killer song. We can build a whole mystique around her, like ‘whatever happened to . . . ?’ Then a rediscovery special, emphasize how she hasn’t played or released a song in years.”

  “She has, though. Twice a week, every week, practically. She’s put out a ton of music on some weird platform.”

  He wasn’t listening to her. “Not with us or anyplace else that matters. How do we reach her? And the rest of the bands you found?”

  She hesitated. It felt wrong to make this connection without giving the musicians a heads-up, and she hadn’t collected contact info for any of them yet. A little lie wouldn’t hurt.