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SINISTER

17.

“Do you know that girl?”

Garren knelt in front of a display of stomp boxes, wiring the effects together with short, black cables. He glanced where CJ was looking. Tory, the girl from his Biology class, was there. She was with another girl who was thumbing through the sheet music.

“We had a class together.”

CJ leaned down and said, “She likes you.”

“Yeah, right,” he said. “How many different effects are there? Is this how guys like Eddie Van Halen make their guitar sound so cool?”

“She keeps looking at you so forget about the pedals for a second and go talk to her.”

He shook his head, no, several times, and stood up.

“Let me tell you something, kiddo – .”

“Do you know how many there are?”

“I have no idea. The company that makes them keeps putting out new ones. Now listen to me, there’s something you haven’t realized about guitar players.”

“What?”

“Everybody likes them.”

“I kinda figured that out already,” Garren said.

“Some girls really like guitar players.”

Garren glanced back at Tory and saw that she was looking at him. He broke away fast, before they made eye contact. It was one thing to talk to her after school. He could do that. It was something else to attempt a conversation outside of that setting.

“Once you play guitar you have magical power,” CJ said. “You have to be responsible with the power, but it’s okay to use a little of it if you’ve always been shy around girls.”

Garren looked at his shoes. The rubber tip of the left one had a long crack above his big toe area. He shot a sideways peek toward Tory. She was listening to her friend, attentive. He figured that he’d already been forgotten.

“What if you’ve been a total loser your whole life?”

Garren flinched as CJs hands rose upwards, then relaxed when the man put both of them on his shoulders. CJ wasn’t the kind who hit to make a point.

“Play some of those A-minor licks I taught you.”

“But I haven’t mastered them yet and – .”

“Go.”

CJ gave him a shake. It wasn’t hard, but it made the deep cut on his side wake up and hurt. Garren put one hand on top of it and then went to his guitar. He had her in a stand near the luthier’s station where she’d received her new strings. He practiced whenever the store was slow and it was easier to keep her out all day rather than box her up in her case. Besides, she liked being in the world twenty-four-seven.

He picked her up by the neck, looped the black strap CJ had given him around his shoulders. CJ was right, he supposed, because he felt a whole lot cooler than he’d even been with her weight against him. He walked out from behind the counter, careful not to bump her headstock against anything and thinking that he had none of a rock star’s strut. He saw Tory and her friend look at him as he passed by, heading to the old tube amp. He popped the amp’s cord into the guitar, flipped the ON button and dug a pick out of his back pocket. He positioned his fingers. His stomach fluttered because somehow he knew the girls were watching. When the amp hummed he hit one note, did a hammer-on and raked his pick against the other strings. The amp’s reverb was cranked to the right, making the notes sound wet. He repositioned and did a hard bend.

“I didn’t know you played guitar.”

Tory – she was right in front of him, her friend slightly behind her.

He nodded.

“When did you start working here?”

“’Bout the same time I started playing guitar,” he said.

“My dad knows CJ, the owner.”

“My boss,” he said, biting his lower lip as he looked around to see if CJ was watching him. He saw him at the cash register, ringing up a customer. “Good guy.”

“Cool guitar,” Tory said.

“Yeah, me and her became friends really fast.”

“So you just bailed out on Biology?”

“Priorities,” he said, and tapped the guitar’s body with three fingers. “Life changes, you know how it goes.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“So, uh, you guys find everything you were looking for?”

Her friend said that she had, then added, “I’m going to check out. Meet you outside.”

She left and Garren thought that she was pretty, too, just not the same way or to the same extent that Tory was.

“Okay, well, let me know if you want me to order any sheet music. We can get almost any song, new ones, old ones, you name it.”

“You really just started playing?”

He nodded.

“You sounded pretty good.”

“That was just pentatonic stuff, first position,” he said. “Penta means five, it’s like a five note scale repeated over and over. I still don’t really understand it, but it’s pretty easy stuff to play.”

She stared at the guitar and he stole that moment to stare at her, the shape of her nose, the way her eyelashes fell… So many details to her, they made his heart pick up speed, a little like it had when he’d first seen the guitar. He put his fret hand on the thinnest string and did a quick double bend, wah-wahp, clipping it off at the end.

“That’s in position two,” he said. “Do you know who BB King is?”

“No.”

“I didn’t either. He’s a total bad ass on guitar, though, and that lick is from the BB Box. It’s called that because he uses those notes in his solos all the time. CJs got some old albums of him and I’ll play them for you sometime, if you want.”

“Okay.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

He tried to finger a barre chord to play a happy sounding major and butchered it. His fingers went where they wanted, like they had their own, disobedient minds. The chord was muddled and he pressed his hand against the strings, silencing it.

“See? I’m still learning. I can’t make a decent barre chord to save my life.”

They were both quiet for a moment.

“I can hear some really cool music,” he said, touching the side of his head. “I just don’t know enough yet to play it.”

“You’ll get there.”

He looked at his shoes, feeling his cheeks flush and pleased that she’d said that and that it meant she had confidence in him.

“You should let me cut your hair,” she said. “I cut my little brother’s hair all the time.”

“You ever give him a Mohawk?”

“No,” she said through a laugh. “He’d kill me, but I could do one. Is that what you want?”

“Maybe a black one with red on the end of the spikes.”

“Let me know,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”

He nodded and uttered something like yeah, then watched her leave the store. He switched the amp off, unplugged the guitar and stuck his fret hands fingers in his mouth to snip at one of the fingernails. The bitter taste of medicine, the liquid bandage CJ had made him buy and paint on his nails, made him remove them fast. It tasted like poison. He carried the guitar back to her stand behind the counter. CJ came over to him.

“How’d it go?”

“She said I sounded pretty good.”

CJ laughed. “If that girl can’t get your mind off the guitar, nothing can. But you did sound pretty good.”

“Yeah, those scales are easy,” he said. “Think I should start working on Major or Minor next?”

“Major,” he said.

“Okay, I’ll start tonight.”

“Did you at least get her phone number?”

“Next time I will,” he said. “I’m gonna go smoke, okay?”

He left the store through the back, thinking that maybe he had some rock star in him after all. Talking to Tory as if he was one of the cool kids seemed unreal – and God, she really was pretty – and he’d probably talk to her like that again because she said she’d come back and listen to the BB King albums. He pictured it, saw the two of them sitting in the old sofa CJ had set up in the studio, kicking back while BB King made his guitar sing on an old record player. Then he pictured her giving him a haircut and wondered how it’d feel to have her fingers in his hair.

Wow.

The back door closed and locked. He’d been too distracted to think about propping it open. It didn’t matter. He lit his cigarette and walked through the alley, smoking fast so that he could return to work through the front door. Rock Garage was incredible. Being around guitars and music all day seemed right, like he was home. The Taco Grande job had helped him learn the Rock Garage cash register quick and CJ showed him new stuff on the guitar every chance he got. He already knew all five positions of the minor pentatonic and how to connect them. He’d learned them in hour-long practice sessions, playing each note in time with a metronome. He was learning the name of each note on the freeboard, too, finding all the As, then all the Cs… He had a mountain of knowledge to consume, but the guitar played well and stayed in tune. She was making it easy. She sang to him, too, fueling him with the bits of melody and rhythm she spun through his head. Some night soon, he thought, he’d know what notes to finger to free her songs and let them rip.

He rounded the corner, inhaling deeply on the cigarette. This is what it felt like, he thought, to be excited. Life might actually turn out okay. He’d need to figure out how to get a GED, since he’d blown off the last week of Junior year. But that kind of thing made a good story for a rock star, so what the hell. It would be okay. Everything, actually, could be okay as long as that guitar was in his hands and he kept working at the songs she inspired in his head.

Then he stepped around to the front of the store and saw the white trucks at the far end of the parking lot. He stopped in mid stride. They were Manitou Landscaping trucks. A two-man crew was laying down sod next to the sidewalk. One of the men was the daadee. He forgot about Tory and how he’d felt playing guitar in front of her. Now, all that filled him was a burning nausea. The familiar anger rose inside him, that hard other being who lived in the deepest regions of himself and who’d kept him standing upright all these years. The daadee could take this away and, even worse, he’d want to. He’d lied to CJ, telling him that he was 18. The truth was that his 18th birthday was some time away and right now he was still the daadee’s property, like any 17 year old kid.

He took a last, short drag off the smoke and cast it to his side, then hurried back to the store. Two customers were on the sales floor. CJ was working with one. The other was unattended. He approached.

“Are you finding everything okay? Do you have any questions?”

The customer started talking and Garren tried to listen. It was hard, though, because he realized it was only a matter of time before he the daadee found him. When he did, big time shit would hit the fan. He’d be psycho, more so than ever. He’d call the cops, get CJ in trouble for harboring a runaway or contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile, some stupid shit like that. The end result would be that CJ, someone who’d done nothing but be cool, would end up in deep trouble. He knew it also meant that he’d have no more Rock Garage job and, a far worse punishment, no more guitar. Life would return to what it was, avoiding humiliation, succumbing to it and the darkness of the basement. The cut on his side throbbed like it was reaching for his ribcage.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I said I’ve been thinking about buying a guitar, but I don’t want to spend a lot of money.”

“What kind of music do you want to play?”

He listened to the guy talk about what bands he liked and what he might want to play someday, but all the while he thought that he had to do something about the daddee – and he had to do it now. It had to be something big, too, and permanent so that it left no room for retaliation.

* * *

Obsessing about the daadee ruined the rest of his day. He’d made two over rings and apologized like crazy over them. CJ had assured him they were nothing to worry about, but Garren still felt horrible. Now, he sat in CJ’s living room, wishing he’d brought her, the guitar, with him.

“You get enough to eat?”

“I’m stuffed,” he said.

It was good to hang out in CJ’s apartment. The rooms were small, but the building was new and modern, much nicer than the daadee’s house that he’d grown up in. The shower water ran so hot it filled the whole bathroom with steam. CJ had cable television, too, which meant Garren was riveted to MTV while eating tonight’s dinner of burgers and fries.

“You sure?”

“You’re a better cook than my mom.”

“Don’t tell her that,” CJ said. He gathered their plates and wadded up paper napkins from the coffee table.

“I can do the dishes and stuff,” Garren said. “I mean, you cooked.”

“You worked hard enough today.”

The living room walls had a few more pictures. These weren’t of CJ playing live like the ones in his Rock Garage office. Rather, these were casual photos of him with the different musicians he’d played with. Garren had scanned them all, looking for the famous. He thought a few of the people looked familiar.

“I’m wiped out,” CJ said, coming back into the room. “How about you?”

“I was thinking of heading back to the shop.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Do you mind? I just really want to practice.”

“If you sprain a finger or a muscle in your wrist, you won’t be practicing for a month. Keep that in mind.”

Garren nodded and made a mental note to stretch the muscles in his arms and hands from now on. He took the warning seriously, like he took everything CJ said about the guitar. Besides, the last thing he wanted was to be down for a month due to a stupid injury. That would suck to the extreme.

“I’m going to work on chording, especially going from the open chords to barre chords.”

“You don’t have to learn everything in a couple of weeks, kiddo. You’re going to play guitar for the rest of your life. You’ve got plenty of time.”

He nodded in agreement, but conjured the daadee in his imagination. He could hear his hateful voice already… What do you think you’re doin’, Garren? You get your ass home. Now. I’ll see you in the basement…

CJ went to bed and Garren watched another video. It was a new band he hadn’t heard of and they were more pop than rock. Their guitar player sucked. MTV was totally addicting, he thought, even when the guitar player lacked all semblance of passion. Someday, he thought, he’d have a video. He was tired. CJ’s living room couch was far more comfortable than the old sofa that was in the Rock Garage studio. Sleeping, however, wouldn’t earn him a place on MTV. He left the apartment, careful to be quiet when he shut the door so as not to bother CJ, and walked to the store.

He needed to do something about his shoes. He’d blown off the Taco Grande job. By now they’d fired him for no-call, no-show. So there wasn’t a source of money. He had all the cash he’d saved for the guitar fund, but who knew how long he’d need it to last? Maybe the Goodwill store would have some five-dollar shoes that would get him through. He hoped so because the short walk made the soles of his feet ache deep in his arches. At least the wound on his side where the branch had ripped into him had calmed down to a dull throb.

He entered Rock Garage through the front, locked the door and left the lights off. She waited where he’d left her, safe behind the counter in her stand. He moved quickly, ignoring all of his pains, and picked her up. The moment she hung around his shoulders, one of her wicked melodies swirling through him, he felt… tranquil.

“I missed you,” he said, and smiled at his own silliness. Talking to a guitar, no wonder his best friend called him a weird-o so often. Course she was a guitar like no other. She was more than wood and strings and the bits of wire that connected her electronics. She was special. Sacred was a better words, and for some mysterious reason he’d found her. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Maybe she had chosen him?

With her comforting heaviness around his shoulders, he moved through the shadows of the music store, heading toward the tube amp. He stopped at the rack of effects pedals he’d put together earlier. The song in his head, the one she’d given him, didn’t sound like single coil pickups running through a tube amp. When she played clean, he thought of her tone as a dagger. The song in his head was more like a serrated blade. It was still all sharp edges, though, and deadly.

“Okay, we’ll experiment a little.”

He connected her to the squat amplifier under the rack and turned on the display. The pedal’s tiny LED lights glowed in electronic red for a long beat, accepting the charge. He bent down and turned the amp’s volume knob to the right, turning it up. He twisted the guitar’s volume knob half-way. Then he pressed one, orange pedal for distortion, pulled pick from his back pocket and positioned his hands.

His left fingers tingled, a slight vibration as they rested against the strings. He closed his eyes, listened. The internal music, the song that only he could hear, repeated itself. It wasn’t A-minor, but he thought it might be pentatonic based. He moved his hand up the neck and listened to her da da da deeeee do do…

Then he played it. Perfect. A haunting melody using only two strings and a simple slide from on position to another. Easy, yet so beautiful. The victory whooshed through him and it felt like a cold wind. His heart galloped and gooseflesh crawled down the small of his back. He shivered for a moment and when he opened his eyes the room was swirling, all the shadows colliding with each other. He adjusted the guitar’s volume by touch, teasing it further upwards, and played the lick again, then again, and again and each time it was flawless.

Garren said , “I am a guitar player.”

Then, without warning, he knew how to fix the daadee situation. It came to him all at once, as if from out of the darkness. He smiled.

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