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SINISTER

22.

Garren kept his guitar – Zoie – around his shoulders and led me upstairs. I followed him down a narrow hallway.

“CJ was going to use this as a private lesson room.” He held a door open and I entered. “I kind of took it over.”

The room was the size of my mom’s closet. The walls had a layer of dark brown acoustic tiling, the kind that keeps sounds from escaping. One wall had a large, rectangular mirror on it. The door closed behind us and the air went still. I stood and looked at our reflections, him in black boots and jeans, me in my SMCA uniform. The black eyes made him look menacing, dangerous. We were the pictures of good and evil, I thought.

“I’m composing in here.”

A black music stand with a couple of pens and sheets of paper stood in one corner. One of his journals was on the floor between his backpack and a practice amp. He slid the guitar to his side, held it close to his hip and bent down to grab the journal.

“New songs,” he said and gestured at the wall.

I turned. He’d pinned half-a-dozen pieces of paper to the wall with plastic thumbtacks. He’d torn each page from a journal and the left margin was jagged. The pages had music staffs, treble and bass, and hand drawn music. His handwriting had always been precise, the careful script of a naturally smart, perfectionist student. He’d written the music in a hurried scrawl, like a child rushing through his letters. I read the titles:

LET ME STEAL YOUR HEART

VIOLENT SHADES OF GREY

BLEED FOR ME LITTLE DARLING

EARLY GRAVE

MY SWEET ENEMIES

HALF PAST KILLING TIME

“Those are some names,” I said.

“This one’s a ballad.” He put his finger on Bleed for Me Little Darling. “It’s got some really cool guitar licks in it, though, not your usual love song.”

He’d written a lot of music, more than I’d done the whole time I’d been studying theory and dreaming about being a musician. I stepped closer to the page to decipher his lyrics, but the tip of his forefinger caught my attention. The nail was coated with something shiny, polish or medicine. The cuticle had healed and the nail had grown out. He pulled his finger away.

“Do you like the hook?”

I scanned the first eight bars and got an idea of what it would sound like.

“When did you start writing music?”

“Come on, let me show you the recording studio.”

I followed him through the hallway again and into another room. The studio wasn’t glamorous, nothing like you see in the movies. It had two foldout chairs, a small mixing board and a separate vocal booth enclosed in glass. An old couch was against the wall and someone’s bedding was strewn across it. The book I’d given him, Music Theory for Advanced Students, was on the pillow. Beneath it was the leather bound journal that had come with his guitar. I wondered if the blankets were his.

“Are you living here now?”

“Technically I’m living at CJ’s,” he said. “I’m helping him out with the store and stuff. I’m spending all of my free time practicing, though, so I guess you could say that I’m living here. What do you think of the studio?”

“Garren, what happened with your parents?”

“Ah, man, the little tyrant went all psycho on me and I had to break out.”

“He gave you those black eyes?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You should’ve seen them before the swelling went down. I could barely see! They were almost totally shut!”

He was talking about being beaten by his father and all I heard in his voice was happiness.

“So what do you think of the studio? It’s wicked cool, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I said, even though it was a piece of shit studio. A couple of half-stacks were pushed off to one side and, even from where I stood, I could tell they were covered in dust. Maybe the old owner had left them behind when he’d gone out of business?

Garren sidestepped around me and grabbed the textbook.

“I’m done with this now,” he said. “You can have it back.”

“You read the whole thing?”

“I memorized it, all the important parts anyway. Want to quiz me? Go ‘head, ask me a question about music theory.”

“I believe you.”

I did believe him; and I didn’t know what to say.

“Let me play something for you,” he said.

I watched him stride across the room to and connect Zoie to one of the half-stack amps. His gait seemed less gangly and awkward now. He moved with purpose now. It was evident in the firm poke he gave the amplifier’s on button and the smooth way he pulled a pick from his pocket. Then he spun and faced me, his grin so wide it almost touched the edges of his black eyes.

“Listen,” he said.

He closed his eyes, looked down and to the left where the guitar’s neck was. His hands moved into position, the left on Zoie’s neck and the right in place over her strings. He planted his little finger on the guitar’s body, using it as a pivot point. I was a strummer, so I never used pivot points. That was an advanced guitar player’s technique for speed and precision, one I’d only read about and planned to acquire someday.

Then, with his eyes still closed, he ripped through a haunting introduction. His left hand slid below the twelfth fret where he played in double time. Then, apparently without effort, he dropped into the rhythm part. He’d learned to palm mute and the galloping music gave me a start, like it was sprinting inside me. He stopped on the beat and looked at me.

“That’s totally new,” he said. “Do you like it?”

CJ entered the room. “Sounds good,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“I love the spookiness of minor chords,” he said.

He’d learned to palm mute and could play some blues and he could write music and match it to lyrics…

CJ moved to Garren’s side, swatted him on one shoulder and gave him an affectionate squeeze

“So you ask him yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Ask me what?” I said.

“Do you want to be in my band?”

My band…

He’d gone from a guy who couldn’t play two open chords in a row to a fucking musician and that didn’t make any sense. Nobody learned music that fast, much less someone who had no natural talent for it.

I said, “Hell yes.”

* * *

A short time later, I went home to break my mother’s heart with the news that I wouldn’t be going to the University of Colorado. As my father had put it, I had to pay for my dream and the first price was blowing her biggest dream to smithereens. I was scared, but I’d just joined Garren’s band and now was the time. I could put it off no longer.

Garren’s band.

My thoughts kept returning to his guitar playing, not that he was a maestro, guitar God, at least not yet, but he’d made a lot of progress.

An impossible amount of progress.

I told myself, firm, that it wasn’t entirely impossible. He’d been living guitar and music, playing every spare second and studying constantly. It wasn’t that unbelievable. Anyone could make the same progress if they devoted every spare second of their waking life to it. It made me crave drinks, strong ones, and I hoped my mom didn’t want to discuss my decision all night because I needed to get to Dane and Bomar’s for some cold beers.

Then I pictured his eyes, those living gas flames surrounded by black bruises, and I wondered what price had he begun to pay?

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