American Goth (9 page)

In spite of my map, I promptly got lost, confused by Tubes and rails, parks and greens, squares and circuses, and more than once got off at the wrong stop. Finally, though, I found my way to Palmers Green, where I tried, one, two, three, four—and the moment I played it, I knew it was mine: I was in love, smitten with an old Fender Precision bass, complete with traditional tricolor flameburst that followed the contour of the body. I’d held it on my lap when I first tried it, then welcomed the weight of it across my shoulder once I selected a strap, an ox-blood leather that spread to three inches wide. I liked the way it contrasted with my black shirt.

What I loved, really loved, was the way the neck felt in my palm, the thick strings under the pads of my fingertips, the deep, low rumble that echoed through my body when I leaned my ear against the headstock. When I asked the clerk for a patch cord and plugged into an amp, it was even better, and I spent the next hour deciding which amp had the best tone, presented its vibrated voice most accurately.

Affording it wasn’t an issue, which it would have been just two years ago, I reflected as I pulled out a credit card that I hardly ever used, and that an accountant Stateside made sure was paid out of the trust fund I’d been left: the insurance paid to me by the City of New York’s Fire Department for my father’s untimely death in the line of duty.

I’d been left moderately wealthy, but I would have gladly traded it to once more hear my father’s voice while we worked on the car he’d bought me in anticipation of my driver’s license, traded it twice over for one of his hugs and the smoky smell when he got home, and yet a third to have Nina eat dinner with us, then sit and play guitar on the porch while my Da lit a cigarette and kicked his feet up on the railing and listened. Such were my thoughts as I hefted the dirty-blond tweed hard case in one hand, after arranging for the small, forty-pound Hartke amp I’d settled on along with a gig bag and various electronic accoutrements to be delivered to the shop. I couldn’t quite think of it as home yet. But no matter; my instrument I’d carry myself. Everything else could be shipped.

The way back to Soho was quite the adventure as I discovered that New Compton Street was quite far away from Compton, at least on foot. It figured, of course, that neither was near Old Compton Street.

When I did finally get the proper bearings, I met Uncle Cort right outside the door of the pub with fifteen minutes to spare, and it turned out it was on the corner of Dean, which we actually lived on, only a few blocks away from the place I slept.

“You found everything all right, then?” he asked me with a big smile, a clap on the shoulder, and a nod to the case in my hand.

“I take it you expected me to get lost?”

“Yes.” He laughed. “Come on, dear heart, let’s get some dinner.” He opened the door and ushered me in.

The pre-dinner crowd was light as we entered past the sign that announced dancing after dinner, and the smell of old wood, varnish, and spirits over the unmistakable scent of something roasted filled my lungs as a young man—I stopped half a heartbeat—greeted us.

It was automatic, the reach beyond the skin to the aethyric double. Him. The sandy blond hair that curved over the delicate face that perched over a slender neck and slight shoulders said one thing, but the energy signature, the soul the skin wore… I tried not to stare, but I was certain I
knew
him, recognized him on some fundamental level. He led us to a table and handed us our menus, letting us know he’d be back in a moment with the pints Uncle Cort had requested.

“Yet another thing to get used to,” I told him with a small grin. The biggest thing had been one of the simplest: crossing the street. A lifetime of checking left, then right had to be reversed and I compensated by truly paying attention to and using the crosswalks. Food-wise, the first thing had been the whiskey in the ketchup.
That
had been an unpleasant surprise. The next had been the unexpected tang of vinegar on my potato chips. Actually, I rather enjoyed that and had gotten into the habit of eating my fries or chips like that, vinegar and salt. But this, the last… “Warm beer,” I said and saluted him with it before I took a sip.

“Don’t be a heathen,” he returned with a smile, “it’s not beer, it’s ale, and it’s good for your blood this way.”

“Sure. Yeah. Right. When did they first get steady current and electrical refrigeration over here?”

He laughed outright. “Logan, your father, said almost the same exact thing to me once.”

“Really?” I asked, pleased for some reason. It was the first time anyone had mentioned my father that I didn’t automatically want to weep, but instead felt a warm sort of comfort, almost as if he were there and had put invisible arms around me.

“Truly. He insisted the virtues of warm beer were extolled because the people extolling it had no refrigeration.” He took a deep pull and smacked his lips. “He may have had a point, but it’s still pretty good this way. And besides,” he added, “it’s warm relative to refrigerated—it’s not as if it’s heated up like tea.”

The waiter came back, introduced himself as Graham, and after he took our order, Uncle Cort took me through the finer points of drinking ale, including a theory about the marketing of cold beer as a plot to destroy the ale industry, since cold beer could be stored for months, and ale for barely a week.

When a woman came up to the table and asked for a dance, I glanced up from my plate toward Uncle Cort and waved him away with my fork. “Go right ahead,” I told him, returning my attention to my plate. “I’ll be here with my well-done cow and my warm beer.”

“Actually, I was asking
you
,” she said, her voice friendly and low and I glanced up, first to see my uncle trying not to laugh at me, then to look over into a sparkling pair of light blue eyes, partially obscured by short dark brown hair that fell over in one long lock.

“Well, go on,” he said and this time he did laugh. “I’ll watch your well-done cow for you.”

Flustered, I stood anyway. “And my bass too,” I reminded him and pointed to where I’d tucked it under the chair and table, “don’t forget.”

“It’ll all be here,” he promised.

Her name was Hannah and as one dance became another and we fell into a real conversation, I learned that not only was I in what was considered to be the oldest bar in London, but also the oldest gay bar. I also learned that she was “taking a bit of a break” from gigging, since she was a studio and session drummer and had just come back from a six-week tour as a drum tech with a semipopular band.

It was a good conversation, and suddenly I realized I’d spent more time chatting with her than with Uncle Cort, who’d invited me.

“Hannah, I don’t want to be rude, but my uncle did invite me for dinner.”

“Of course,” she said and smiled, “and I’ve kept you. Maybe you’ll join me for dinner sometime?” she asked as we approached the table.

I thought about it and grinned. She was all right, but I wasn’t up for dating anyone yet, not with all the new…stuff…kicking around my head. Friends, though. Well, Elizabeth and Uncle Cort would certainly encourage that.

“How about…we could meet here sometime during the week and figure it out from there?”

“Sure, then. Here’s my number,” and she pulled a business card out from her wallet and handed it to me.
Hannah Meyer, Kit and Percussion, Drum Tech and Repair
it read, with her number beneath.
Own Equipment and Transport
it said across the bottom.

“Is that important?” I asked.

“Which?”

I pointed out the last line.

“Well,” she said with a little drawl, “it
can
be.” The accompanying gleam in her eye let me know I’d stepped into something I hadn’t meant to and I felt a rush of heat crawl up my neck.

She let me off the hook. “I’ll be here Wednesday, about five-ish—what say I stand you a drink and we can talk about bands, since you’re a bass player?”

“All right,” I agreed, “I’ll see you Wednesday,” and I sat back down to dinner with my uncle.

“So,” he said brightly, unable to hide his mirth completely in the lift of his brows, “did you have a nice chat? Oh, I think your cow’s cold, by the by,” he said, indicating my plate with his knife.

*

The place had begun to fill up by the time we were done, and Hannah waved to me and yelled, “Wednesday, right?” across the room as we made our way through the other patrons and to the door.

“So, the oldest pub, and the oldest gay bar in London,” I commented as the cool autumn air blew against our backs and we rounded the corner on Dean. “Any particular reason you picked that, or…” I let that hang in the breeze.

“Simply figured you’d never been, and this one’s so very nearby.” He shrugged in his thick, brown workman’s jacket. “That and you may want to do a bit of socializing there, so you might as well get comfortable with the place, right?”

We walked in companionable silence as I thought on that. I was confused. He was right, I’d never been to a bar before, and especially not a gay bar, but was he trying to help me out, was he trying to tell me something about himself…or both?

“Do you go there a lot?”

He gave me a sidelong glance as we neared the door next to the shop, the door that led directly to the steps into the flat. “No, but often enough. That bother you?”

“No,” I shrugged, “but it’s, well, it’s unexpected, I guess.”

He unlocked the door and swung it open, then waved me past him again. I rested my hard shell case on the floor and waited for him at the bottom of the landing. I watched his shoulders work as he took a deep breath and locked the door.

Tiger eyes met mine, deep amber flames in their depths.

“Samantha,” he said, the first time he’d called me that since I’d asked him not to, and that, combined with his tone, made something clench in my chest.

“You’re making two assumptions, the first one being that I’m straight, and the other being that if I were, I wouldn’t be comfortable around people that aren’t.”

I had assumed exactly that and attributed his comfort level with me to two things: first, he
was
my guardian, and the second—well, I wasn’t exactly a “girly” girl, by most standards. Other than biology and appearance, there was nothing I said or did that I could think of that marked me as a girl, and Cort didn’t treat me like one either. I guess I’d assumed that he was comfortable with me because he could treat me like, well, a guy.

“I know, I mean, I’m not like
regular
girls,” I said, “you know, like besides the gay thing.” I stared down a moment at the case that rested against my thigh and took a breath. “I’ve always sorta hung out with the guys at home and I guess maybe I’m more like them than a girl.” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “I figure that’s why we’re, you know, cool.”

Uncle Cort laid a gentle hand on my shoulder and gave me an even gentler smile. “First, no one, absolutely
no one
, is completely straight or gay, not me, not you, not anyone, and we’ll leave that there for now. As for the rest…” He motioned me up the stairs before him. “I’m not looking at you as a boy, or a girl, as a man, or a woman,” he said, his voice firm, an underlying fire behind the words as we trooped up the stairs. “You’re here to be a Wielder, and I? I’m the forger, the teacher. There’s no room for that nonsense about boys and girls and the inanities about supposed differences. People live, love, bleed, then die. It’s that simple, and that short.”

He caught my eyes with his when we reached the landing. “Your strengths—and your weaknesses—are completely unique to
you
. That’s what I look for, what we have to work with, that’s what I help you develop and guard against. So I don’t care,” he said as we stood on the landing, “who, or
how
, you love, so long as the law of Light is guarded. Nothing else matters.” The flame in his eyes was ablaze as I opened the door at the top of the steps. “Nothing.”

My amp had already arrived and sat there in the hallway. “Well, Ann, go ahead and put that where you’d like it,” he said in his usual tone, “and no studies tonight—you need to spend time with your new love.”

He grinned at me then volunteered to carry the amp upstairs to my room when I said that’s where I’d practice. It was a matter of five minutes to discover the perfect floor position for it, and I mulled over our discussion as I experimented.

“No one’s completely straight or gay,” he’d said. Huh. What did that mean, anyway? And that bit about unique strengths and weaknesses… Did he mean regardless of being a boy or a girl or because of it? And where did that leave me, with my definitely female body and my decidedly nonfemale mindset?

But within seconds, none of that mattered: I found the sweet spot that I was pretty certain would give me back the tone I wanted to hear, and my heart thrumming with anticipation, I tuned up, strapped on, and plugged in. I let the vibrations from the bass flow through me as I plumbed the mysteries of the low end.

*

I did go to the pub Wednesday and since I was early I sat at the bar, where I met the bartender, Kenny Black.

“So, you’re new ’round here, yeah?” he asked as he handed me a pint.

“New to almost everything ’round here,” I answered with a grin.

His eyes lit up and he smiled. “Hey, you’re an American—I saw you carrying an instrument last night. What’re you playin’? You here with a band?”