Bravado's House of Blues (2 page)

He fumbled the last few notes of “Fire and Rain,” sounding like a first-year guitar groupie. He’d never had the calling start while he played, with his fingers on the strings. It got so bad, he had to put the guitar down and rub his fingers along the seams in his jeans. A shiver ran through him, all the way up and over his scalp. He turned slowly; the rain had stopped again, and the crowd inside were braving the street vendors.

A large guy, every bit of six foot and then some, stood across the way, black half notes oozing out of him to settle on the ground in oily pools. His girlfriend, a thin, lanky girl with stringy black hair and a boyish body fired back at him in tiny orange sixteenth notes, each one bouncing off the boyfriend before dissipating into the muggy air.

Ethan crossed his arms and shoved his itching fingers into his armpits. The sound of their discord rifled through him, filling him with anger. The girl looked his way for a brief moment, and Ethan could feel the fear in her eyes, her anguish a palpable punch in his gut. Music crescendoed inside him. Without thinking, without intent, he found himself standing in the middle of Pike Place, his guitar in his hands. The notes ripped across the crowd as he shouted the lyrics. The words flew like javelins from his lips.

Words of anger and pain; abuse and humiliation. Of a young boy molested and beaten, and a young couple reliving the nightmare. Ethan cried as he sang, the tears streaming down his cheeks. The taste of salt and bitter bile filled him. The guitar roared with wrath, the words lancing the abscessed boil of their secrets.

The girl collapsed, fainted in the street. The man held his hand up, shielding his haunted eyes from the blinding light of the truth. He licked his lips, glanced from side to side, and then fled through the crowd, wailing.

The last dissonant chord faded into the horrified crowd and Ethan’s mouth closed, clipping the final word like the closing of a casket. His head swam and he breathed in great gulping gasps. He stumbled toward the girl, reaching for her, his hand trembling. One of the vendors looked at him in horror and waved him away. The crowd moved over the girl, swirled between her and Ethan. His vision narrowed and grew dark around the edges. He couldn’t breathe. He stumbled backwards, flailing for balance. A pair of strong hands caught him, steadied him. He turned to see Alejandro smile at him through the fog, and he fainted.

Susan’s face swirled into view, haloed by a cloud of wispy brown hair.

“Hi,” he said.

She pushed her hair back with one hand. It showered around her face again almost immediately. Her other hand cradled his head in her lap. “Hi yourself,” she said with a crooked smile.

He lay on the cold concrete next to the coffee house. His guitar and pack were stacked at his side. Susan’s cello remained in its case against the wall. Alejandro walked across the street with a wet rag, a bunch of grapes, and a bottle of water. He handed the rag to Susan, who held it against Ethan’s forehead, and unscrewed the cap on the water. Susan helped Ethan sit up, steadied him as he drank the entire bottle in one long draught. He felt a little more stable afterwards.

Alejandro patted him on the shoulder and smiled. “He must eat,” he said placing a bag of grapes in Ethan’s lap

“I’ll make sure he eats them,” Susan said. “Thank you.”

“Usted lo mira cerca,” Alejandro said, his face stern and earnest. “Él es mago.”

“I’ll watch him,” Susan said. “But magician?”

Alejandro nodded.

“I’ll see that he gets home,” she said. “He lives near me on campus.”

The old man made the sign of the cross, kissed his crucifix, and touched it to Ethan’s forehead. Then he tousled Ethan’s hair and went back to his booth.

Ethan watched Susan pulled the cello case onto her back, the covered neck sticking above her head like a periscope. She held out a hand to him. Her grip was firm and soft. He smiled at her as she helped pull him to his feet. The world swam for a moment, but she held tight to his right hand and placed her left hand on his shoulder.

“I got you,” she said.

“No doubt in my mind.”

*

Saturdays came and went. Ethan played for the crowds and kept up with his studies, but sightings of Kari remained only in his dreams. Susan began showing up early to watch Ethan’s sets, and he found himself lingering in the market, journaling, writing music and drinking coffee while listening to Susan perform. During the week, his waking mind filled with studying and reading the classics, but his dreams succumbed to music. At first he and Susan were just friends, brothers-in-arms so to speak, but lately Susan sang in his dreams as often as Kari. How could he have ever considered Susan mousy?

Finally, in early October, Ethan looked up from unpacking his guitar to see Alejandro standing in front of him.

“She’s back,” he said, then went to his work.

Ethan looked around. It had been so long since he’d thought of Kari that the sight of her shocked him with a flood of emotion and longing. She stood at the T-shirt booth talking to Rasta. Her booth had long since gone over to an elderly woman who sold ceramic cats.

Susan looked up from the cross-stitch she was working on, following Ethan’s gaze.

“She’s pretty,” Susan said.

“She’s beautiful,” he breathed.

Ethan watched Kari talking with a group of vendors.

“So, about next weekend?” Susan asked from somewhere far away. “Are you still interested in coming out to meet my parents?”

“Huh?”

“Next weekend. My dad’s birthday. Remember?”

“We’ll see,” he mumbled as he slipped into a sappy love song. “If you like Piña Coladas . . .”

Susan’s voice tickled the edges of his hearing. “Ethan?”

It wasn’t until Kari waved at Rasta from the passenger side of a red Audi that Ethan realized Susan had gone.

After his set, Ethan spoke briefly with Rasta. Kari and college boy were getting married. Ethan had never spoken to her.

Susan didn’t show up for her slot and didn’t answer when Ethan called her that afternoon. He walked from the bus to her place, but if she was there, she didn’t answer the door.

Winter fell onto Seattle with cold, gray rain. Ethan found himself lost and alone. Susan refused to see him, for reasons he could not fathom. He attended classes and wandered the city, but like Susan, the guitar became an anathema. He forgot songs while playing them. It got so bad that during one set a group of high schoolers booed him. Finally he stopped going to Pike Place Market. He just put the guitar in its case and slid it behind his futon, abandoned.

He mourned the loss of the music; could no longer feel the harmonies that normally filled his world. He lay awake some nights, yearning for that maddening sensation, feeling for the music like an amputee’s phantom itches, only finding sleep in the darkest hours of the morning.

He saw Susan once from the back of the Brechemin Auditorium where she was performing with her chamber quartet, but she faded out the back before the crowd allowed him a chance to move.

Finally, over Christmas break, Ethan pulled the guitar case out from behind his futon and resolved to get on with his life. He walked through the U-District, the guitar case an alien object in his hand. He eschewed the bus and walked the entire way to Second and Pike. He thought back to the day his grandmother gave him his grandfather’s guitar. How he first felt the gift at fifteen when the music took him. Tears rolled down his face as the shame burned in him hot and vile.

The Guns & Sundries pawnshop gave him $125 for the guitar, which he distributed among the buskers at Pike Place; a final gesture to something he’d loved and lost. Then he trudged home alone, the wintry rain leaching the remaining warmth from him, washing away the final bits of joy.

*

One day in late March, Ethan sat in an off-campus coffee shop, drinking a mocha and eating a meatloaf sandwich, when something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He glanced up to see Susan standing at the crosswalk. She stood not three feet from him, on the other side of the window, her cello on her back. He watched her as she laughed with the girl beside her and they both crossed at the light—her cello periscope weaving up the hill toward campus. He grabbed his jacket, ran out of the coffee shop, and dashed across the street. The crowd thickened as it moved through the construction area near William H. Gates Hall, but he kept sight of her cello. He hopped over the railing, ran through the construction area, and squeezed between the fence and a dumpster to get ahead of the crowd. Susan walked slowly toward Red Square. Her friend had disappeared. Ethan screwed up his courage.

“Susan,” he called as he ran to her.

She turned.

“Hello, Ethan,” Susan said. Her eyes held that haunted look of overwhelming sadness.

Was he the cause of her pain? Ethan struggled into his coat. “Could I talk to you for one minute? Please?”

Susan looked at him and sighed. “What do you want, Ethan?”

“Where have you been?” he began. “I’ve looked for you for a couple of months. Why did you leave that day?” He feared the answer, but had to ask.

“When did you finally notice I’d gone?” she asked, a sad smile flitting across her face. Ethan’s chest collapsed inward as his heart seemed to constrict.

“I don’t know.” Ethan watched her, remembered when she’d been happy, radiant.

“Why aren’t you with Kari?”

Ethan struggled with his answer. “She’s getting married, or something,” he finally managed to mumble.

“Ah,” was all Susan said.

“What? I don’t understand.”

“Silly, me,” said Susan. “I thought you might not be with Kari because you wanted to be with me.”

Ethan flushed. “That’s not fair. I do miss you.”

Susan looked at him for another moment. “I miss you too.” One tear escaped from her left eye, gently rolling down her cheek. Ethan took a step toward her. Susan held up her hand to ward him off and took a step backward.

“What?” he asked.

“I can’t compete with your fantasy of her, you know that.” Her face hardened. “No matter what, I can never be her.”

Ethan replayed that day in his mind. He held out his right hand, reaching toward her. “I’m sorry.”

She took a deep breath, and more tears leaked down her face. “Me too,” she said, and turned away.

The cold wind blew through his hair as he watched her back recede.

He trudged homeward, hands thrust deep into his pockets, thinking of how the conversation had gone. What could he have done differently? What was he missing? He had told her he missed her, but was there something more? The cold wind lashed the tears from his face.

The itching started in his fingertips then, startling him. He turned around slowly, making a complete circle. The man across the street spoke into his cell phone, the conversation a bouquet of yellow and pink floating above his head. He pulled his hands from his pockets and looked at them. The music had been dead to him for so long. He cringed as his fingertips began to itch more painfully. He ran all the way back to his house and burst into his room before he remembered he’d sold the guitar. He tore his desk apart looking for the pawn ticket as the itching worsened. He fumbled his checkbook, then ripped it apart, flinging the ticket into the air. He snatched the ticket off the floor, grabbed his worthless checkbook, and his little remaining cash. As he pulled the door open, he paused. There on the table sat a pile of envelopes, including several checks for his portion of the rent and utilities. His roommate would have to understand. He thrust the checks into his back pocket and slammed the door behind him.

The bus ride to Pike Place took forever. The itching turned into a heavy-gauge file working along base of his neck, the noise of the other passengers the sound of grinding glass. He rode with his knees up to his chest, whimpering so that the other passengers gave him a two-seat buffer zone. The bus driver glanced at him from time to time in the mirror. Ethan just grinned at him through the pain.

Staggering up Second from Benaroya Hall, Ethan caught people looking at him and moving around him in a great wide wake. Some children cringed behind their mothers, pointing at him. He ground his teeth and shambled forward through the building slurry of sound.

The large neon sign in front of the Guns & Sundries pawnshop rang out in garish pink and green echoes. The colors danced in Ethan’s head, making the world sway. He trailed one hand against the wall, moving forward despite the reeling.

He leaned against the front window, faced mashed against the glass, searching for the guitar.

His world began to skip like a bad vinyl album. He found himself standing in the doorway, then at the counter, then back out on the street, the sad, headshake of the pawn shop owner vivid in his mind, the news that his guitar had been sold the week before crashing through his psyche.

A hurrying shopper knocked him down at First Street. An elderly woman who smelled of lilacs helped him back on his feet. He mumbled an apology to her as he stumbled away, her questions a slurred soundtrack running at half-speed.

He found himself at the Market; the crowd moved with celerity, as if time flowed around him at varying speeds. One minute he gingerly walked between people who seemed to be turned to stone, the next he found the world whirring by him, the buzz of humanity echoing the rasping of the grinder that ate away his mind.

There, under The Clock, he found his guitar. A middle-aged woman all in tie-dye and bangles sat with his guitar in her lap. Recognition shocked him. Skook—the busker who’d asked to buy the guitar in the spring. He watched for an agonizing minute as Dylan tunes danced out into the crowd.

Ethan staggered to her, falling to his knees.

“Please, God,” he said between sobs. He held out the pawn ticket. “That’s my guitar, I need it.” The woman faltered into silence. She looked at Ethan, horror creeping into her eyes. “Please?”

A crowd began to form around them. The woman held the guitar to her chest as Ethan lay on the ground sobbing. He couldn’t think, couldn’t hear. His world narrowed to the rasping of the file, the erosion of his soul.

He looked up as someone plucked the pawn ticket from his hand. Alejandro lifted him to his feet.