Gossamer Axe (11 page)

Christa knew now what it was that so pained Kevin: he had lost all feeling for his music. He listened to the magic and he heard only the precision and clarity that was to be expected from any fourth-year novice from Corca Duibne. The real music—the melodies that grew and sang to the musician, to the listener, to the Worlds—had escaped him.

She was disappointed, but frightened also. Eventually— sometime before Midsummer—she would have to reveal herself to other musicians, and she would have to ask for their aid. But if no one could understand, if no one could feel, if no one would believe her, then she had already lost the battle with Orfide.

A few days later, she got a phone call from Ron, the vocalist in a band called Dark Power.

“Kevin Larkin put me on to you,” he said. “He says you can really play.”

“I—”

“Now, you know, I don’t usually go for girls in the band. I’ll tell you that right up front. All looks and nothing else, if you know what I mean. And they cause problems. But Kevin says you’re good, so I’m willing to give it a try. What kind of equipment you got?”

His casual sexism rankled her. “I play a ’78 Strat, and I run it through two Roland SDE-2500 delays for chorus and a little slapback echo to fatten it up. I use a Laney half-stack.”

He was carefully unimpressed. “Well, that’s pretty good. Listen, why don’t you come over tomorrow night and we’ll jam a little.”

“Who, may I ask, is we?”

“Me and you.”

“The band won’t be there?”

“Well, I thought I’d give you the once-over by myself. No sense using up a full audition when I don’t know you. Y’see, we’re into some serious rockin’ here, we’re out to impress people, make a statement—”

It was her turn to interrupt. “I have harp students tomorrow evening,” she said with a distinct edge, “and I am unwilling to cancel their lessons just so that you can give me the ‘once-over.’ If it’s an audition you want, it’s an audition you’ll have to give me. Do you need a guitarist, or do you not?”

“Well… yeah…”

“When is your next rehearsal?” She was half of a mind to tell him to go tweak Bricriu’s beard, but out of loyalty—or perhaps pity—for Kevin, she would audition.

“Thursday night. Seven.”

“What songs do you want me to know?”

He named several. Some Quiet Riot, some Ozzy, some Metallica. They were obviously pieces intended to daunt her, but she knew most of them already, and the rest she could pull off Melinda’s records in an hour.

“I’ll be there,” she said as she wrote out his address in neat Gaelic letters. But her heart was heavy as she hung up. She was going to explain magic to someone like Ron? Dear Goddess!

It had been a bad tour all around, and Lisa Donnatelli had given up on it several weeks before it actually broke down. Beer-swilling bar patrons, abusive club owners, miles of North Dakota wheat fields, and less than adequate sleep had piled one on top of another in a deadening heap; but she had nonetheless continued pounding on her kit night after night. Four smacks of her black graphite drumsticks started each set, and the songs followed in sequence thereafter, ground out with mechpanical precision. It was not her idea of music, but it got her through the night.

But band economics continued to be a cause of disagreements that erupted into loud, vicious arguments in impersonal motel rooms. Her bandmates spent their money on beer and women. Lisa stuffed hers into savings. Expenses inevitably came up, and Max and the others expected her to make up for their lacks.

The final rift came in Billings, over lunch in a Mr. Steak just off Interstate 90. “You’re paying, aren’t you, Boo-boo?”

“Huh?”

“We’re out of money.” Max looked sheepish; so did Art and Monty.

She was more than annoyed. “You mean you brought us here for lunch, ordered top sirloin and all the beer, and you knew that you couldn’t pay your own tab?”

“I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“I sure as hell do mind.”

“Hey, take it easy…”

“What do you mean, take it easy? I’ve been buying meals for you guys since Bismarck. You think I’m made of money? I’ve got to re-head my snare pretty soon, and I’m already short because I’ve been springing for all the food. You guys want to play without a back-beat?”

Max sighed, looked at Art. Art looked at Monty. Monty looked uncomfortable and stared at his french fries. “Uh, you don’t have to worry about your snare,” he said. “We got you a brand-new one.”

Her stomach started to hurt. It was not the food. Her grandmother would have called it prescience, or intuition, or something weird that a
strega
would say. Lisa called it gut feeling. “What do you mean?”

“It’s really nice,” Max put in quickly. “Matches the rest of your kit and everything.”

Now she felt cold, too. “What did you do with my snare?”

“Well… uh… see, Monty needed some grass last night, and we worked out… this… uh… trade…”

Had the table not been in the way, she would have been on her feet and at his throat. “You traded my snare for some goddamn weed?”

“I told you, take it easy,” said Max. “It’s all right. You on the rag or something?”

“No, I’m not on the fucking rag. I’m something.” She got up and threw down her napkin. “You can call it what you want. I call it fed up to here. I quit. Got it?”

“But we’ve got tonight… a-and the rest of the tour—”

“Right. How ’bout that?” And she walked out of the Mr. Steak and hitched a ride back to the hotel. The boys being held up by the unpaid tab, she had just enough time to grab her drums and suitcase and pile them into a taxi for a trip to the Greyhound station.

Goddam fucking rock and roll bands.

Unwashed, her hair stiff with spray, and traces of makeup from last night’s show still smudged around her eyes, she stood before the ticket counter with a stack of cased drums. Her family was in New York, but they did not want to see her unless she had a diamond on her finger—minimum weight: one-half carat.

So New York was out. The fare was too much, anyway. She ran her eyes down the route map on the wall. Sheridan. No: middle of nowhere. Caspar and Cheyenne, likewise. Denver?

Didn’t she know someone in Denver? There had been a girl at the NAMM show a year back. The one who had been drooling over the Pedulla basses. Melinda… Moore. They had eaten lunch together: female rockers trading horror stories. They had traded phone numbers, too.

“Give me a ticket to Denver,” she told the man at the counter. “And how much is the freight for my babies here?”

Ron’s address led Christa to a small house in a blue-collar neighborhood off South Broadway. The front lawn was dry and neglected. Paint was peeling off the shutters, and the yellow stucco walls were stained.

She pulled into the driveway in the early evening. Rock and roll was playing on a stereo inside, and she had to ring the doorbell and knock several times before a man with masses of curly brown hair and a stubble of beard came and peered at her through the screen door. “Yeah? You must be Christa.”

“I am, surely.”

“I’m Ron. Come on in. Our drummer’s not here yet, but we can get your equipment downstairs.”

He swung the door open, and she stepped into a cluttered room that smelled of smoke and too many people. Two blond-men watched a television that was competing unsuccessfully with the stereo, and a dark woman with bleach-damaged hair lounged in a corner.

“Christa,” said Ron, pointing. “Fred and Jerry. Monica. Fred’s our bass player, Jerry’s on keys.”

Christa bowed slightly. “Blessings.”

Fred and Jerry nodded absently in return. Monica seemed hostile. “Come on,” said Ron, “I’ll show you where we’ll put your stuff.”

“Can’t she carry her own equipment?” said Monica.

“Hey, babe, she’s a girl.”

Monica’s tone was ugly. “She can carry her own fucking stuff. What’s the matter, you already sweet on her?”

Christa turned to Monica. “I do not wish to cause difficulties.” She kept her voice even, polite. “But I cannot lift my cabinet by myself. A woman friend has helped me before, but she is not here. Would you care to help?”

Monica snorted and turned back to the television.

Ron steered Christa toward the back stairs. “Don’t pay any attention to Monica,” he said loudly. “She’s just being a spic bitch today.”

Monica whirled. “Shut the fuck up, Ron.”

Ron grinned at Christa and took her down the stairs to the basement. A large set of drums was set up in the corner. Synthesizers and amplifiers were arranged to either side. A mixing board stood against the wall, and cables snaked from it out to large PA speakers.

In ten minutes, the men had carried in her amp, speaker cabinet, and delays. Paul, the drummer, arrived a little later. He grinned and offered a large hand when introduced to Christa. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I was helping with my kid sister’s birthday party and had to run some of the little monsters home.”

Monica kept to herself, filing at her nails. She avoided looking at Christa, but she had followed the musicians down to the basement and had found herself another corner.

Christa powered up her amp and her effects and plucked a few notes to check the sound. Fred offered her a tuner, but she declined. “Give me an A, please,” she said.

He played the note. Christa struck a single chord, listened, adjusted a string. She toed a footswitch, and the hum from her amp turned into an electric hiss as the preamps kicked in.

“I’m ready.”

“What’cha want to do first?” Ron had said nothing further about his opinion of women in bands, but he had made it clear already.

Christa felt herself in the company of patronizing men and a hostile woman. Not even Colum Cille had treated a harper from Corca Duibne in such a way. She sighed. “Let’s do some Ozzy. ‘I Don’t Know.’ ’Twill loosen me up.”

Monica snorted.

Christa turned to her. “If you do not treat your sisters with honor, Monica,” she said quietly, “then your lot will be no better than that of a slave.”

“What are you, some kind of a dyke?”

For a moment, Christa smiled to herself, thinking of Judith. “I am a woman, Monica. And I play the guitar.” She looked at Paul. “Master drummer?”

He blinked at the title, found his wits, and smacked out a four-count. Christa slid into the opening rhythm hook, rapid-firing the notes at the members of Dark Power. She looked up briefly to see Fred watching her incredulously. He was so unnerved that he almost forgot to come in with the bass figure, but he caught himself in time. Christa grinned at him, nodded to Paul, and popped off a string of harmonics without looking at her hands. Harper’s flash, guitarist’s flash.

In spite of their opinions, the men were competent musicians and knew their parts well. Even the tricky slow section came off, with Jerry’s keys shimmering out in background swells while Christa plucked clean runs and arpeggios.

Then the drive came back to the music, and Christa was off into her lead, opening with a high, shrieking wail that dropped immediately into a string of blues-influenced licks, then into rapid runs, rising trills, and long, sustained notes.

Randy Rhoads had written this lead two years before his death in 1982, and the young guitarist had been pushing the limits of his instrument and his technique, expanding both into new worlds. Christa treated his music with reverence, playing it note-for-note, changing only the last four measures so as to echo a
duchand
, a lamentation that the bards used to sing for champions fallen in battle.

Another verse, another chorus, and it was over. Christa turned her volume down, tossed back her red hair. She looked at the others. “Well?”

They were staring at her. Paul set his sticks down on the head of his floor tom and folded his long arms. “How long have you been playing, Christa?”

She wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Two months.”

He laughed out loud. “Goddammit, Ron, hire her!”

Grease.

Sleep was eluding Kevin tonight, and the sound of crickets and mockingbirds was loud outside his window as he sat on his sofa with his guitar, staring out at the obscurity that had enveloped the valley, a darkness as profound as the pupils of Frankie’s eyes, blind in life, long closed in death.

Grease.

He fingered notes, thinking of Frankie, thinking of Christa. Somehow—and the connections kept slipping away from him, but he knew they were there—the lusty, pain-ridden bluesman and the pale, intense harper had paired themselves in his thoughts, more like than unlike in spite of their surface differences.

Grease.

He was crying. Crying for Frankie, dead and unknown in a Cincinnati bar when his music should have been a part of the lives of millions. Crying for Christa, who seemed to have more ability than her small body ought to contain, who strove to express ideas that he could not understand. Crying for himself, for music that he could not make, for thoughts and feelings that had long been lost in the eddies and cul-de-sacs of the years between his present and his past.

Grease.

What had she done, that Celtic girl whose blue eyes shone like the edge of a razor? How had she played that Malmsteen piece? That slow, harmonic minor arpeggio, with the third and the seventh lingered over as a lover might linger over a beloved, staring down into her eyes as the moonlight washed over the bed in waves of silver and white…

His fingers were on the guitar strings, and in his mind he saw Christa looking up at him from the tousled sheets of his bed, her eyes blue and full of moonlight, her hands reaching up to touch his face. And he loved her. And through the arpeggio that he played—harmonic minor, third and seventh lingered over and shaken with just the faintest touch of vibrato, the notes shimmering through the air and touching it with life—he told of that love more eloquently that he would have found possible with such dull things as words.

He saw her again, reaching up to him, her eyes as deep as a summer Colorado sky. Music was like sex, like magic. Like blood. Like the twining of flesh against flesh. But now in her eyes he saw something more than an offer of love, physical or otherwise. He saw a command— imperious, urgent—a call from a Goddess to a mortal.
Come. Come now. Come to the altar, or else be lost. For if you have hands, and will, and do not make music— whether your song be as sweet as the milk of my breasts or as bitter as your deepest sorrow
—
then are you bereft of all. Come. Quickly
.

He awakened to the sun streaming in through the window. His fingertips were blistered and cut, the strings of his guitar slick with blood.