Gossamer Axe (12 page)

It was a band, but it was not the right band. But with the gateways into the Realm closing, with Judith slipping farther from her reach with each passing day, Christa wanted to believe otherwise.

She learned Dark Power’s songlist in a few days, dazzling the other members of the band with her abilities; and she came faithfully to rehearsal, week after week, braving Ron’s persistent condescension and Monica’s continuing hostility.

But she played with a growing certainty that she would never be able to tell these musicians about the magic, about the Sidh, about Judith. She had absorbed new ideas and new melodies, but that was small comfort when, in the bleak hours after a practice, she found herself depressed and unfulfilled, facing a future loss as bitter as it would be permanent.

A month into rehearsal, after a particularly unsuccessful attempt at Night Ranger’s “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me,” she turned to Jerry. He was fiddling with his keyboards, shaking his head.

“It’s not the patch, Jerry,” she said.

“If I can just get this sound right,” he muttered, “it’ll fall together.”

“It won’t.”

He looked up in annoyance. “What the hell do you mean?”

“You’re not listening, Jerry,” she said, already feeling the futility. “The music grows during that quiet part. Think of a tree. Think of a river. Don’t think about your hands. You could play that part on a piano and it would sound right if you brought the right image to the music.”

He shook his head. “Think of a tree? This is bullshit.”

“Y’see, Christa,” Ron said as he flicked cigarette ash onto the floor, “these days, when you’re going out, you got to sound like the record. Now, we want to make it, and I think we can. I told this friend at an agency about this hot girl we’ve got on guitar. He’s real interested. Quite a gimmick and all that.”

“Gimmick?” She had thought that a harper from Corca Duibne could be many things… but a gimmick?

“Yeah. Don’ you see? You usually use the girls for window dressing—tits and ass for the guys to look at and all that—but we’ve got someone who’s a terrific looker, and she can shave the heads of the first ten rows, too. Think of it.”

She turned her volume knob down. Her amp hissed quietly, the sound blending into the faint, electronic whine that filled the basement. “I am.”

He did not notice her tone. “It’s going to be great. You need to get yourself something really sexy to wear on stage. That’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about. You dress like a school teacher. You need to dress metal.”

“I thought,” she said, “that this was rehearsal.”

“It’s all a part of it. Metal is a lifestyle. You can’t really play it unless you’re into it.”

“I see. And I have not been playing it, I assume.”

“Well…” He took a drag, threw the butt down, and stepped on it. “You’ve been doing all right. And you’ve got the moves. But… can’t you dress sexy? I mean, you’ve got a nice little body.”

“And what about you gentlemen?”

“Aw, that’s the way it is. Guys dress power, girls dress sexy.”

She glanced over at the corner that Monica usually occupied. Tonight it was vacant: Monica had apparently decided that Christa was not competition. “Would you be telling me this if your lady were here?”

He colored, and his jaw clenched. “I’m telling you this for your own good. We can go out cool, or we can go out stupid. I intend that we go out cool.”

Ron was, in many ways, correct. He was describing the heavy-metal culture exactly, and was only expecting conformity from her. But her Celtic pride balked at being so treated, and she felt loyalty to her school and to what it stood for. A harper from Corca Duibne treated like a piece of pretty meat? Better her harp be shattered!

“I will dress appropriately for the style of music we play,” she said. “But I will be the judge of what is appropriate.”

“Look, Christa—” There was threat in Ron’s voice.

Paul spoke up from behind his drums. “Ron, this isn’t really the time to get into this. We’ve got weeks of rehearsal ahead of us before we have to worry about it.”

Ron whirled on him. “This is my band, guy. Remember that. You can be replaced.”

“It’s a hard time you’d have of it,” said Christa. “Paul knows what he’s doing.”

Ron stood for a moment. Then: “Shit.” He switched off his microphone, stuck it in its stand, stomped upstairs.

“Okay, guys,” said Paul. “Let’s call it for the night.”

Christa shut down her amp and effects and cased her guitar. Fred and Jerry were already ascending the stairs, talking quietly to one another. Jerry cast a look back at Christa. He was angry.

But Christa was also angry. If she had wanted predictability and stagnation, she could have stayed with the Sidh. She grabbed her guitar and headed for the stairs. “See you on Thursday,” she said to Paul.

“Hey, Chris.”

She stopped, one, foot on the bottom tread.

Paul stuck his sticks into a leather case. “Take it easy,” he said. “I’ve been in a lot of bands, and things like this always happen. You’re hot, and you can call the shots a lot more than Ron thinks. But you’ll have to go through a bunch of shit before you find what you want.”

“I don’t have time for that, Paul.”

He shrugged. “You’re young. Just starting out. Music is a crazy business, you know that already. And if you’re going to go anywhere—and I know you are, Chris—it takes awhile. Just play your guitar. Relax. Enjoy the ride.”

She looked up toward the top of the stairs where the light from the kitchen shone smoky and yellow. The decision was staring her in the face. She could not conceive of any combination of events that would bring Dark Power to confront Orfide and the Sidh. But she could not think of anything else to do. Paul had as much as told her that in another band she would face the same problems. “Thanks, Paul,” she said. “But I really don’t have the time.”

“Sorry, Chris.”

“Blessings.” Unwilling to deal with Ron any more that night, she went up the stairs and let herself out the back door. She made her way along the driveway, scuffing through the unraked autumn leaves.

As she neared the street, a car pulled in. It approached, stopped, and Monica stuck her head out. “You guys breaking up already?”

“Some… ah… disagreements.”

Monica’s eyes narrowed. “Ron after you?”

“I think that he would like to be. I’m not interested. I’m sure you know that.”

Monica tapped her long nails on the wheel for a moment. Finally: “Yeah. I know it. You’re gay, aren’t you?”

“I love a woman, Monica. If that means I am gay, then so be it.”

Monica nodded. “I gotta respect you for being honest. Listen: can we talk? I… I mean, I’m not into women, I just need some advice. I… uh…” She shrugged. “You seem to know what you’re doing.”

“I wish I believed that. Surely.”

Christa put her guitar in her station wagon and followed Monica to a coffee shop a few blocks away. The lights were pale and cast few shadows, and the coffee was weak and without depth, but Monica had not come there to drink anything.

She was a dark woman, and her bleached hair was a stark whiteness against her Latino skin and eyes. But her face was drawn as she slumped in the booth. “Ron’s always pulling that shit,” she said after a time. “That’s why I was so mad at you when you auditioned.”

“I guessed that,” said Christa.

“What can I do… to keep him with me?” Monica fidgeted with her coffee, dripping in cream and watching the patterns puff across the surface like clouds in a brown sky. “I mean, he’s after everything in a skirt, and when he’s with me I feel like his whore. What do I do to make him care?”

“Is it so important,” Christa said, “that he care? Is it himself you must have in order to be happy?”

Monica looked puzzled. “I love him.”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you mean?”

“Love is like music. It has to flow. It has to give… and be given in return. If you love him, and he does not love you, is there really love there at all?”

“But…” She looked confused. “But I need him.”

“That is a different thing. Need is not love. Need might come from love, but then again it might not. Why do you need him?”

“Because…” She started hastily, groped for a minute, then shrugged her thin shoulders. “I… just do.”

“Would you be less of a woman if you had no man?”

Monica stared into her coffee, struggling with unaccustomed thoughts. “No…” she said slowly. “But… it’s… I…” She lifted her eyes. “I don’t know what I mean.”

“Think about it, Monica. Give yourself when you wish to, but know that when you give yourself willingly, you are still your own.” The Gaeidil was coming out too strongly, and Christa softened her words with a wink and a smile. “Don’t let Ron push you around.”

“Okay.” Monica nodded slowly. “I think I understood that last part.”

And, driving home, Christa understood also. Love was like music. Music was like love. If it did not flow, it was nothing.

She was not—could never be—a part of Dark Power. For the men in the band, she was an attractive guitarist, no more. There was no flow, and therefore no growth. Jerry could not understand her advice, and Ron could not understand her needs. Even Paul fell far short of the goal, for music had become a job for him, and he had come to expect nothing else.

Since there was no real music, she was wasting her time. Perhaps no hope was better than a false one. Orfide could only be defeated by music, by musicians, by a band that was knit together by something more than economics and the desire to play out six nights a week.

The lights along Colorado Boulevard were harsh, garish, distant. She needed a band. The right band. But could such a thing exist?

Kevin had watched Christa’s growing depression, but there was little that he could say. Not content with the erratic convolutions of fate and chance that governed the formation and dissolution of rock bands, the red-haired girl wanted results immediately; and she was blaming herself when they did not come. Kevin was beginning to fear that she would leave rock and roll entirely.

His fingers were still scabbed and sore from his unconscious, all-night solo when she came in for her last lesson of the month. She was late. That in itself told him a great deal, and the look in her eyes—bleak, shadowed—told him everything else. He did not need her spoken confirmation: “I quit the band.”

“Problems?” He did not have to ask. He knew there had been problems.

“Indeed.” She hardly looked at him. “I am a harper, not a centerfold.”

He blushed in spite of himself, remembering his vision: Christa, naked and holy, in his bed. “Uh… yeah. You run into a lot of that.”

“And…” She bit her lip as though unwilling to express the thought. “They do not understand what music can be.”

“There’s damned few that do, Christa.”

“Do you?” Her blue eyes were intent upon him. He could have felt their gaze through a cinder-block wall.

That all-night solo: impossible licks and melodies had been ringing in his ears when he had come to himself. His fingers had been mutilated, wounded, but that was of no consequence: for the first time in years, he had played music. He did not know if he could do it again, but the knowledge that he had done it at all was a warm comfort in his heart.

He looked at his left hand. Brown scabs patched his fingertips. “Yeah… I think I do.”

She followed his eyes, reached out and took his hand, examined it. “How came this?”

“I was playing. Really playing. It was… great. Like magic. I must have been in some kind of trance.” And the thought of what had carried him into that trance made him blush again.

She was nodding. “It’s often like that. Music can be a demanding Goddess who calls Her priest to Her altar and possesses him utterly.”

He started at her metaphor. “It… must have been pretty intense. I don’t remember much, though. Haven’t been able to play for most of a week, either.” He held up his hand, flexed the fingers, dropped it into his lap. “So I think I can say that, yeah, I’m starting to understand.”

“Would anyone else, do you think? Could they?”

She had asked much the same question a few weeks ago, and he had put her off with a cop-out. Now…

“I dunno,” he said. His hand strayed to the fingerboard of his guitar, touched the strings. He winced, gave up. “People are into music for different things. The bottom line is that you’ve got to eat, of course. But, higher motives…” He laughed quietly. “The most that rockers want is to have a good time and make some noise.”

Christa did not give up. “I’m not asking for much more than that. Is it so impossible?”

A week ago he had thought that he could never really play the guitar. “Anything’s possible, I guess.” This time, his words were an invocation to hope, not a casual dismissal. “But you’ve got to understand, Christa: you take music into places that most people can’t even think about, and you’re going to have to look long and hard for people who can keep up with you.” He paused, glanced at his hand. “For myself… I can’t teach you anything more. If anything, you’ve got to start teaching me. I’m not going to let you waste your money on useless lessons.”

He was telling her the truth for the first time since she had walked into Guitar Tech. And he felt relieved. No more hiding. No more fears. Just the truth: up front, right on the line.

For Christa, it was one loss on top of another—first her band, then her teacher—but she was thoughtful. “You know more rockers than I,” she said. “Will you keep your eye out? This is important. I don’t have much time.”

“Sure.” Once, he would have shrugged off the whole affair.
That’s the breaks. That’s the way this crazy business works
. But now he was convinced that this crazy business had to start working differently or it would lose something precious. “You’ll stay in touch with me?”
please
… “I like to think that we’re friends.”

Christa’s eyes were still clouded, but she smiled. “I will indeed, Kevin. I still need advice and knowledge. And I need friendship most of all. But you have given me something today, and so I want to return the gift before I go. If you want to play music, you will need a sound hand.”

She told him to put aside his guitar and close his eyes. Wondering, he did so, and he heard her start to play her Strat, the unamplified instrument chiming like a quiet harp. The melody sounded ancient, Irish, something like the ballad she had sung for him weeks ago…

He opened his eyes, blinked, shook his head. Christa was gone. The clock told him that only a few minutes had passed. “Must have dozed off,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes.

But something seemed strange, and when he realized what it was, he snatched his hands from his face. The pain had fled. His left hand was sound and whole, the fingertips pink and healthy, without a trace of a wound.