Hidden Things (17 page)

Gerschon's club was essentially a small bar with a fair number of open tables, some booths along the back wall, no dance floor, and a small stage about the size of a bathroom stall. Calliope looked over the sparse collection of college-age kids, thirtysomethings, and lonely singles fingering their drinks and watching the crowd. The stage was set up with a TV on one side, two mikes, and a number of mismatched speakers. A soundboard and playback unit sat just to the side of the stage.

“This is a karaoke bar,” Calliope said.

“Only on . . . ehh, Saturdays,” Gerschon said as he eased past her and into the bar. “Excuse me, I must see to the business.” He smiled and roll-walked through the crowd, nodding to the bartender.

Calliope turned to Vikous, standing next to her with his hood raised. “This is a karaoke bar.”

“Only on Saturdays,” Vikous murmured.

Calliope glared. “You're not funny. This”—she gestured to the bar—“isn't funny.”

Vikous pushed his hood back and raised an eyebrow at Calliope. “I'm not trying to be funny.” He indicated the stage with his chin. “This is something that I—we—need to check.”

“This is crap.”

“Hey, what happened to trust the guide?”

Calliope snorted. “The last time—” She cut herself off abruptly.

Vikous gave her a puzzled look. “What?”

“Nothing.” She turned her attention back to the stage, moving out of the way of the entrance.

Vikous looked around. “It's just like any other karaoke bar.” On the stage, a young man stepped up to the microphone and began a rendition of something that the screen next to him insisted was Jimmy Buffett.

“I've never
been
to a karaoke bar,” Calliope growled.

“No kidding?” He looked mildly surprised. “I figured . . .”

“You figured what?”

He nudged her in the direction of an open booth, moving through the tables with a dexterity that seemed impossible. “Well, you sang in a band, right?”

Calliope rolled her eyes. “I played drums first but yeah, what's your point?” She dropped into a seat and glared across the table. “Do you know a lot of triple-A baseball players who do local coed softball on the weekends?”

Vikous's eyebrows shot up. “Nice attitude.”

“You are
hearing
the sounds that guy is making right now, right?” The bar's lone Saturday-night waitress stopped at their table.

“That's Jerry,” she said, pulling out a pad. “You should have heard him do “Henry the Eighth” a few hours ago. He walked through the crowd.”

Calliope winced. “Oh god.”

“I recommend a painkiller,” the older woman murmured. “And the boss says it's on the house, so go crazy.”

“Strychnine?” Calliope asked.

The waitress shook her head. “Only have a beer and wine license, honey. Sorry.”

“Beer then,” Calliope replied. “Whatever's on tap.”

“Liquid bravery, on the way.” She gave Calliope a perfunctory smile and wove her way into the crowd without so much as a glance at Vikous.

Calliope closed her eyes, speaking only after several seconds had passed. “What, exactly, is the point of this? What am I supposed to do?” She glanced back at the stage where Jimmy Buffett had been replaced by a Foreigner ballad sung by a balding man in his midforties. “If it's some sort of rite of passage in which I have to suffer through a gauntlet of pain, and you thought this would be easier than cutting off a finger, let me tell you: I can spare a finger.”

Vikous's face was blank. “I want you to sing.”

“Why?” Calliope turned back to him.

“Because I think it might
matter,
” he said, his voice low and hard. “People are interested in you and it's not all about your dead friend; it's you. Do you know why?”

Calliope shook her head.

Vikous handed her a piece of paper. “Then you can sing. If I'm completely wrong, the worst thing that happens is Gerschon gives you free food and drinks, and you have to hear a pair of newlyweds sing ‘Endless Love.' ”

Calliope frowned at Vikous, then glanced at the paper. “What's this?”

Vikous turned back to the stage, where a girl in her twenties was leading the crowd through “My Guy.” “You have to write down the songs you want to do. I picked out ones I thought would—”

“No.” Calliope held up the paper so Vikous could see it and pointed. “ ‘Me and Bobby McGee'? ‘Mickey'? Are you cracked?”

“What's wrong with—” Vikous cut himself off. “The song list is on the bar. Big book, can't miss it.”

“Was there any Green Day?” Calliope asked.

“I didn't—” Vikous began, his voice starting to rise, then he caught sight of Calliope's expression. “Okay, now you're just screwing around.”

“Were you joking about the newlyweds?”

Vikous snorted. “Count yourself lucky you slept as long as you did—saved you from the warm-up performances.”

The waitress dropped off a mug on her way to a large table. Calliope ignored it and looked around the club. “Okay.”

“Okay to what?”

“I guess I'll go check out the song list.”

Vikous's expression was neutral as he toyed with the plastic rapier sticking out of the cherry in his drink. “You could do that.”

Calliope stood. Vikous watched her go, his mood not at all helped by the woman starting “I Say a Little Prayer” on the stage.

 

It would normally have been about an hour before they got to Calliope's first turn at the microphone, but Gerschon spoke to the young man running the soundboard and within twenty minutes she heard her name called. She moved through the crowd on heavy feet. There were no stage lights to speak of—half the people she'd seen so far hadn't even gone up to the stage, simply standing at their tables as they sang. The closeness of the room made her unusually aware of the dozens of pairs of eyes watching her. It had been two years since she had performed, and every familiar element—the murmur of the crowd, the hiss of the open mic, even the simple act of stepping up onto the humble stage—dumped adrenaline into Calliope's system.

She pulled the mic to her and looked over the nearest patrons. “Hi.” She tried to smile. The sound wasn't set up so she could hear her voice as it came through the system; to Calliope it sounded as though the mic was off. In the back of the room, she could see Vikous, his hood still pulled up. At that moment she hated him, hated the bar, and hated herself for agreeing to do anything this ridiculous. The music began without warning or signal and Calliope started in surprise, glanced at the smaller video screen angled in her direction, and decided to get it over with.

With nothing to lose, Calliope sang.

At the end of the night, no one could remember the songs the girl from out of town had sung.

The first one, they were able to say, was angry. Or maybe she was, but one way or the other that was what they remembered. When she was done, everyone sat there for a second, long enough for her to make it halfway through the tables before they started clapping. They hadn't waited all that long, but she had nearly run from the mic when she finished up. The applause had stopped her cold; they remembered that, too.

When they called her second song, someone had started clapping while she was still walking up to the stage.

That had made her smile. They recounted that and smiled to themselves when they talked about it, warmed by the remembered fondness.

That second song had been slow, slow and sad. Some of the women had cried; nearly, anyway. Everyone had clapped when she was done.

The third time, people started clapping when the sound guy called her name.

Her name? No one was quite sure. The little weird guy who ran the club said he didn't know. People had stood up the third time; some had tried to dance—that, they remembered.

No one could say what happened after that. The girl stayed on the stage and sang for . . . well, till just about the end of the night, but she was gone afterward, before anyone could stop her, and she hadn't come back.

People still talked about her every Saturday night when they got the song list and the microphones out.

They said she sang her soul, and their eyes were far away, remembering.

Calliope, Vikous, and Gerschon sat around Gerschon's small kitchen table with steaming cups of coffee. Gerschon was smiling.

“I think”—he waved a hand through the air—“ehh, she is found something very strong, Vikous, yes?”

Vikous's coat-button eyes were on Calliope, but he spoke to Gerschon. “That's what it looks like.” He took a drink of coffee, grimaced, and set the cup carefully on the table. “What do you think?” he asked, directing the question to Calliope.

“Waste of talent and time.” Calliope murmured to herself, the words hardly intelligible.

“Calliope?” Vikous said.

“Yeah?” Calliope looked up from her coffee cup and blinked, shaking her head. “Sorry. Umm, I guess it went all right.”

“All right?” Gerschon chuckled. “She makes joke, I think.” Vikous said nothing.

Calliope looked from one to the other, her expression bemused. “I don't really remember . . .” Her voice was quiet. “It's always kind of a blur.”

Vikous nodded, his garish face as close to serious as was possible. “How do you feel?”

“Great,” Calliope replied without thinking, then blinked. “I mean . . .” She looked up at Vikous, clearly confused. “Great. I'm not tired or anything. I need a shower, I guess, but otherwise . . .” Her gaze became unfocused, as though she was trying to recall something just at the edge of memory. “Great.”

Vikous looked at Gerschon, who smiled broadly and slapped him on the shoulder. “I think you have hit the nail on the first . . . ehh, swing, my friend.”

Vikous nodded to Gerschon in acknowledgment, but like Calliope his expression was distracted.

Calliope rolled her window down, raising her voice over the noise of the wind. “I still don't know what we're doing.”

Vikous glanced at her, sucking on his cigar hard enough to make his cheek bow inward as he held a flame to the tip. Moving it to the side of his mouth, he blew smoke out of his own partially opened window. “We've got to keep moving. We can think while you drive.”

“Burning tires,” Calliope said, her face twisted. “That smells exactly like burning tires. God, I hate that smell; always have.”

Vikous frowned at her, moving the cigar nearer the window. “Well, why'dja tell me I could start it up if you're gonna go all martyr on me?”

“Because it still smells better than
you,
” Calliope said. “We were at Gerschon's for over a day—you couldn't have taken a shower and washed your clothes?”

“It's a little more complicated than that.” Vikous took another draw from his cigar.

Calliope raised her eyebrows. “What?” She looked over his rumpled, stained clothing. “Please don't tell me that you melt if you come in contact with water or something, because that would be really stupid.”

Vikous snorted. “Hardly.” He rubbed at the corner of his mouth with a gloved finger. “It just wouldn't help, is all.”

“Then what would? Because I'm willing to try most anything.”

With a wordless sound, Vikous extinguished his cigar and tucked it somewhere within his clothing. “There, it's out, roll the windows back up, please.”

“You didn't have to—”

“If I'm going to die, I'd like it to not be hypothermia that takes me down.”

Calliope glanced at Vikous, then rolled up her window without comment. “There's not much chance of that, is there?” she said after a few miles had passed.

“Of what?”

“Dying quietly,” Calliope said. Her voice was solemn, reflecting her morbid mood. “Not really one of the options.”