Gossamer Axe (19 page)

The marriage was going downhill. No, not going. If he had to argue with Kelly over a favor to a friend, it had already bottomed out.

Bill Sarah leaned on his steering wheel while he watched the young folks dribble up to the door of the club in twos and threes and fours. The weather was mild—not unusual for Colorado’s unpredictable Decembers—and the sky was clear, but the piles of snow at the edges of the parking lot were reminders of the storm that had hit the city earlier that week.

He thought about how people changed. Once, yes, he and Kelly had been inseparable, and the sight of her face had been enough to hold his attention to the exclusion of all else. But over the years the marriage had firmed, solidified, and settled into routine. There were other things to do now, other people in the world besides her, and Kevin Larkin was one of them.

Kevin had helped him manage his first band. That had led to other bands, and eventually to a career, and money, and security—if anything in music could ever be called secure. Kevin had never made it big himself, but Bill Sarah was not the kind to forget debts.

Maybe Kelly was different. Bill flicked cigar ash out the open window and onto the pavement, thinking. He had no idea how she ran her business. He had never asked. To be sure, interior decorating was of no interest to him—a domain of excitable flits and frilly artistes—but surely after ten years he might have picked up something about her work.

Strangers they had become, he realized, strangers who knew little of one another save the shoes at the foot of the bed, the overcoats hanging in the closet, the names of the magazines left on the coffee table. The compromises had been cast off and left behind, the promises and the love rent by acquired indifference.

When Bill saw Kevin walking toward the club, he got out and hailed him. Kevin seemed a little more frayed around the edges than when they had first met, but his height and his long hair were much more a part of the rock-and-roll style than Bill’s own stocky roundness. Too bad he had turned down that record contract. Lost his nerve, maybe. It had happened before.

And Bill found himself testing Kevin’s grip as they shook hands, as though by doing so he might confirm his nagging suspicion that Gossamer Axe was nothing more than Kevin’s dream; that, unable to believe in himself, Kevin had focused his hope on someone else. That also had happened before.

“How are you, Kevin?” Tragic. And he had shouted at Kelly because of another man’s fading hope.

“Glad you could come, Bill.” Kevin’s grip was strong, his smile too.

“I’ll tell you, Kev, this better be good.” Bill laughed a little as he loosened his tie. What on earth was he doing with a tie? Where were those days of 501s, paisley shirts, and a few beads? But here he was, a round little man in a suit and a tie and a foundering marriage, come to listen to heavy metal.

He paid the cover for both Kevin and himself and noted with embarrassment the cashier’s amused look. She probably thought he was Kevin’s father.

Routine marriage, routine life. Now he was indistinguishable from the maggot-folk who crawled along the downtown sidewalks with their wool-blend suits and Yves San Laurent briefcases, mouthing the right words and the right prejudices, their little behinds as well scrubbed as their faces. Shuffle, shuffle.
Ain’t no room for no rev’lution here, brothah
!

He took a table in a dark corner and tried to forget the suit, the dismissive look in the girl’s eyes. “So, where did you find these girls, Kevin?” he said. He had to shout over the taped music, and he noticed with distaste that whoever was running sound was abusing the graphic equalizers. Like the weather, this was nothing unusual, but it always annoyed Bill that millions of dollars of studio time and engineering went to waste because the disc jockeys insisted upon boosting the bass and treble into unintelligibility. The same fate befell the live bands, for the stage microphones and direct outputs ran into the house PA, and the result was an undistinguished mass of mud and hiss no matter how good the musicians.

“The guitar player was a student of mine,” Kevin relied. “But I can’t say I taught her anything: she blew me away after her first lesson. You’d better get ready: this is no T and A band. These ladies can cook.”

Bill tried to keep an open mind, but his doubts were crawling out of their hole again. One of Kevin’s students. Yeah, sure. Kevin was not the first teacher to lose perspective.

Across the big room, on a platform twenty feet in the air, were the sound board and the gentleman who was abusing the graphic EQs. LEDs and illuminated dials formed bright constellations in the dim light, and a young woman in leather and spandex was climbing the flight stairs to the platform. Bill could not help but notice her: her red hair had been backcombed into a fiery mane.

“Hey,” said Kevin. “That’s Crista.”

She gained the platform, tapped the man on the shoulder, and spoke to him. At first he shook his head, but the red-haired girl was adamant. Bill felt her presence even though he could hear nothing of her words.

With a dismissive gesture, the man turned away. Christa seized him by the jacket and lifted him out of his chair. Now he was listening.

When she released him, he turned and made adjustments to the rack of equipment at the side of the board. The sound of the PA altered, bass and treble diminishing and settling into proportion with the midrange. The music sparkled. Harmonies were clean. Songs were recognizable.

The girl descended the stairs and vanished through the door that led to the dressing rooms.

“Got balls, doesn’t she?” said Kevin.

“How well does she play?”

The lights on the stage went out, and the canned music shut off. Kevin sat back. “You’re going to hear, Bill. I hope you’re ready.”

In the darkness, Bill saw shapes moving on stage, heard the buzzing of amplifiers. The drummer smacked out a four-count, and the stage turned incandescent with light and music. And Kevin was right. The ladies could cook.

From the impersonal sterility of the dressing room, Christa had stepped into the glitter and flash of the stage. The quiet lakes and sea-battered shores of Corca Duibne were far away now. Here was volume that the sea itself would have been hard pressed to match, and here was music that had never sounded from bronze strings and willow soundboxes, music that screamed and rumbled, music that filled the club as strong mead might fill a wooden cup.

Christa hardly looked at her guitar, for, like her harp, it had become familiar territory. With the cocky smile she had taken for her stage persona, she looked her audience in the eye as she chopped out rhythms, bounded from one side of the stage to the other, bounced up on Lisa’s drum risers, down to rejoin Monica at the microphone for a chorus, down again to the dance floor to play a lead break among the club’s patrons. Her spandex was soaked by the middle of the first set, her hair wilting in spite of its coating of spray, but still she moved with energy, grinning with a surety and an openness that would have startled her fellow students at the harpers’ school.

But her smile was not all affectation, for its roots were sunk deep in a genuine satisfaction with her band. The sound was good, the feelings were good, the music was good: the work of five women, five musicians, blending together into a heady, sensuous mix of noise and passion and—though the patrons were unaware and the rest of the band might only have guessed—magic.

In contrast to the biting energy of the music, it was a gentle spell she wove about the club. True, Corca Duibne was far away in distance and in time, but though she could not return to the green and fertile fields of Eriu, she could bring some of her home and her memories into this club, into the lives of the people for whom she played.

During the break between sets, she called a short band conference in the dressing room. “It’s sounding wonderful,” she told the others. “I want to thank you.”

Lisa shook her head. “Shit, we ought to be thanking you, Chris. You know, I always thought that this was the way a band should be, but I never could find it before. It’s like…” She blushed. “It’s like having sex with someone you really love.”

Devi dropped her eyes, looked in another direction; but when Christa touched her hand, she did not draw away.

“That’s what music should be, Boo-boo,” said Christa. “That’s what it always should be.”

“Does that mean we’re all lesbians?” Monica giggled as she adjusted a studded belt, her fingernails the color of blood against the gun-metal gray leather. “God, Ron’ll be pissed if he hears about this.”

Melinda was not paying much attention. Her thoughts seemed to be somewhere else as she faced a mirror and added backcombing to her hair with short, rapid strokes.

“What do you think, Mel?” said Lisa. “Are we hot?”

“Real hot,” she relied. “Real fucking hot. What did I tell you?”

“Hey, this is InsideOut, not Capitol Records.”

“Give it time. I know what I’m doing.”

Something about her manner struck Christa as odd. In her mind, she went over the set, considering; and when the others left—Lisa and Monica to mingle with the patrons, Devi to adjust equipment and double-check programs—she held Melinda back. “Are you well?”

“Sure. Perfect. Whatsamatter?”

“You’re a trifle before the beat tonight. I imagine it’s just excitement, but can you please be careful? I have that big solo this next set, and I’ll need you to be in the pocket.”

Melinda grinned. “No problem, Crissy. I got it all worked out.” The bassist gave her a light punch to the shoulder and walked out of the room.

Christa winced. Her name was Chairiste. She was willing to compromise on Christa, tolerated Chris out of affection. But
Crissy
!

Her satisfaction with the band was still a warm glow in her belly, but Melinda’s response had tempered it. She could not say that something was wrong, but all the same she could no longer abandon herself to the utter certainty that everything was right.

She pushed out through the door and edged through the crowd, accepting compliments, declining drinks. She found Kevin in a dark corner with a stout man in a business suit.

“Christa, Bill Sarah,” said Kevin. “Bill’s been a friend for a long time. I asked him to come by and hear some good metal.”

Bill seemed an unlikely person either to know Kevin or to have the faintest interest in heavy metal, but Christa shrugged off the incongruity. Six months ago she herself had been unacquainted with leather and studs, and guitars had been far from her mind.

“I hope you’re enjoying the show, Bill,” she said, taking a chair beside Kevin.

“It’s…” Bill seemed to be choosing his words, and Christa noticed that Kevin was watching him carefully. “It’s pretty impressive,” he said at last. “I haven’t heard many bands as together as you girls are. And there’s power there, too.”

“What did I tell you?” Kevin slipped his arm about Christa’s waist. She had no objection. Since she had cried in his arms, the unspoken loneliness of two centuries finally catching up with her, she had rediscovered the comfort of another’s touch. She was as loyal to Judith as ever; but, like Devi, she needed a human, mortal hand.

And Kevin had apparently felt something similar: where she needed others, he needed a heritage and a past. He had talked to his mother and father for the first time in a score of years, and he was planning, albeit with some anxiety, to spend Christmas with them in Cheyenne.

Under the table, she took his hand and gave it a squeeze. Fourteen centuries separated their births, but they were nonetheless alike. “Thank you,” she said to Bill.

“You played a couple originals in there.”

“My compositions. I’m no master poet, I’m afraid.”

“Doesn’t matter. They sounded good. Most of the time, a band plays originals, I can’t tell what’s coming down. You know: I only hear the song once in a live performance. There’s not enough time to say if I like it or not.” He tapped a small cigar out of a case and lit up. “Now, your stuff, I’m remembering. I might not know the words, but I’ll bet you I can hum that entire tune… the one with
Get your ass out here, boy
in the chorus.”

Christa smiled. “It’s pleased I am to hear that.” She still wondered who this man was, but from his words she knew that he heard a little more in music than did most. Still, the suit… and his hands were not those of a musician.

“Good stuff. Keep it up.” Bill signaled to the waitress for another beer, glanced at Christa and made it two. “I think I’m going to stay the evening.”

Kevin grinned broadly. She felt the warmth of his arm as it tightened on her waist.

And later, many minutes later, in the middle of the second set, she still felt the warmth. Kevin was an honorable, honest man, tall as one of the Fianna, gentle as a harper. He had been there for her tears, had asked nothing of her, and in his own way he seemed to be trying to learn what he could about music and magic.

Melinda was still anticipating the beat, but Christa found that her heart was full as she began her solo lead. If she could bring nothing else to this club full of the jaded and the flirting, she would bring a sense of love, of honest, giving affection. Love for Judith. Love for Kevin. The love of one Gaeidil for another.

Most of the time, Jessica felt isolated and embattled, as though the office she occupied at Adria Records were hedged in by rings of land mines, barbed wire, and reinforced concrete walls. As the sole woman in the Artist and Repertoire department, she occupied a precarious and delicate position that was open to judgment and prone to harassment—sure, she had slept her way to the top; that was why the top was so saturated with female executives, right?—a hefty paycheck and an incipient ulcer her only rewards.

But sometimes she wondered if she were simply filling a position at a desk, screening tapes and musicians, keeping the yokels away from the big boys. Or maybe it was the real talent that she turned away. It was hard to tell sometimes. That hick from Des Moines who was in the other day could have been the next Springsteen. The metaled-up trio last Wednesday might have turned out to be the next Triumph. In either case, they were gone now.

Tonight, she sat with Dennis at a table in the corner of a Denver rock club, nursing a bloody mary and an ankle that still throbbed from yesterday’s skiing disaster. Her injury warranted aspirin and rest, but she had heard the demo that Dennis had brought back to L.A.—full of static and flutter from his portable tape player but bursting with hot metal—and she was willing to ignore the ankle, or at least to dull it with the bloody mary, while she listened to a band called Gossamer Axe.

The covers were solid and well executed, the stage show one of the best she had seen. The girl who played lead guitar covered the stage with her indefatigable presence, and though the singer’s voice cut through the wall of sound like a chain saw ripping through balsa wood, still the guitar was always there, doubling vocal lines, powering out block chords for emphasis, shrieking out leads that melded anger and vicious joy.

Jessica tried to be objective. Returning to L.A. with an enthusiastic recommendation for an all-girl band was bound to affect her status at the label. Was she perhaps seeing in these five women an image of herself? Maybe it was Jessica Conway who should have been on stage—hair spiked, body clad in spandex—jiggling her tits at an audience she could not see for the spotlights. Nice fantasy. Would it sell?

Near the end of the evening, the singer stepped to the front of the stage, shook back her peroxide-blond hair, lifted the microphone. “We’d like to thank you all for coming to hear us,” she said. “You’ve been a fantastic bunch of people, and we really enjoyed playing for you. We’ve got one more song before we call it for the night…” She smiled, her eyes flashing in her dark face. “It’s an original by our guitarist, Christa Cruitaire—”

Someone whistled, and there was applause. The woman with the flame-colored mane waved. The singer grinned, threw an arm about Christa’s shoulders. “What do you think, guys? Isn’t she great? And she plays harp, too!”

Cheers and more applause. “Atta girl, Chris!”

“Anyway,” she continued, “Chris wrote this, and we’d like to dedicate it to all of you who’ve found someone they really love tonight. Our best wishes to you, and, a big thank-you from
Gossamer Axe
!”

The song was a rock ballad. Supported by synthesizer and piano, the guitar lilted fills and licks. The drums were even, steady, the bass rich and full; but in contrast to the instruments of the 1980s, the words sounded almost ancient.

I do not know how to praise you, O my love
,

For I am no master his who can claim the twelve branches.

Your hair in my hands was sweet as new milk,

Your lips against mine like the rich mead of kings.

Sensual and yearning both, the singer’s voice drifted out, borne up and echoed by masterful guitar playing; and something about the song spoke of a love more tender than Jessica had ever hoped to find in a world of lush carpet and false smiles. She felt her eyes start to tear and she glanced surreptitiously at Dennis. His cheeks were damp. She looked away quickly.

Unlooked for, maybe forgotten, I have come

To win you, who, once won, graced my arms

With your presence.

Unthought of, perhaps despaired, I return

From lands which, though mortal, are alive

And waiting for you.

And as Christa’s guitar lofted out a melody that seemed an embodiment of whole-hearted affection, Jessica felt the barbed wire and the battlements dissolving, taking with them the hard, tense knot that lived habitually in the pit of her stomach. Something melted, flowed, glowed warmly within her.

The song ended, the stage lights darkened, and the women of the band left for bed or for celebrations. But Jessica remained at the table. She ordered another drink to ease the lump in her throat, and she was almost afraid to look at Dennis for fear that he might see how vulnerable and sad she really was.

“What do you think, Jessica?” Dennis’s voice was faint. “Was I right?”

She smiled. He sounded like a small boy asking his mother if he could keep a turtle. “You were right, Dennis. Let’s take that demo and see what we can do back at the label.” She shook her head. “I’m just afraid that no one’s going to believe us.”