Robin’s last full day before duty recalls him west.
-Play for me, he says, tell me what I’m hearing.
Mary plays and talks.
When she’s on, she loses track of time. She feels the notes coming up to her, moving through her and shooting out and she watches them disappear into the farthest, darkest corners of the club. Some stranger’s eyes are always there to drink them in, cascade upon cascade. The purest solos are like sex or religion. This one for example.
The Strat quivers and tension booms the narrow room even before a single note bullies into volume like a wailing god, bull-like, oceanic, naked. The volume is a shock, a body-blow. She laughs as he turns the amp down to 3.
-No more teasing, he says, and she begins to play, left hand rapid, or slothlike, ticklish, or epileptic, right hand feathery and mathematical.
She collects picks but never use them, except for the occasional earring, or clitsmooth seashell, or bus-flattened bottlecap pried out of the asphalt. She prefers the thumb’s meat, the long sharpened nail of her index finger and the nastier split of the middle.
He tries to follow.
Almost touching.
Something stolen (Jimi, Jimmy, Eric, Jeff) … something new (Vernon, Yngwie, Miles, Jack) … something Persian (Isfahan by way of Hollywood) … something blue (Jorma, Rory, Elmore, Slim).
He tries to follow.
Barely touching.
Strangled swan.
Evacuates a cluster.
Of diamonds.
Thorns float.
In a pool.
Of milk.
Rattler.
Slithers sideways.
Through a ghost of smoke.
Single note stings, vibrato strong as penetration, dropping an octave and returning, drumming into brief feedback squall, repeated two more perfect times to prove she can, hummingbird runs east to west, the white plastic pickguard smeared now with streaks of blue sweat, discordance grabbing beauty by the hair, ponytailing her to her knees.
She looks up, then down again quickly, as if caught.
Little finger hooks the volume knob and lays down waves of light, falling tiles of color (triplets in green, two-string bends in purple or red).
Hallucinated, he tries to make out the Strat’s imperial code.
He sees a river, birds like tossed confetti on the startled mirror of water, a girl, much like herself, lying or falling back in the tall grass, trying to force the words out, falling back in the tall thick grass and being made to….
He frowns free as she slaps the heel of her hand against the taut sprung curve of the tremolo bar.
The dead notes fade, leaving an after-ache like sweet on a rotten tooth.
None of it is real.
He’s made it all up.
She isn’t smiling but in the silence of his head she might as well be.
-What was that? he asks.
-A sort of theorem. When you cross over into white noise the pain seems to go away.
Outside, under a fading summer’s cool blue sky, they watch a squadron of white vans practicing defensive driving beside the underpass. Hers is now a soothing tone and he suspects she regrets already that display of ‘totally nude’guitar tourism.
-What often happens … what happens a lot … is that I blink and miss the exit ramp. And so I unplay what I’ve played.
It’s not just guitar lessons anymore, is it? he feels like asking. What she shows, she hides. What she gives, she takes back. She unloves what she’s loved.
-What now? they ask each other at the same time.
Shy, but rising. Is this it? is this the moment? Aiming for Audrey H. and Cary G. and veering someplace other? Bogarde and Rampling in the hotel lobby? Does it bear thinking of? Shall I reassure him? Mary wonders. Shall I tell him no, no, you’re oh so wrong so that he can call me a liar so that he can start to lift his hand and I’ll nod and whisper beat me yes? I deserve it? and that invitation simply one more thing for him to throw back in my face?
So much depends on letting go.
They have an understanding, going all the way back to that first bloodletting when they were children. Now, having restored the imaginary rope bridge, netting it strong and whole with words and touch, it is at last secure enough to be allowed to turn to mist, a drift of smoke waiting on the first breeze which sends it skirling into nothingness.
She hates long goodbyes and he will be the first to admit he is afraid to speak the actual words.
They have given one another the memory which will supplant all the previous ones.
For her it is the moment when she snapped at a question and he looked down and then slowly back up and his smile and the enquiry in his eyes made her stop and she was ten years old again and all the great big dreadful world was elsewhere, powerless to enter the sacred space of their shared silence.
For him it is the moment when the picture, stared at for how many long years, thins its blur-lines and moves into focus. Her naked body, blue-lit, his hand on her flank to grip her to him, his other hand circling her wrist, their arms stretched to the edge of the cot, her black hair loose and fanned across the pillows. Her eyes are open as she nods once, and then she’s lost, gone away into herself as he ejaculates inside her and she shuts her eyes and cries out and he knows he now shares this moment with all those others, the final and utter possession of what was never really there.