Stuart Kaminsky - Show Business is Murder

She bristled. It was true. “I’m a lone act.”

“Lian. Am I hustling you? Am I taking a bigger share, or all of it? And I could, a bitty thing like you, I’m twice your size. Don’t you hear how great we sound together? We-we complement each other.”

Lian scowled down at her case, now tenderly cradling her Gibson in its felt-lined bed, locked for safety. She swung the case up across her shoulders and back, the woven strap tight between her breasts.

“Tomorrow,” he begged. “Just let me come tomorrow.”

She looked off down the rails as if seeking the answer written in graffiti there. Feeling her success vibes, testing the idea on her surrounding luck. She stood motionless, waiting. Then, one last glance up at his pleading, handsome face, feeling the extra dollars in her pockets. “Ok. Tomorrow. Eleven.” And she strode off toward the stairs to the streets above, melding into the crowd but alone in her thoughts.

The next day brought Sody and Lian together again, same place. Without consultation, she, leading off again, struck strongly into some vintage Dylan. He slammed into her path and, grinning, stayed with her all the way in a harmonic third, doing a fantastic job of it, too, she admitted grudgingly to herself. Then a bit of alternative that she’d picked up last week, not the whole song, but a change of pace and mood. Sody handled it well. Tall, slender, his blonde tipped hair shagged just right, he looked like a movie star. She thought about that as she watched him play. Talented, yes. And bringing in cash like a six-foot-tall ATM machine. She gazed off again down the empty track.

Maybe this was right for her at this stage of her career path. Maybe he’d been “sent” by those lucky airs that carried her to her golden goals. Suddenly she muted her voice, in effect offering him the lead. After a fleeting lift of eyebrows in surprise, he took off, letting her follow, making the decisions and taking the melody. He was excellent, she admitted. And he hadn’t followed her home yesterday, so maybe he wasn’t a creep. Finally, she nodded to herself and accepted him. This time at the end, she divided up the take and when handing over his share, looked up into his happy face and let herself really smile. “Welcome, Sody.”

He heaved a deep sigh. “Thanks, Lian. You had me worried.”

She shook her head as she wound the strap from her case around herself again. “Never worry, Sody. Bad for luck. See you tomorrow.”

He lunged quickly into her path. “Want some dinner?”

She shut her eyes for a moment and silently cursed. Had she made a mistake after all? “No,” she said shortly, then left.

The next day she and Sody were again at their post at the subway stop when a short dark young man stepped off the arriving train and walked directly toward them, the familiar stars in his determined eyes. Without pausing in her song, Lian screamed inwardly at her fate, enraged all over again. Was her life being wrenched from her control? Had she proven unworthy of her luck and had it abandoned her?

“Been hearing about you two topside, on the street. Needing a keyboard?” he asked, and Lian gasped, forgetting her lyrics. Her hands dropped useless at her sides.

Sody let his bass chords die. He gazed coolly down at the short intruder and said, “You got one?”

Lian glanced at Sody. Normally she’d be furious at him for acting as leader, but now it didn’t matter. Now she only strained to hear a distant voice come floating to her from down the presently empty track, telling her what to do.

The stranger was around five seven, a few inches taller than Lian, but his muscles strained his black jeans and tee nearly to bursting. A no-style no-neck, marveled Lian. Hadn’t shaved for days, by the look of him, and not recently bathed by the smell, either. His dark hair, though, curved clean and smooth, the ruffled edges just hitting his shoulders, but unmarred by any purple or green dye, shit that Lian hated. He also lacked the endless body piercing Lian considered childish, although tattoos could make a statement-so long as the statement wasn’t that you’d been somebody’s “partner” in prison or membership in a drug gang. Losers, that lot.

She considered her last thought. Sounded a bit Irish. Excitement shivered through her for an instant. The lilt was coming. And to help it, this chunk of powerful Irish male had arrived. Again she threw her question down the tracks, asking her luck what to do with this keyboarder with muscles and the genuine brogue she’d longed to learn. No sign came. Or was the answer standing in front of her in the form of this new musician…

Just then Sody turned to her and said, “Let’s give him a try, okay? If he sucks, I’ll throw him back on the train.” The young man glowered at that, as if his maleness had been challenged. Lian shrugged coolly, feeling anything but cool inside.

“Eleven tomorrow,” she agreed. “Make an impression or Sody will help you fuck off.”

The young man looked her over with black eyes melting into black liquid. “Him? Small chance. Bugger you, more likely!”

She listened to this, lips parted and breathless. His voice slid like cream into her ears!

“What’s your name?” she demanded.

“Joseph Francis Urban O’Rourke, then. Joe. And you?”

“Lian Logan,” she said and his gaze changed. She saw the shrewdness in his lightning assessment of her. She knew he’d seen through her and out the other side. He knew it all. Her fake Irishness, her ambition, her dreams. Maybe even her luck. His eyes glittered but with a powerful maleness that Sody could never have summoned, despite his height. Lian doubted Sody would ever be able to throw this one onto a train. Or anywhere.

“Keyboard.” She repeated stiffly, as if considering, and felt heat rise in her face.

She looked around for an electrical plug. As if he read her mind, he said, “I bring my own re-charge battery pack, if I need it, an’ I usually do. Not a problem. Why ye got to sing b’neath God’s good earth, though?” He looked around uneasily. “What’s wrong with the open air?”

Lian’s face hardened. “Not negotiable.”

“Tomorrow then.” They all nodded to each other and O’Rourke jumped down onto the track, and strolled along the narrow ledge where the trainmen usually walked to get to a needed repair down the line. Lian shivered to watch his carelessness of the massive trains and wondered if this was a stupid male display to impress her. It did.

In the coming days, O’Rourke became an asset, as Lian had guessed he would, since her luck must have summoned him to her. He seemed to live in an aura of confidence. He didn’t know as many songs as Sody, but he could plug in spots as he caught on to the progression of chords and fill out the music until he quickly learned it.

Lian’s voice soared like an angel borne up on the talents of these two, but she was careful to practice the song in private. Over the next weeks, they made a lot of money, enabling Lian to dress more and more to fit the image she had chosen, rather than to just cover her body. She sublet a closet of an apartment, one room with several doors, each of which opened to a murphy bed, the toilet, and a sink next to a two burner stove, so she finally had somewhere relatively clean-and safe-to sleep. And she carefully gave no hint of its location to Sody, Joe, or anyone.

Then it happened. Lian moved the trio to “her” place outside Grand Central’s double doors on 42nd Street. Joe, relieved to leave the dank underground behind, bloomed in the bright sun and his performances sharpened, to Sody and Lian’s delight. Within a week, a portly man dressed in all black stopped to hear not just one song, but several. He stood close by for nearly an hour, reminding Lian of a Catholic priest in his black three-button suit hanging open over the black silk mock-turtleneck tee. His head nodded to the beat of their music, obviously enjoying himself. Then a sudden realization caused Lian to drop out of the performance of “Baby Jones,” too breathless to sing. It was him! Her “luck” had brought him!