Сара Пинскер - A Song for a New Day

“Yeah, I’m planning on it. Thanks!”

Rosemary retraced her route. She passed the members of Harriet, who had stopped on a corner to continue their argument.

A few more cars and vans dotted the street now. Rosemary glanced at her hood’s display for the time: eight fifteen. A little more reasonable, maybe?

She dug an ancient piece of spearmint gum from the pack in her jacket pocket; the most important night of her life and she’d eaten dragon-breath chili.

Aran had called it the 2020, and she hoped he wasn’t messing with her; it wasn’t a name that tripped off the tongue, like the Bloom Bar. Maybe it had a nickname, or maybe 2020 was the nickname, and she was inventing random worries to distract herself from her own nerves. The woman at the diner would probably have told her, but she hadn’t thought to ask.

She approached from the side, as if she was trying to sneak up on the place. Willed someone else to walk in first, so she could study the method, aware she was acting overcautious again. She had taken the bus all the way here. She had walked in a strange city, eaten in a strange diner; surely it wasn’t such a big deal to knock on the door. Or open the door? Too many options.

It was a venue, she told herself, even though it looked like a boarded-up vacant. She decided to push the door open, not knock, and found herself standing in somebody’s sparsely furnished living room, a canned basic StageHolo show playing out on the tattered throw rug, some band she didn’t recognize. The walls were bare and off-white, as was a painted-over fireplace. Nailheads poked out where pictures must have hung at some point, whiter white rectangles beneath them.

A tall, broad woman with the shoulders of a linebacker sat on the stained and sagging couch, her arms spreading over the back. “Can I help you, Officer?”

Rosemary took a step backward, almost off the doorstep. Looked behind her to see who the woman was addressing, only to realize the question was aimed at her. “I’m not an officer. Um, my friend told me bands play here.”

The woman didn’t move. “You know if you are police you are legally obligated to identify yourself now.”

“I swear I’m not. Is this 2020? The 2020? I didn’t mean to intrude if I’m wrong.” Somewhere under their feet, feedback squalled. Rosemary looked down. “This is the right place, I’m pretty sure.”

“Close the door a sec.”

Rosemary closed it, happy to be on the inside, but the look on the woman’s face didn’t get any friendlier.

“You’re not police, then, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I don’t recognize you.”

“Do you recognize everyone who comes to your club?” The front door creaked open again behind her, but Rosemary focused on the problem at hand.

“Club? This is my house. My spouse is down in the basement playing guitar.”

This was getting exasperating. “Look. I know this is the address. Aran Randall from Patent Medicine told me to come. I drove eight hours to get here.”

“Patent Medicine? You’re going to mention a StageHolo band to get into my basement?”

“What’s wrong with StageHolo? Some good bands play on there. You’re watching one right now…” Rosemary pointed to the basic box on the woman’s coffee table.

“Patent Medicine. Go back to wherever you came from.”

A hand settled on Rosemary’s shoulder, and she leaped sideways.

“Alice,” a woman said behind her. “Are you harassing my new guitar tech?”

Rosemary turned. It was the woman from Harriet-the-band.

“You know her, Luce?”

“Yeah. She’s tuning our guitars tonight. She’s cool.”

Alice frowned, then sighed and waved her hand. “I don’t know why she didn’t say so. She would have gotten a whole lot further mentioning you than mentioning Patent Medicine.”

Luce lifted an eyebrow at the name. Rosemary made a mental note not to mention Aran’s band again until she figured out why people here had that reaction.

Luce pushed past Rosemary. Her bandmates followed her in, and Rosemary trailed behind. They crossed the living room and entered a narrow kitchen, then turned 180 degrees to a basement stairwell beside the kitchen doorway.

The basement was at least as large as the house above, but still tiny compared to SHL venues. The ceiling was low, the floor packed clay. There was a faint odor of cat piss. A stage area filled one end, not any higher than the room, but differentiated by strands of LED lights and two bulky monitor speakers. SHL used those on the soundstage for effect, window dressing, even though the performers all had in-ear systems. The monitors looked good on the edge of a big stage, and served as a barrier. That was the one similarity between this and the Bloom Bar.

A banged-up drum kit lay in pieces at the stage’s back, and a bass amp covered in stickers from a hundred bands sat tucked in beside the scattered drums. Guitar amps lined the wall beside the stage, and eight or ten guitar cases were piled in the corner. Microphone stands at various heights stood in stalagmite patterns on the stage perimeter, cords wound around them like vines. She fought disappointment that it was so cramped, an experience in miniature. Even though Aran had called it “a little underground space,” she hadn’t thought he meant it literally.

“What is this place?” she asked under her breath.

“It’s either a shrine to rock as it was or an attempt to build something better. Some days one, some days the other. Are you gonna help or what?” Luce squatted a few feet away, rummaging in the pocket of a guitar bag.

“I—I thought you were kidding.”

“Why kid? We don’t have any comp tickets here. Either you’re our guitar tech or you owe Alice eight bucks.”

“She wasn’t going to let me in.”

“True. Maybe you don’t owe Alice after all. You can go back to when she was telling you to get lost.”

She said this matter-of-factly, though her eyes and the corners of her mouth hinted she was messing with Rosemary. The whole situation had gone wrong. Too fast, too aggressive, too jokey. She hadn’t even had a chance to mention she worked for SHL. Or maybe she wasn’t supposed to mention it yet; the training manuals left her a few different options.

“Okay,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

Luce held up a small box. “Do you know how to tune a guitar?”

“Nope.”

“Change a string?”

“No.” Rosemary’s face flushed. She crossed her arms. “I’m not stupid. I’m just not a musician. Teach me whatever you need me to do. I’m a fast learner.”

“That’s better. Do you have a name, by the way?”

“Rosemary. Rosemary Laws.”

“Cool name. Mind if I use it for a band sometime?”

“No, um, yes? Maybe?”

“You can get back to me on it. Okay, Rosemary Rosemary Laws. Lucky for you, tuning technology has advanced to a point where you don’t need to know music, as long as you can read the alphabet and follow up and down arrows. You can read?”

“Yes.” Maybe by the time the night ended she’d know whether to stop feeling offended.

A few more people straggled downstairs. One started assembling the drum kit, another taking microphones from pouches and attaching them to the cords on the stands. Luce pulled a black electric guitar from a case and plugged it into a pedal. She tuned two strings, then handed the guitar to Rosemary, who self-consciously turned the tuning keys, with the encouragement of Luce and the pedal. A red light with arrows told her which direction to twist, and a green light in the center blinked when she had it correct. She did the four remaining strings before handing the guitar back.