Сара Пинскер - A Song for a New Day

At nine o’clock she dumped all her clothes onto her bed. Closed her eyes, tried to picture what the audience at the 2020 had worn. This could be her do-over, her chance to blend in. She’d be the last person down the stairs instead of the first, coming in this late. If she stayed in the back, she’d keep out of the crush.

She put on her Hoodie, realized she’d forgotten to charge it, and took it off again. She’d have to do without. Stuffed her wallet and phone into a small bag, then realized an umbrella made sense, too, and repacked into her backpack. Another advantage SHL and hoodspace had over real-life excursions: everything you’d ever need fit into a bag of holding.

City rain bounced off surfaces instead of settling into them like farm rain; it stained the buildings and sidewalks gray and grayer. She splurged on a single-cell to keep from getting soaked, and to delay dealing with other people for as long as possible. This way she wouldn’t be lying to her mother when she said how she’d traveled. The backseat was more worn than the one she’d taken to her orientation, and smelled like artificial flowers on top of fried chicken.

She spent the short ride psyching herself up. She was a woman alone in the city. How cool was that? Had she ever in her life imagined herself someplace like this, doing something like this? I belong here, she repeated. I’m here to help people. To bring music to the masses, musicians that deserve to be heard. I will walk into that building as if I have the same right to be there as everyone else.

Alice was lying on the couch watching another prerecorded band on the living room rig when Rosemary opened the door. “You again?”

“Do you know everyone here?” Rosemary asked in return.

“Yes, and you don’t belong.”

“I’m not police. I told you.”

“Fine. You’re not police, but you’re something. I’m sure of it.”

“I can’t imagine you give this hard a time to every new person who shows up. I just want to hear some music tonight. Please?”

“You’re not going to be tuning for Luce tonight?” Alice smirked, and Rosemary’s cheeks warmed. Before she could defend herself, the woman pointed toward the front door. “You can come in when someone else vouches for you. Not Aran Randall, not Luce. She’s way too trusting.”

“Is Joni here? Joni would…”

“Joni’s not here.”

“I don’t know how you have anybody here at all if this is how you treat people.”

“This is how I keep us from getting shut down.”

“Look, I already know where you are. If I were a cop, I’d have busted you already, wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know, but you’re not welcome without an escort.”

Rosemary knew she’d been beaten; she left the way she had come in. What were her options now? Head back to the hotel, admit total defeat. Troll the web for uploads, hope to find the next Victor Janssen somewhere in hoodspace.

She caught movement in the corner of her eye. A man on the opposite side of the street, lit by a streetlight, lifting a rifle. She shrank back into the doorway in panic, trying to make herself invisible. A second look showed it wasn’t a rifle; he was closing an umbrella. He had a little girl with him, five or six years old. The rain had stopped for the moment.

Something rattled, and she looked down to see her hand shaking, knocking against her bag, the buckle of which knocked against her own umbrella. An umbrella looked like a gun at the right angle, in the right moment, but it wasn’t a weapon. Nobody was trying to hurt anybody here. It was some guy trying to get his kid home. She had no reason to overwrite him with her own groundless fears.

She would have given up and gone back to the hotel if she hadn’t mistaken that umbrella for a gun. Somewhere inside her the shame of her own paranoia hot-wired a new determination. She was here for a purpose. She wanted to be good at her job, and being good at her job meant finding music that couldn’t be found by someone sitting in their bedroom with a Hoodie. She’d been given a chance to do something new and different with her life. She wouldn’t allow herself—or Alice—to squander it.

Where did Alice get off keeping her out, anyhow? Assuming Rosemary was other than what she claimed to be? Never mind that her suspicions were correct; that didn’t give her permission to make snap judgments about people she didn’t know.

She reversed her steps from a few nights before, rounding the corner into the darkened alley. The precise backyard count from the corner to 2020 escaped her, but she recognized the chain-link fence, the garden, the steps to the back door. The gate’s padlock was in place this time.

A broken link at the top snagged her pants cuff and raked her leg when she clambered over. Her plan to land lightly on her feet was upended, and she dropped headfirst into the paved yard, pants still caught like a trophy fish. She stayed that way for ten seconds, or ten minutes, eyes closed, head spinning, before getting one leg under her and hopping to free the other. When it pulled clear, she lost her balance and fell backward again, this time into the soft garden soil.

The whole sequence had gone much better in her mind when she’d looked at the padlocked gate. She examined the muddy, torn mess she had made of herself and did her best to wipe the dirt off with a sodden sleeve. Her head rang with a mild urgency.

The back door was unlocked. Two people stood in the kitchen, drinking water and arguing in low tones. They gave her an odd look, but didn’t question her presence. Alice the door dragon still sat in the front room, guarding the entrance and maintaining her charade of a person lounging at home watching canned StageHolo shows at high volume. Nobody stood between Rosemary and the basement stairs; all she had to do was convince herself to go down there. Given the trouble she’d gone to, she wasn’t turning back.

She opened the door to the basement and was greeted by noise cut short, then clapping and cheering. A good time to slip in; time for a new song to begin.

Rosemary had hoped the rain might keep people away, but if anything, the basement was more packed than it had been for the previous show. A new musty scent mixed with the sweat and cat pee odors for which she had already prepared herself. Wet dog? Wet clothes. Wet clay. Wet everything.

She lingered at the bottom landing. Nobody was going in or out, and she was more than happy to stay in that spot, with easy escape at the ready. She didn’t know how long the band had been playing already. Luce stood onstage, tuning, her hair flattened to her forehead with sweat. Rosemary swung around to inspect the alcove where she’d spent the previous show: nobody sat behind the merchandise table. She hadn’t been needed after all, as Joni had said.

“One-two-three-four!” shouted Luce, and the room changed again. Rosemary turned her attention to the stage. She expected “Blood and Diamonds,” but this song sounded nothing like that; a different genre altogether, even with the familiar voice cutting through. She hadn’t believed it was the same person, couldn’t reconcile her mental image with the ordinary-looking woman she’d met. Luce’s ponytail flipped and bucked as she sang, punctuating her lines. A fierce ponytail. A hype man of a ponytail.

Craning her neck, Rosemary identified the whole group from the diner. They all looked different now. The laid-back teasing had been replaced by something knife-edged. She wasn’t sure what could be dangerous about music, but that thought lodged in her mind, and once there, it didn’t shake.

She had loved music her entire life, even if the live type had never been an option. She thought she knew what music sounded like in a fair number of forms: the stuff her parents had introduced her to, the songs she had found on her own, the life-changing Patent Medicine show, where she’d felt for the first time like she was inside a song, that a song was a living thing. Magritte’s performance in the SHL tanks, compelling even in isolation. The bands from the other night, each special in their own way.