Scott Westerfeld: The Last Days

The Strat loved the Big Riff, sliced straight into it. Its spiderweb strings tempted my fingers faster and higher, weightless against Zahler’s firmament. If the Big Riff was an army, he was the infantry, the grunts on the ground, and the Strat had turned me into orbital ninjas dropping from the sky, black pajamas under their space suits.

Pearl sat there listening, fingers flexing, mouse twitching, eyes closed. She looked ready to pounce, waiting restlessly for an opening.

We kept going for ten minutes, maybe twenty—it’s hard to tell time when you’re playing the Big Riff—but she never jumped in…

Finally Zahler gave a little shrug and let the Riff peter out. I followed him down, wrapping up with one last plunge from orbit, the Strat skittering into reluctant silence.

“So, what’s the matter?” he asked. “You don’t like it?”

Pearl sat silently for another few seconds, thinking hard.

“No, it’s excellent. Exactly what I wanted.” Her fingers stroked the keys absently. “But, um, it’s kind of… big .”

“Yeah,” Zahler said. “We call it the Big Riff. Pretty fool, huh?”

“No doubt. But, uh, let me ask you something. How long have you guys been playing together?”

Zahler looked at me.

“Six years,” I said. Since we were eleven, playing our nylon-string loaners from school. We’d electrified them with the mikes from his older sister’s karaoke machine.

Pearl frowned. “And all that time, it’s been just the two of you?”

“Um, yeah?” I admitted. Zahler was looking at me kind of embarrassed, maybe thinking, Don’t tell her about the karaoke machine.

She nodded. “No wonder.”

“No wonder what?” I said.

“There’s no room left over.”

“There’s no what ?”

Pearl pushed her glasses up her nose. “It’s totally full up. Like a pizza with cheese, onions, pepperoni, chilies, sausage, M&M’s, and bacon bits. What am I supposed to do, add the guacamole?”

Zahler made a face. “You mean it sucks.”

“No. It’s big and raw…” She let out a hiss through her teeth, nodding slowly. “You guys made a whole band out of two guitars, which is very lateral. But if you’re going to have a real band—like, one with more than two people in it—you’re going to have to strip your sound way down. We have to poke some holes in the Big Riff.”

Zahler glanced at me, eyes narrowed, and I realized that if I decided to blow this off right now, he would march out of there with me. And I almost did, because the Big Riff was sacred , part of our friendship from the beginning, and Pearl was talking about tearing it up just to make room for her towers of electronic overkill.

I glared up at all those winking lights, wondering how she was supposed to squeeze that much gear into anyone else’s sound without squishing it.

“Plus, it’s not really a song,” she added. “More like a guitar solo that doesn’t go anywhere.”

“Whoa…” I breathed. “Like a what ?”

“A guitar solo that doesn’t go anywhere,” Zahler repeated, nodding. I stared at him.

“I mean, you guys want to do songs , right?” Pearl continued. “With verses and choruses and stuff? Don’t you think the Big Riff could use a B section?”

“Fool idea,” Zahler said. Then he scratched his head. “What’s a B section?”

The new girl was intense. And kind of hot.

She could pull a tune apart like it was nothing . Not like Moz, who always talked in circles. Pearl could just hum what she meant, fingers waving little patterns, like she was seeing air-notes at the same time. I watched carefully, wishing my fingers could do that.

She was one of those girls who looked better in glasses—all smart and stuff.

The way she stripped down the Big Riff was totally fawesome. Like I knew would happen, she didn’t touch my part. My part is basic, the foundation of the Riff. But Moz’s jamming could get kind of random, like she’d said about pizza. You know when they have the sundae bar at school where you make your own sundae? I always add toppings until the ice cream disappears, and it winds up kind of disgusting. Give him enough room, and Moz’s playing can get like that.

Don’t get me wrong—the Mosquito’s a genius, a way better player than me, and there was some pretty fool stuff in his Big Riff zigzags. But it took Pearl to pick out his best threads and weave them back together in a way that made sense.

She explained that a B section was a completely different part of a song, like when the chorus has a different riff, or everything slows down or changes key. Me and Moz didn’t do that too much, because I’m happy playing the same four chords all day long and he’s happy buzzing around on top of them.

But when you think about it, most songs do have B sections, and we sort of hadn’t noticed that ours almost never did. So the moral of the story is, you shouldn’t be in a band with just two people for six years. Kind of saps your perspective.

Moz was all buzzy at first, like the Big Riff was his pet frog that Pearl was dissecting. He kept looking at me and making faces, but I eyeballed him into submission. Once he saw that I thought Pearl was okay, he sort of had to listen to her. It hadn’t been my idea to drag my ax all the way down here, after all.

In the end, Moz was no idiot, and only an idiot would mind listening to a smart, hot girl telling him something that’s for his own good. And for the good of the band, which is what the three of us were already turning into.

It was fawesome to watch. All the years Moz and I had been jamming, it was about adding more to the riffs. So it felt great to see stuff getting erased, to sweep away all the mosquito-droppings and get back to the foundation.

Which, like I said before, is where I’m happiest.

Once the Big Riff was cleaned up, Pearl started playing. I’d figured she was going to blow us away with some kind of thousand-note-a-minute alternafunk jazz, because she’d been in that Juilliard band. But everything she played was sweet and simple. She spent most of her time poking around with her mouse, diluting the tones flowing from her synthesizers until they were thin enough to sneak through the folds of the Big Riff.

In the end, I realized that Pearl was playing some of the lines she’d erased from Moz’s part. Even though she’d simplified them, the whole thing wound up bigger, like an actual band instead of two guitarists trying to sound like one.

And then came the moment when the whole thing finally clicked, totally paranormal, falling into place like an explosion played backwards.

I yelled, “You know, we should record this!”

Moz nodded, but Pearl just laughed. “Guys, I’ve been recording the whole time.” She pointed at the computer screen.

“Really?” Moz skidded us to a halt. “You didn’t say anything about that.”

I eyeballed him to calm down. The Mosquito is always afraid that someone’s going to steal our riffs.

Pearl just shrugged. “Sometimes people choke when you press the red button. So I just keep my hard disk spinning. Here, listen.”

She fiddled with her mouse, popping in and out of the last two hours, little snatches of us, like we’d already been turned into cell-phone ringtones. In a few seconds, she pinned down the one-minute stretch where the New Big Riff had somehow flipped inside out and become perfect.

We all sat there, listening. Moz’s and my mouths were open.

We’d finally nailed it. After six years…

“Still needs a B section,” Pearl said. “And drums. We should get a drummer.”