Текст книги "My Butterfly"

Автор книги: Laura Miller

Chapter Nineteen
The Band

“Hey, so Will, I heard you can sing?” I heard a voice call out.

I looked up and saw Matt charging toward me.

“Where’d you hear that?” I asked.

“Through the grapevine, I guess,” he said, panting and stopping in front of me.

“Geez, Matt, you ran five steps,” I said, starting to laugh.

“I know,” he casually said. “I didn’t warm up first.”

I smiled at him and went back to working on the hose.

“So, this band canceled at this bar my friend manages in The Loop,” he continued. “And he can’t get anybody last minute, so I said maybe we could do it.”

I stopped and looked up at him again from where I was kneeling.

“We?” I asked.

“Yeah, Daniel plays the drums; Chris plays the bass; and I play the keys,” he said. “We get together every once in a while, but our singer’s always been a floater. None of us can sing.”

He laughed and handed me a screwdriver. I cautiously took it, as I judged his face.

“Listen, I know you’re new to the station and St. Louis and all, so if you don’t want to, that’s okay too,” he added. “We’re getting together to run through some songs tomorrow night at eight at my house. If you’re there, great. If not, I’ve gotta a guy who I know will do it.”

I watched him cup his hand around his mouth.

“He’s just, you know, a filler – not the best songbird in the cage,” he said.

He dropped his hand then and picked up a wrench.

“Just think about it, and let me know,” he said, ambling back toward the door again.

“I’ve heard you’ve got some talent, Will,” he called out over his shoulder. “You’ll be doing us a big favor, and who knows, maybe you’ll have some fun.”

He smiled a wide grin and then disappeared into the breakroom.

I kept my eyes on the breakroom door, just in case he reappeared again to tell me that he was pulling my leg or something. Seconds drew on, though, and he never returned.

“Where’d he hear that?” I whispered to myself, as I went back to screwing on the nozzle.

* * *

It was Friday night, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I had already found her number ten times in my contacts only to set the phone down onto the TV dinner table and stare at it for another twenty minutes.

I finally snapped out of my latest trance and spotted the remote balancing on the edge of the couch. I quickly snatched it up and powered the television to life.

The next thing I knew, I was flipping through each channel, only stopping briefly on each one and then flipping to the next. And within seconds, I was already back to the beginning of the order. I let out a sigh and then hit the power button on the remote, causing the screen to go black again.

What was she doing now?

I stared at the black screen for a couple of minutes, lost in my thought, until my eyes eventually landed on my phone again. Something told me not to reach for it, but my hand went for it anyway. And just before I could touch it, its display lit up.

My heart instantly started a fast, rhythmic pounding against the walls of my chest, as I quickly snatched up the phone and peered into its glowing screen. Next, I forced my eyes into a frantic search for the sender of the message, until they eventually stumbled upon a name and stopped cold.

It wasn’t her.

I let out an exhausted and heavy sigh. Then, I took a second before picking my heart up off of the floor and following over the words in the message: You comin’, buddy?

I took a deep breath in and then forced my eyes shut and let out a frustrated groan. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I was going crazy in this little apartment.

When I opened my eyes again, my guitar was staring at me from the corner of the room. I cocked my head then and narrowed my eyes, focusing all of my attention on the six-string.

Moments passed. Then, I glanced up at the clock on the wall.

“What the hell,” I said out loud, before standing up and shoving my phone into my jeans pocket.

I made my way over to the corner and snatched up the guitar. Then, I grabbed my coat from a chair and my keys from the kitchen counter. And within seconds, I was out the door and heading for Matt’s.

* * *

“Will, you made it,” Matt cheerfully shouted, as he swung open his door. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Waiting?” I asked.

I watched his eyes fall to the guitar in my hands.

“You can play too? Great,” he said.

He pulled me inside by my coat’s sleeve.

“Guys, look who’s here,” Matt shouted into the garage.

I shyly entered the doorway and stood stiffly inside its frame.

“Will,” Chris yelled out first.

“Hey, does this mean we don’t have to call Jim?” Daniel asked no one in particular.

Chris burst into laughter.

“Okay, okay, let’s get going,” Matt said, raising his voice over Chris’s laughter.

Then, Matt shuffled over to a keyboard and took his place behind it.

“Will, we play a lot of covers – all sorts of stuff,” Matt said. “Do you know ‘Brown Eyed Girl’?”

“Yeah, the girls love it,” Chris shouted.

I lowered my head and smiled.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding my head. “I do.”

“Okay, we’ll start with that, and if you got any, you let us know,” he said to me.

I nodded my head again, then looked around.

“Is that where I go?” I asked seconds later, eyeing the microphone in its stand.

Matt and Chris laughed.

“That would be where you go,” Matt said.

I awkwardly grinned and took my place behind the stand. My guitar was now swung across my body, sheltering me, as I played with its strings and tuning pegs.

“All right, here we go,” Matt said.

The melody filled the room a short count later. I was a little nervous, but if I knew a song, I knew this one – thanks to Jules.

The part where I was supposed to come in came quickly, and my first words came out timid, but it didn’t take long for it to feel as if she were the only one in the room again.

After several minutes, I sang the last words of the song and took a step back from the mic, still strumming my guitar. Then, eventually, the music stopped and the garage was silent again. I turned around and faced the guys behind me. I noticed first the goofy grin on Daniel’s face.

“We’ve finally got a band,” Daniel yelled.

A wide, toothy smile soon lit up Chris’s and Matt’s faces as well. And only then did I feel a grin start to edge up my face too. I quickly lowered my eyes and tried to calm my excited breaths. It was as if there were some kind of weird adrenaline rushing through my veins all of a sudden; it was strange. But at the same time, I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t strange in a fun way because that would mean that she had been right all along.

“Oh, but Will,” Chris said, interrupting my thoughts.

I looked up at him.

“You do know that it’s brown-eyed girl, not green-eyed girl, right?” he asked.

I froze, as if I had been caught naked or something, then chuckled to myself.

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, lowering my eyes again and shaking my head.

“Okay,” Matt said. “It doesn’t matter what he sings. They’ll love it anyway. Let’s just keep it going.”

When I looked back up, Chris was staring at me, and he had a mischievous look glued to his face. I furrowed my eyebrows at him, then brushed off his look and returned my attention to Matt, as he rattled off a list of songs.

We played through the rest of the songs. They were mostly classics and country – oddly enough, the songs I used to sing to Julia – so I knew them well. Every so often, though, my heart would stab at my chest when a particular lyric sent me back to a summer afternoon with her in my arms. But then, not too long after, a slight smile would find my face when I realized that I couldn’t escape her no matter what I did. It was like her to always find a way to win. At least now, however, I would be a little distracted. Here, the music forced me on to the next moment without too much thought. And really, these guys weren’t bad.

“So, what do we call ourselves?” Chris asked, when the music stopped for the last time.

“I thought we had a name,” Daniel said.

The men froze – Daniel where he sat and Chris and Matt where they stood. I watched each one’s face twist and turn into a puzzled mess.

“What was it?” Matt asked, finally.

A moment of silence passed again.

“Whatever it was, it mustn’t have been that good,” Chris said. “Let’s come up with a new one. I feel like we’re a real band now.”

“What about WDCM?” Daniel asked.

“What?” Matt asked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s our initials all squished together,” Daniel explained.

“Vetoed,” Chris yelled out. “What about Matt’s Garage?”

“Matt’s Garage?” Daniel sarcastically asked and then snickered. “Yeah, I can see us famous someday, ‘Uh, hi, we’re Matt’s Living Room, uh, I mean, Matt’s Bathroom. No, I mean, Matt’s Garage. Can you guess where we started?’”

I laughed and so did Matt.

“This guy,” Chris said, pointing at Daniel, “has already got us famous now. Daniel, you’ll be lucky if Will remembers to introduce you tomorrow night.”

Daniel hit the snare and then the cymbal and a ba-DUM ching echoed through the garage.

All three of them laughed.

“What about District 9?” I asked, shyly.

Their eyes slowly moseyed toward my corner and then rested on me for a second.

“You know, I like that,” Matt said first.

“Yeah,” Chris said, nodding his head. “We’re firefighters first.”

Daniel started a drumroll. It got louder as it continued until it finally stopped.

“District 9 it is,” Daniel shouted.

“Okay, we’ve got a name,” Chris said. “Shouldn’t we have at least one song that’s ours?”

We all looked at each other.

“We don’t necessarily have to,” Matt said. “Plus, are we really gonna learn a song in a night.”

“Well, I think we could,” Daniel said. “But it doesn’t have to be for tomorrow. We can just have it ready for the next time.”

“What next time?” Matt asked. “Do you know something I don’t know?”

“Dude, we’re a real band now,” Daniel said. “We’ve got a singer.”

He stopped, gestured toward me and smiled.

“And we’ve got a kickass name, and you know all those club people who thought we were okay without a real singer,” Daniel continued.

His eyes were planted on Matt.

“Okay, okay,” Matt said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Okay, so what about the song?” Chris chimed in.

“You gonna write one for us, Chris?” Matt asked. “None of us could write a song to save our lives.”

I watched as everyone’s eyes turned toward the floor. Then, after a moment, Chris’s head suddenly popped up.

“None of us have ever written a song, right?” he asked the room, but he was only looking at me.

And slowly, Daniel’s face and then Matt’s face turned up as well, and before I knew it, all three of their sets of eyes were on me.

I stared back at them. I felt strangely nervous, as my lips started to turn up.

“I might have written a song,” I confessed, hardly more audible than a mumble.

“What?” Matt asked.

There was a surprise in his voice.

“Let’s hear it,” Daniel shouted.

I shook my head.

“Nah, I don’t think it’s the kind of song you’re looking for,” I said.

“Will, we’re looking for whatever you’ve got,” Matt said.

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s a slow song.”

“Perfect,” Daniel said. “I like slow songs. Girls like slow songs. Let’s hear it.”

There was silence then, as the three of them stared at me and I stared back at them. They were pleading with me out of pure desperation, I could tell. And suddenly, I realized I was just about to do what I would have been doing at home, except now, I had a live audience of my three, hopeless co-workers staring back at me.

“Damn it,” I mumbled under my breath, as I repositioned my guitar in front of my body again.

The three men cheered and then settled back into their spots behind their instruments.

I turned my back toward them and stepped up to the microphone. Then, I rested my fingers on the guitar’s strings and fiddled with a couple of the tuning pegs again. When I was sure I had her tuned, I planted my eyes on the garage door but then stopped. And the next thing I knew, I was shuffling around and twisting the microphone stand so that I was facing the guys again.

“Yeah, that’s better,” Chris said, chuckling.

I smiled.

“Yeah, I thought so,” I said.

I repositioned my guitar.

“If you hate it, just stop me,” I said.

Then, I cleared my throat as my fingers started a slow melody on the strings of my guitar. And seconds later, I parted my lips and started in:

 
“I’m famous in this small town
For a ghost I cannot shake
They all know I’m talkin’ to you
But of it – I don’t think they know what to make
But they don’t see what I see
They don’t see you dance on the river walk,
Underneath the street lamps
With those stars in your eyes
They don’t see you
Lying next to me
Tellin’ me your dreams,
Planted somewhere up in those big skies
No, they don’t see what I see
Because I see
A rainstorm in June
Just before the sun
The black of night
Just before the stars
And, girl, I see your ghost
Just before our dawn
And tonight I’ll see you again
Just like every night before
But they don’t see what I see
What I see is more
Because I see
A rainstorm in June
Just before the sun
The black of night
Just before the stars
And, girl, I see your ghost
Just before our dawn
And, girl, I see your ghost
Just before our dawn.”
 

The room turned silent when my fingers stopped dancing on the strings. My eyes were planted on the floor. The song meant something to me, but they didn’t need to know that.

Eventually, I heard a slow clap. I collected myself and slowly lifted my head. Another clap joined the first one, and then, the third set of hands started in.

“Will, man, that was amazing,” Matt said.

“That’s our song,” Chris blurted out, pointing at me. “We can use that song, right?”

His gaze fell on me, and I bashfully smiled.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have sung it otherwise,” I said, jokingly, all the while, trying to swallow the thought of the girl behind the song.

“The girls are going to love us,” Daniel yelled, throwing his fists into the air.

“Okay, okay,” Matt said. “Now, let’s get to work.”

* * *

Chris and Daniel were pulling out of Matt’s driveway as Matt and I waved from our place underneath a basketball goal. We watched their headlights eventually fade and then disappear.

“How did you know that I might be able to sing?” I asked, as I turned back toward Matt.

“Your buddy, Jeff, right?” he asked. “The one who hung out with us a couple of weekends ago…”

I nodded my head.

“Yeah, Jeff,” I confirmed.

“Yeah, I believe his exact words were that you have ‘the voice of an angel,’” he said. “Of course, he was a little, you know…”

He tipped back an imaginary glass in his hand.

“Yeah,” I said, smiling. “That sounds about right.”

“Anyway, I believed him nonetheless,” he said. “And I’m glad I did. What are you doing dressed in turnout gear anyway? Shouldn’t you be in Nashville or something, gettin’ all the pretty, country girls?”

I laughed once and shook my head. Then, I tipped my baseball cap and started out toward Lou on the street.

“So, I’ll see you tomorrow night then at seven?” he called out after me.

I nodded my head and raised my hand in the air.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

I got to the driver’s side door and pulled on the handle.

“Hey, Will,” Matt called out from the driveway.

I looked back up in his direction.

“It’ll be fun,” he said.

I smiled and nodded my head. Then, I opened the door, set my guitar onto the backseat and slid behind the wheel. I found the key next and then stuck it into the ignition.

“Fun,” I mumbled under my breath. “Yeah, I’ve heard that a couple of times before from someone else.”

A wide smile battled its way to my face and eventually won.

“And she just might have been right, damn it.”

Chapter Twenty
The Gig

“Okay, you guys ready for a sound check?” asked a stout man propped up against the side of the stage.

I glanced over at Chris plugging the last cord into an amplifier and hesitantly nodded my head. We were on a tiny platform in a room a little bigger than New Milford’s corner bar. But the ceilings were high and unfinished, and they gave the place a more modern look than the little bar from back home.

I watched the stout man take the three steps back down the stage and then make his way across the room again. He stayed as near as he could to the wall as he shuffled to his place in the far corner. There were people already sitting around tables and standing at the bar. They all seemed to be in their twenties and thirties mostly. Some were watching us, shielded behind their drinks and the darkness that filled the area below the stage. But most looked as if they didn’t even notice us. My eyes eventually fell again onto the stout man, squeezing behind a counter, lit up with knobs and buttons. He played with some of the knobs and then finally looked my way and gave me a thumbs-up. I turned then and found Matt.

Matt caught my glance and paused from digging through a container full of electrical tape and pliers and whatnot.

“You can go ahead,” he said. “I’ll go next.”

I faced forward again and stared at the microphone resting at the top of its stand. Then, I looked back up at the man behind the counter. His eyes were turned down; his fingers were busy dancing over the lights and the knobs. I caught a pair of eyes near the stage, and I smiled an awkward smile. She smiled back, and then I went back to the sound check that was evidentially already in progress. Suddenly, I felt as if I were seven all over again and playing rock star with the kids up the street. I shook off another uneasy smile and then tapped the top of the microphone. A dull sound bounced off the walls in the little room. It seemed to attract only a few more faces. I readjusted the guitar’s strap around my body. Then, not really sure what to do next, I brought my lips to the microphone, remembering a movie I had seen once.

“Test, test,” I said into the mic.

My words came out soft. I could barely hear them over the constant hum of voices in the room.

The guy behind the buttons and knobs pointed his finger in the air.

I nodded my head and waited.

“Test, test,” I said again into the mic after a moment.

This time, I could hear myself.

“That sounds good,” I heard Matt call out from behind me.

I gave the sound guy in the back of the room an okay gesture with my hand and nodded my head in approval.

“Song list,” Matt said, setting a sheet of paper onto the stage at my feet.

I glanced down at the floor. The paper had a list of titles scribbled down the page.

“Okay, thanks,” I said.

Then, I played with the strings on my guitar, acting as if I hadn’t just tuned it, while Daniel tapped around on his drums and pedals and Matt and Chris worked with the sound guy. These guys were old pros at this stuff. I felt like a tadpole out of pond water.

When the guys were finally satisfied with their sounds, several more lights appeared in rays from the ceiling. Some were white; the others were red. They were bright and caused me to squint until I got used to them, which took me about a minute.

“You ready, Will?” I heard Matt ask.

I turned and found Matt. Then, I glanced at the mic and then back at him as if to say, now?

“Yep,” he said. “We’re ready.”

I took a deep breath in and then felt it instinctively escape past my lips as a big smile edged its way across my face. I was pretty sure I thought the wider I smiled, the less my heart would race.

“Hello,” I said into the mic.

Suddenly, the hum of the small crowd hushed.

“Hello,” I said again, once the room was quiet. “How are ya?”

A few people clapped. One person whistled.

I swiveled around slightly, being careful to keep my lips near the mic, and glanced back at the band.

“We’re, uh, District 9,” I said.

Then, I turned back toward the crowd and the lights, trying my best not to squint my eyes.

“We’re really, uh, firefighters, so even if you don’t like our songs, feel free to clap anyway,” I said, softly laughing into the mic. “You’d be doing some goodwill for the St. Louis Fire Department that way.”

It took a second, but soon, a soft buzz, followed by enthusiastic applause, filled the little room. I let go of a wide smile then, and it instantly shot across my face. Then, I stepped back from the microphone and lowered my eyes to my guitar as Daniel started in on his drums. Immediately, I felt my hands fall into place on the guitar’s strings, and I brought my lips close to the microphone again. The old melody was already taking me back to when I was a kid in the back of my grandpa’s store singing my lungs out to the same song, and it helped to crush my nerves.

Soon after, I got the first words out, and the rest came easy. Then, the second song felt like a rush as this strange, adrenaline-like stuff shot through my spine. I had barely noticed that a line of people, mostly girls, were now pressed up against the side of the stage, dancing and singing. Every so often, I would look down to see if I could find Julia in one of their faces. I knew that she wasn’t there, but that didn’t stop me from trying anyway.

We finished the last song scribbled on the list before I knew it. And I let my guitar hang from its strap, as I grabbed the microphone’s stand with both hands.

“Thanks so much,” I said. “You guys were kind.”

There was a loud applause, and I paused and smiled.

“Again, we’re District 9, and remember to change those batteries in your smoke detectors,” I said into the mic.

I heard laughter in the crowd, then more applause. And then, the stage went dark again. I narrowed my eyes trying to get them to readjust faster. I could barely see a thing again.

Still squinting, I turned and caught Matt’s figure first. He was smiling. Then, I looked over at Chris and Daniel. They had wide grins planted on their faces too.

“Well done, boys,” Matt finally said. “Well done.”

* * *

Daniel, Chris and I were busy packing up the last of the gear into Chris’s SUV when Matt came over to us and leaned his head near ours.

“So, listen, guys, my buddy said that he’s got a friend who needs a band next week,” he said. “You guys in?”

Daniel and Chris looked at each other and then at me.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Sure,” I said.

“See, what did I tell you, Matt?” Daniel shouted. “I knew you’d find us another gig.”

“Can you guys be at my house on Sunday?” Matt asked. “We’ve got to practice. This place is bigger, and I think we should do Will’s song.”

We all looked at each other and nodded our heads.

“Sunday it is,” Chris shouted, as he let out an excited howl.