George sat on an old wooden stool in front of a crowd of hundreds. Vast, overhead lights overwhelmed him while he squinted to make out the silhouettes of heads, extending in an ocean as far as his eyes could see. Beads of sweat rolled down his brow and he wiped his damp hands on faded jeans. The auditorium was rumbling, busy and dark.
He was nervous. But he pulled the microphone closer to his mouth and uttered quiet words into it.
“Hi, I’m George. I’ll play a few songs for you.”
The crowd maintained the level of ambience he was listening to before he spoke any words. He gulped and looked down at his guitar. Now or never. He took out the pick from his pocket and steadied his position sitting on the stool. He grabbed it with the sides of his fingers as steady as possible to, but he could feel his fingers losing their grip already.
Now or never.
He lifted his arm above the strings, and played the first note.
The crowd was drowned out by his notes and his voice. It was like he was listening to himself from afar, but he played the song in his head and his hands moved subconsciously with each lyrical line or bar in the melody.
Between closed eyes and fluctuating tone, he could make out a crowd swaying with his music and it calmed his nerves in a way that he hadn’t known for a long time. So he kept playing, because it was the only thing keeping him from not collapsing on stage, and his shoe tapped the foot of the stool, and his fingers pressed the frets before he knew what he was doing, but it was working.
He was surprised it was working.
By the time he had moved to the end of first song, his eyes were completely closed. He wasn’t thinking about the crowd in front of him or the fingertips feeling like they were bleeding or the sweat piling up on his forehead, soaking into his thick toque, and the edges of his hair becoming wetter. He just played.
And kept playing. Because it was all he knew how to do.
“Thank you.” A small uttering over the crowd clapping and cheering.
It was then when he realized everything he had been working for started to pay off. It was a surreal feeling; an unbelievable feeling. He wondered if it was something to embrace or deny, or if it was real at all. But George didn’t want to think about his feelings at that moment. He just wanted to feel. It was working, and working well. He felt the music, the crowd shouting behind his vocals, and the vibrations from his guitar against his body slouched over on the wooden stool his shoe was tapping on.
He lifted his hand again, and he positioned his fingers again. He breathed in deep, and held it for as long as he could to prepare for the future that seemed like it was catching up with him. He didn’t care though. He just kept playing.
He kept playing because someone had told him it was the only thing he had left.
***
George sat backstage against the black wall beside the open area facing the crowd. His toque was off and his hair was matted and wet. He drank water from a large bottle and beside him was his guitar, as worn down as he was.
Various bands and artists greeted him on a good opening act, congratulating him on a job well done and telling him he had a long career ahead of him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to hear any of it, or that he didn’t believe it, because he did; it was one of the things he felt when he was playing with his eyes closed and his voice resonating in front of a large, rambunctious crowd.
It was more that he didn’t want to believe in himself, because the person who told him it was the only thing he had left also told him he would never find anything, or anyone, else. He stared at his guitar once again, and traced the spaces in between the strings with his calloused fingertips. That person was someone who he thought could save him from everything he didn’t want to hear from life. To hear it from a guitar, something you can control and manipulate wasn’t nearly enough. He wanted to hear a human song, one that spoke to him and reassured him and made him feel like someone worth believing in.
He got that, for a long time. When it ended, it was just him and his tools. The faceless, handless tools he had to work with, and up until now, he was just fine with that.
Up until now, he wasn’t thinking of her.
George lets out an exasperated sigh as stagehands and band members from each act carry out equipment and instruments outside into the parking lot. The crowd was dispersed and the lights of the auditorium shined onto a bare floor with scraps and garbage littered all across. He stepped into it, if only for what he thought was a brief moment. But it was empty as hell, and George knew she would like it. She enjoyed emptiness. Loneliness.
He knew it was where she belonged. He knew she was better off wherever she was, than sitting on a stool beside him in front of hundreds of people, tapping his foot with hers, playing chords that harmonized and made each song that much more soothing and mesmerizing and unforgettable.
George closed his eyes, like he did when he was playing and forgetting about everything but the music that filled his ears. This time, there was only silence. Usually, silence was just like the music he played. Calming, fitting, and appropriate. George opened them. Nothing changed. It had been a while since nothing had changed.
In the past few years, everything about his life had changed, even her. It was a bitter note to figure out that she actually hadn’t. She’d just been hiding underneath all that change, and revealed things he had long forgotten about.
He dragged his feet back offstage and noticed most of it was empty of people. He knelt down on one knee and laid his case on its flat side. It was worn and black, the material stripping parts and the metal clasps rusted from years of use. He opened the inside where red, faded felt protected where the guitar sat. There were three or four stickers. Two of them, she had put on herself. Two others were ones he found that reminded him of her. That was too early to remember.
He had never looked at the stickers for at least two years. And now that he did, it was an entirely different feeling. Everything he felt from when he was playing in front of those people was drowned out by the feeling of not being able to play for her, or with her. He closed the case before any more feeling happened.
Deep breaths. He wipes his hands on his jeans again.
He opened it once more and this time briskly shoved his guitar into it, clasped it shut and picked it up. He moved his way down the ramp and looked at the parking lot with scattered cars and people putting trunks and cases into backs of trucks. He pulled out his keys and walked alongside a row of cars, looking for his own.
He saw the front end, slightly dented, headlights round and archaic, sticking out between a sedan and a minivan. He pointed his keys towards it and pressed a button to unlock it from a distance, jogging towards it as he did so.
“Hey, George! Wait up.”
George turned around to see the concert manager carrying something in his hand and waving it at him. “Where did you go? I didn’t get to pay you.”
“Oh, I’m pretty tired and I wanna get to a place where I can sleep.”
“But I got your pay right here, man.”
He waves the wad of cash in front of George. His eyes don’t move from the concert manager’s.
“What, you won’t take it?”
George frowns and shakes his head.
“Why not? You played a kick-ass act, man.”
George begins to turn around and open the back door, trying to squeeze his guitar in between the sedan and his own car, turning his head slightly to speak to the manager.
“I, uh—I don’t play for money anymore.”
“Anymore—what? What do you mean?”
“I mean, I stopped. I don’t need the money. Thanks for letting me play. But I don’t need the money.”
The manager looks at his old, scratched, and rusted car and examines its headlights.
“Are you sure?”
George shuts the back door and hears something loose when he closes it. He briefly looks inside and shrugs it off, and matches the manager’s gaze at the car’s eccentric headlights.
He chuckles while saying, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure.”
The manager looks up at him, holding the cash in front of him again. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“There was that eighteen year old kid, the second act? How much did you pay him?”
“Little less than this. You want me to give him a hand?”
George opens his driver-seat door and puts one foot inside. “Hell, this isn’t an easy path. We should know that.”
The manager hits the wad of cash against his open palm while thinking. Then uses it to point at George with an agreeable expression.
“You coming back? Next concert I mean, when I call you. I’ll make sure I call you.”
George ponders for a moment. “Sounds cool.” He closes the door and rolls down his window. The concert manager leans against it.
“I’ll call him too. He was good. You think he was good. After that show, I’ll tell him to meet you. He’s going to want to meet you.”
George smiles at him and turns on his ignition.
“See you next year.”
“You too, George.”
The car’s engine sputters and its exhaust emitted black smoke for a brief moment, but as the manager backed off from the car and waved, George turned in the parking lot and left the auditorium, the tiny fifth door of his faded orange hatchback illuminating the pavement below him with a dim red light.
Beyond the auditorium was a dark road, where cars from concert goers and bands entered and sped down, with not much else in sight for at least a couple of miles. The guitar case and George rattled and shook with the bumpy road as he sped up, following the few cars in front of them until they branched off into the highway. The Bob Dylan bobblehead was bobbling more than usual and George swore he could hear sounds coming from the engine that he most feared when on the road. He gripped his steering wheel tighter and twisted his palms against the furry, zebra striped steering wheel cover.
“Come on, Beams, not now,” he whispered under his breath. As hesitant as he was—as scared as he was that the car he had driven to almost two hundred small towns, three hundred festivals, and countless stretches of roads was finally losing its magic, George kept driving, like had always done since that day. And it was rare when he was driving that he would think about that day, and the someone who had told him all those things.
He closed his eyes momentarily to gather his senses, and opened them to begin driving more alert. The sky was dark, and he could make out several stars in the sky when he looked through his sunroof. It was especially bright tonight. He liked to believe that it was a sign. One that demonstrated to him that the feeling he got when in that concert wasn’t superficial or forgettable. It reminded him of the first time he sang into a microphone in front of maybe only twenty people, but he felt exactly the same. He hadn’t felt that in a long time.
He hadn’t felt anything for a long time.
George relaxed. He sat back and rested his hand against the headrest of his seat. He rolled open his window manually with the crank. It was a relic and part of Beams he most cherished, because it also reminded him of sitting in his mom’s car, cranking down the window to stick his head out and feeling the wind blow up his hair and hardly being able to see with all of it rushing into his face. So George cranked it all the way down, and he could feel the hairs on his arms stick up when they were on the steering wheel once again. He wasn’t chafing his palms on it anymore, just firmly holding it, adjusting the wheel to compensate for the bumpiness of the worn-down road Beams rode on.
He stuck out his left hand, the one he used to strum the strings on his guitar with as much passion as cranking down the window of his beloved hatchback. The wind blew it back and he could feel the air resistance and the stream of it go over top of his hand, between his fingers, and around the width of his arm. He put it up and held the top of his window, so the hairs on his arm could enjoy the fresh air. The cool breeze running inside the car now filled it with refreshment and relaxation, coupled with the enjoyment and energy of driving down the highway, with nothing else but a guitar, a busted-up and rusty car, and the hands you most desperately depend on to survive in the world.
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