15. Seth and Annie

Seth tugged on the strand of skin fraying off of his fingernail, and hissed through his teeth as it bit into the quick. The newly torn fissure yielded a trickle of blood. Seth popped the finger into his mouth and wished he would have just left it alone.

The first six notes of "The Star Spangled Banner" tore from Annie's guitar like bullets from a revolver. The crowd caught fire; Seth looked up with worry lines on his forehead. This wasn't on the setlist. He didn't know the bass line. The audience was already into it. What was he supposed to do?
"Just kidding," Annie laughed into the mic, and dropped the impromptu Hendrix homage. Seth's shoulders rose and fell with an unburdening sigh. He chuckled at himself. What a free spirit that girl was, he thought. There was no one like her.
The songs went on as scheduled, and Seth's hands, programmed by obsessive sessions of practice, plodded along on autopilot. He was proud of his consistency. Note for note, he played precisely what was written, with no deviation whatsoever. Not that anyone noticed.
Annie seemed never to repeat herself exactly. Seth had an ear for this and he would notice the spatchcock revision of a score, especially careful to discern improvisational adaptations from mere mistakes. As he would point out, Annie did not make mistakes. She seemed possessed by a force that made her fingers fly, spewing riffs humbucker-hot when necessary. Sometimes she'd put the tempo just where it felt perfect and find, somewhere in those strings, scales that made harmonies with key changes that would break your heart, break it exactly right. Seth couldn't believe the enormity of the music in those hands. Her arms were so thin.

The highway lights made the tour bus interior a carousel of warm orange glows. They overlapped and faded away. The singer, reclined and serene, looked like her skin was the colour of caramel, then of milk. "Annie?"
"Yeah? Oh, hey Seth."
"That show, it was a great show. You were great, you're always great."
"Yeah, thanks."
"No, I mean it, you're really something else. Something special."
"Mm, thanks for the compliment. And you're a great bassist, you are." She yawned. "Yeah, really... great, Seth. But look, I don't like too many compliments on my playing, you know? They just stop meaning anything. It starts to be just a sound people make. You know what I mean?" She shifted her shoulders, settling back into the seat.
Seth took this for humility. He fought the urge to kneel. "I mean, more than just music." Looking for the right words, the road noise filled the cabin.
Annie opened her eyes and turned. Seth, leaning so far forwards that he barely made contact with his seat, picked at his fingers. She wondered what she should say to him, what she could say.
"You know, Seth," she said, looking up to the roof, "for a bass player, you're very high strung." She smiled in a good-natured way and looked over. Passing lights from outside made shadows spin across Seth's features like a sundial in time-lapse. He looked at his hands, fingers all working over each other, probing irregularities.
"Sss," he muttered, and put a bleeding finger in his mouth.