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.

14. Old man and grandson

"The only thing that might keep us alive in there was if we got off the first shot. There was a thing they'd say. Shoot first, you're a hero; shoot second, you're a casualty. Those of us that made it, well, being clever counted for a lot. Some of the time, when we came to a bunker from around back, they'd know we were coming. You'd see a little further around the hatch than where you could point the gun, so they'd just turn the big machinegun right around and train it on the door for when we came in. When they did that, we'd stay put. Lob a grenade through. Clear out the whole room."
"You'd frag 'em?"
"Would 'n' did. A dozen times." He looked into his teacup and saw the reflection of his face. When he picked it up, the image shattered into ripples.
"What was your best kill?" asked the grandson, who knew only youth.
The old man thoughtfully set down his tea and leaned towards the impetuous boy.
"One German saw the grenade come, and he ran for the door. The explosion took off his arms and head. Threw the rest into the hallway. He looked like a sweater with the sleeves rolled up."
The grandson didn't think much of it at the time, but the words created for him a special part of the season in late September. When the first autumn chills crept in, and the cold mornings gave way to warm afternoons, he would see again and again the specter of this ragged corpse of the man who had not made it to the door.

ESL Kids -- Nami, Jinho & Kevin

Kevin was out of options, and he knew it. "Time to say goodbye, Nami," he said, a note of warning in his voice. She wouldn't dare try to stop him, or would she?

"Are you going back to New York?" she asked him, knowing that whatever he said would be a lie. The question was intended to throw him.
"Yes, I am," replied Kevin, hurrying through the last step of the con: exit, stage left. Without the need for any further prevarication, he considered his fraud complete. He turned away from Nami, and solemnly looked to the eyes that had trusted him most. "Goodbye, Jinho," Kevin said. Though his eyes were still, his heart was not. At least the hard part was over. "Goodbye, Nami."

His adrenaline surged. He was thinking of everything he would do after the getaway, counting the riches that awaited him overseas. He noticed nothing unusual as Jinho and Nami said a goodbye even more rehearsed than his own. "Take care, Kevin. We'll miss you." Even a fraction of Kevin's perception would have detected something amiss if he wasn't distracted by his own hubris as he raced through the final goodbye. It was too late. He'd been had.

"I'll miss you too. So long, everyone. I love you all." Kevin made a mental note of a possible flaw in his facade: he could not maintain eye contact when he told the truth. He got into the car, still unaware of how early his plan had unfurled before the eyes of his would-be accomplices, and how masterfully he'd been outplayed.

With an acknowledged equal hand in the crime, Jinho and Nami closed the door together.

Kevin believed he'd finally pulled off the master con, playing these dupes right into his hands. He believed it right up until the parking brake let go.

Jinho watched the coupe careening down the hill. He wondered what Kevin would do, or try; picturing the smug bastard realizing the brakes were cut and the doors were locked for good. Would he have time to break a window? Jinho thought, for only a moment, that he might be as badly off now as his nemesis. Was it wrong to kill a killer? The car broke through the guardrail and took a nosedive. He decided to let karma judge him for this one, he owed that much to Ann. Whether it had changed the path of what was to come, he wouldn't know until it happened. He was still in reverie as he said, "See you, Nami."

She snapped him out of it. "See you again!" She turned with strict professionalism, but he knew it hadn't been all business with her. Yeah, things were on a different path now, all right.

ESL Kids -- Kevin & Ann

Ann stood alone and solemnly coaxed the first plaintive, uncertain notes from the violin. She had barely begun to address the demons of her own shattered confidence when she was interrupted with a staccato burst of applause. Kevin stood in the doorway. She froze. It couldn't be. How had he found her? He stormed towards the stage, wordless.

She lowered the bow, poised to flee as Kevin raised his hands. Instead of striking her, he clapped again; the sound of impact echoed, dominating the music hall air in a way her strings could not. She tentatively opened her eyes from the instinctive wince. His face was unreadable: his eyes were cold, calculating.

"You are great. When is your violin concert?" Kevin demanded.
"June 15th," said Ann, instantly wishing she had lied. She tried to keep the fear from her voice, but could not refrain from a nervous swallow after speaking the words.

Kevin's facade slipped for a moment and his brows crumpled, stifled rage playing across his features as briefly and brilliantly as Ann upon her Stradivarius. "What's the date today?"

Was this another stratagem? Ann cursed inside her mind. How could she avoid playing into his trap? Why couldn't he just tell her that he'd discovered her infidelity, and have it out right then and there! She knew he didn't have the stomach for confrontation. To Kevin, mendacity was so much more palatable. "June 11th," Ann said sharply, striking back at him with a vocal tone that did not match the pretense. Had she given too much away? She didn't care anymore; there would be no backing out now, and she would have to be ready.

Kevin seemed taken aback, as though he had not expected her to match his fire for fire. She would not be intimidated, not this time. He backpedaled, looking for reconciliation. "Oh! This Friday?"

Ann sensed his weakness, and her opportunity. "Can you come to my concert?" she asked, sweetly as she would have when they were still in love. Behind her eyes, though, was something that had not been there when they first met on that day so long ago; a day too lovely to foreshadow what was to come. It was something Kevin could not see: it was the deceptiveness she had learned from him.

"Sure," he said.

Oh, how the tables would turn.

13. Bethany and Doug

Bethany knew it was Doug by the way he slowly turned his key in the lock of the front door. He was trying to make the bolt slide silently, and it did not. She might have slept through it if she'd been asleep, but it made little difference. Any of the incriminating sounds produced by Doug's pre-dawn infiltration could have sprung her eyes open with the fear of burglary; as it was, she sat and thought about how much the slow groan of the door hinge followed by the slight hiss of Doug swearing in a whisper sounded like a bow and arrow being drawn and fired. She stepped where the floorboards met the buttresses and moved through the hallway darkness without sound.

Doug had the fridge open, but was looking at the floor. Bethany rested her forearm against the wall and watched her husband, trying to think what he was thinking.
"You been out?" She spoke gently and did not startle him.
"Been out, yeah." He nodded his head. He'd been drinking, she could tell.
"Doing what?" She leaned a little more into the wall, tilted her head against her arm.
He looked at her; she smiled. He cast his eyes down again to the floor. She stood up straighter and took her arm from the wall. Her lips parted slightly. She thought for a long time and said plainly, "How much'd you lose?"
Douglas had been reaching into the fridge for something and he froze. It was as though he'd finally decided what he wanted from in there and the question had undone it. He stood up and closed the fridge. "It wasn't much."
"Just tell me."
"Well," he turned one way, and then the other, seeing little except the outlines of the furniture in the dark and the pale relief of his wife in her white camisole. He sighed, and approximated eye contact. "I guess for us and for cards, not much money is two different things."
"Oh, Douglas." She felt very tired all of a sudden. If it was worth fighting about, she thought, it would be better fought about in the morning.

His wife dissolved backwards into the shadows and Doug looked into the fridge again. The light from inside blew back the darkness and his eyes closed pinhole-tight; everything outside the grasp of the little bulb ceased to exist. Doug took the bottle of milk and shut the door. He stood drinking, unable to see the walls around him, or the floor he stood on.

12. Stephanie

Stephanie laughed, and immediately felt exactly as she would have if she’d punctured the lid on a can of fish that had spoiled inside the tin. She wished she hadn’t done it. Her mother’s eyes lanced her.
“It isn’t funny.” Her voice was quiet and taut.
“I know, I just…” Steph had time to finish, but she didn’t have the words for it.
“You just nothing. Have some respect.”
Stephanie looked at her feet, studied the grout in the tiles of the kitchen floor. She wasn’t sure why she had laughed. Nothing seemed funny; she wasn’t sure how else to react. Her mother turned back to the telephone. As Stephanie walked to her room, she heard her mother’s voice spilling into the hallway, offering cooing susurrus of consolation not meant for her.

“I think it was, like, this mental image of one of those horse-drawn carts from the olden days, you know? And it, like, losing a wheel or going off the road or whatever.” Stephanie took a sip of grape Fanta, trying not to slurp from the can in case her friend could hear. She took in the other half of the conversation through the plastic pink cellphone and emphatically, though her friend could not see the gesture, rolled her eyes like a pair of volume knobs being twisted to maximum. “I know! My mom just doesn’t understand at all. Like, what’s so great about being what's probably the most crappiest, y'know, way to be, anyways? They’d be so mad if I got that way, but for my sister it’s all, like, good job. If it was me, they’d kill me for sure.” She sat down and looked in the mirror. She looked at the things on her desk, reached for something and stopped, bit her lip. “Yeah no, well, that’s okay because he pulled out.” She sipped at the Fanta again and, finding it empty, threw the can in the garbage.

11. Mickey

The static buildup made a spark jump from the guitar into the patch cord as Mickey plugged in. The pop was as loud as a gunshot. 'Electric frustration,' he thought to himself. 'Builds up when it's not connected to anything. Guess I can relate to that.'
Mickey strummed a few barre chords and decided the guitar wasn't too badly out of tune. He took a swig from his beer and set it down on the amplifier, then turned to the mic. He scanned the rows of empty tables, the few patrons lingering by the bar with their eyes fixed on television screens. He checked his watch; the show was scheduled to start. He looked to the bartender, who gave him a shrug and went back to filling a glass. Mickey turned to his bandmates and twirled a finger in the air.

The first time they'd played a real show, Mickey had screamed 'Are you ready to rock?' and meant it completely. This time, he leaned into the mic, said "We're Downtown Meltdown" with indifference in his voice, and started strumming the same song they always opened with.

Meandering through the lyrics, Mickey realized he'd switched the order of the verses without meaning to. 'Nobody'll notice except for the band anyhow,' he thought. They'd had better nights than this and they all knew it. Irv was probably thinking about his new kid at home more than the drumming, and Ryan was sitting out of most jam sessions these days. He was pretty focused on his job. Mickey didn't think it would last a whole lot longer.

How did it get from there to this?, he wondered. When they started, the three of them would play in the garage until three in the morning was a distant memory. All of them were writing songs, or at least parts of ideas for songs, and somehow a debut album never materialized. The first few shows were packed with their friends, beer was on the house, and it was easy enough to take a girl home most every night they had a set.

"This next song, it's a new song," Mickey said, his eyes panning the room. "It's called, 'All You People.'" He tossed his head back so that the snort of a bitter laugh wouldn't reach the microphone. He turned back, smiling, and nodded to Irv. He nodded back. Mickey thought he looked tired.

They went through it, and in the middle, some new people walked in. They were young, Mickey couldn't place their ages, but the group looked about as old as their fans had when the band first got together. Mid-twenties somewhere. The group stayed for a minute or two and went out to find a different bar. 'What the hell,' Mickey thought, and played very hard on the guitar solo that ended the song. He leaned into the mic and said, "Thank you, everyone. That was our last show. You've been great."

He turned around and put down the guitar. "Thanks," Irv said.