Bravado's House of Blues Read online

  There, under The Clock, he found his guitar. A middle-aged woman all in tie-dye and bangles sat with his guitar in her lap. Recognition shocked him. Skook—the busker who’d asked to buy the guitar in the spring. He watched for an agonizing minute as Dylan tunes danced out into the crowd.

  Ethan staggered to her, falling to his knees.

  “Please, God,” he said between sobs. He held out the pawn ticket. “That’s my guitar, I need it.” The woman faltered into silence. She looked at Ethan, horror creeping into her eyes. “Please?”

  A crowd began to form around them. The woman held the guitar to her chest as Ethan lay on the ground sobbing. He couldn’t think, couldn’t hear. His world narrowed to the rasping of the file, the erosion of his soul.

  He looked up as someone plucked the pawn ticket from his hand. Alejandro lifted him to his feet.

  “He’s in pretty bad shape,” Rasta said, appearing beside Ethan. Alejandro settled Ethan down against a support column.

  Alejandro thrust several grapes into Ethan’s hands. “Coma èstos,” he said.

  Rasta helped Ethan, guiding his hand.

  The sweet juice flooded Ethan’s mouth. The painful buzzing in his body did not lessen, but seemed to recede a step, giving him a lucid moment.

  Rasta leaned in to Alejandro and said something.

  “I know her,” Rasta said. “Let me talk to her.” He walked over to the woman, exchanged a few words and quickly returned.

  Rasta squatted next to Ethan, a sour looked on his face. “She says five hundred bucks.”

  “I don’t have the money,” Ethan said. “If she could just let me use it, just this once. I’ll get the money somehow, and buy it from her.”

  Rasta glanced up at Alejandro, nodded and stood. “She’s ripping you off, man.”

  “Here, wait.” Ethan pulled out his checkbook and wrote out a blank check for $500. In the memo field he wrote for guitar, and signed his name with shaking hands. “Give this to her,” he said, holding out the check. “Just ask her not to cash it for a week or so.”

  Rasta and Skook argued for a bit.

  Ethan shivered as Rasta walked back with the guitar and case. “Here you are, dude.”

  “She relented?” Ethan asked as he reached for the guitar.

  “Not happily,” Rasta said. “I told her if it isn’t good, I’d get the guitar back. But, she remembers you from your busking days.”

  Alejandro and Rasta stepped back, pushing the crowd further as Ethan took the guitar. He ran his hand over the velvet lining of the case, then along the body of the guitar. He shook as he picked the guitar up by the neck and settled it into his lap. The crowd hushed as he placed his fingers on the frets. The woman who owned his guitar leaned in toward him and handed him a pick. Ethan smiled at her.

  The itching began to flood him; the music burst forth, his mind exploded with the orgasmic release of the song.

  There, in the middle of the confused and milling crowd, Ethan accepted what he already knew, what he should have said to Susan.

  He poured his soul into the music that flowed over the crowd and out into the weeping city.

  He sang of Susan’s smile, of her warmth and her laughter. He sang her music and her tears. Then the music changed and he sang his loss and his blindness to the truth. Finally the song shifted to the one true thing that had eluded him.

  Ethan sang his love for her, heart and soul. The music suffused him, burning away the fantasy he had played at, and replacing it with the conviction of his deep and yearning need for her.

  He sang until the crowds thinned and the sun sank—until the buzzing of the streetlights overpowered the last remaining voices.

  Deep into the evening, after his fingers bled and his voice cracked, Susan acknowledged his plea. The joyous sound of her cello came to him across the sleepy city, rich and sweet. His song changed, blending with hers, complimenting her melody with his counter-melody. Eventually, he lay the guitar aside, his physical stamina having been pushed over its limit. The itching had subsided and his stomach ached from lack of food. He stood and stretched, listening to her call to him.

  He emptied the guitar case onto the ground, the bills and coins making a sizable pile at his feet, and gently placed the guitar back into the velvet. There in the midst of the fives and twenties lay his pawn ticket, folded in half with the pawn shop receipt and the hastily scrawled IOU.

  The bills he straightened out of habit and stored in the compartment with his extra strings. He finished packing his guitar, strapped it to his back, and began the long walk home following the sweet strains of her music into the night.

  THERE ONCE WAS a GIRL

  from NANTUCKET

  (A Fortean Love Story)

  J. A. Pitts and Ken Scholes

  Mexico City glowed for Agnes—called to her in her dreams like a lover, sultry and full of heat. Here, her mother had assured her, she could gain strength.

  The frailty of her childhood had lingered into adulthood. Her parents blamed the New England winter and the rigor of college life for her exhaustion. They didn’t know about the affair with Martin—Professor Ellesby to them—or how badly it had ended for her. They didn’t know she was lovesick and soulsick and lost in her own head, sorting through memories of stolen passion and unrequited love. And they certainly didn’t know that forcing her into this hot, bright, living city compounded her longing for something she couldn’t quite name.

  Her father John Barnham, New England’s preeminent architect, and Mary Barnham, her socialite mother, returned to Boston, packed her things and forcibly relocated her with them in Mexico City.

  For well over a year, John Barnham had overseen the construction of the first cathedral built since Mexico’s revolution. Mary Barnham kept to her bed during the day, avoiding the oppressive heat and the news from Europe. At night, she proved to be the life of the party for the expatriate community. While war raged across Europe, and men died in the trenches, Mary Barnham drowned her misery in scotch and shallow encounters.

  This was fine with Agnes. At night she attended the functions expected of the daughter of visiting dignitaries. But the days, oh the glorious days, she reveled in her solitude, lost and alone in a city of millions. Surely, here, she would compose the poem that haunted her dreams—find the words to express the ache in her soul.

  Agnes walked along the cobblestone streets that twisted and turned through the old city. She swung her leather satchel with her pens and paper in her left hand and skipped over the puddles from the morning’s rain. Her thin, tanned legs kicked out the edge of her long white dress with each hop.

  Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” played in her head, remembrances of the previous night’s concert. Heat from the strong summer sun washed into her, filling her hollow places with warmth. A smile played across her lips, brief and bittersweet. Martin had loved Beethoven, the bastard.

  And so had his gaunt and pinched wife.

  Perhaps today she’d find the inspiration that had eluded her since the frigid December afternoon she encountered Mrs. Martin Ellesby at the symphony.

  She’d fled Wellesley then, reeling from shock and deep shame. What else could she do? The scandal would devastate her family.

  In the end, her muse flew before the burning ridicule of her peers, ripping from her more than the sweet memories of Martin, of the innocence of her love, but also the joys of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Walt Whitman.

  Instead she found herself enfolded into the stoic propriety of her father’s house, affirming his long-held bias toward women and education.

  But here, with the long winter a painful but distant memory, she had no fear of meeting the knowing glances and judging stares of her mother’s inner circle. In Mexico she could lose herself in obscurity.

  A myriad of people flowed through the city. The Europeans and Americans were easy to spot in their drab clothing and pinched faces. The Mexicans, comfortable in their city, wore bright colors, celebrating life. The dark, weather-worn faces
greeted her each morning with smiles as she purchased fresh-picked melon, halved and dripping, the juicy meat exposed to the world, or thick-crusted bread and gloriously rich goat cheese for her mid-day repast.

  A Spanish mission stood out amongst the mud-brick houses lined which the lane. Up ahead, growing against the startling blue sky, rose the new cathedral. She and her parents had been in Mexico City since May, and the cathedral’s slow transformation had transfixed her. Despite her best intentions, and well-laid plans, she inevitably found herself drawn toward the spire rising over the belly of the city.

  As she wound in and out of the streets, the growing spire winked in and out of view. Each time it came into view, a tightness crept into her belly. Only to subside again when the view became obscured by other, closer buildings.

  Shame had overwhelmed Agnes since the encounter with that horrible, shrieking Mrs. Ellesby. The hope that had been snuffed out inside her heart had given her something in return, a curse, it seemed, to seek answers. It drove her from sleep and haunted her waking pauses. Now the sight of that cathedral spire brought the feeling of expectation and dread.

  Today she’d started south of the cathedral, to visit a woman she had heard made beautiful wooden rosaries. She thought of her childhood in St. Ignatius’ school for girls in Connecticut. How the nuns had showed her the path to Jesus the Lord, through His Mother, Mary. She’d long since given up on the strictures and confinements of the Catholic church, but deep down, under the mousy brown hair, the glasses and the meekness, she felt the dread of the Christ.

  The anger and righteousness which threatened her, the judgment that would be meted out to her one day.

  She purchased a rather plain rosewood rosary with tiny veins of pink swimming through the creamy wood—each bead linked to its brother with a hand worked bit of silver. She slipped the rosary over her head, felt the heavy silver crucifix nestle between her breasts.

  The square in front of the cathedral bustled with a mid-day crowd larger than normal. The benches surrounding the fountains where she usually ate her lunch held gawkers and photographers, quite a few more than normally lunched here. The usually quiet murmur of the city had been replaced by a rising cacophony. Shouting erupted near the cathedral. Obviously something of note had drawn these people here.

  She craned her neck above the crowd as best she could, but nothing out of the ordinary struck her. A small, rotund local, poncho and sombrero brightly colored, pushed past her, his mandolin clutched in his fat little hand. The usual “excúseme” she received in such situations did not appear.

  “Hmmmph,” she sniffed, wrinkling her nose. “Rude and odiferous.”

  Then an ancient woman, dressed from head to toe in black, shawl wrapped over her thin graying hair, stumbled forward, nearly knocking Agnes to the ground. Agnes spun around, confused. The crowd swelled, and more and more people began to push toward the cathedral.

  Agnes, tall and thin, moved along the edge of the crowd, like a small twig rolling along the crashing waves. Just as she felt she would fall under the swelling onslaught of bodies, a firm hand appeared, an offering in the growing madness. She took the hand and found herself lifted out of the tide of bodies and raised onto one of the tall, flat tables that surrounded one of the ministerial buildings like barriers.

  The hand belonged to a man, an Anglo, by all signs.

  He stood above the crowd, his clothing disheveled and his fingers stained yellow from nicotine. Agnes looked up into his face, strong chin covered in a thick black beard. Several curly locks flowed down the sides of his face, escaping the twisting braid which lay across the back of his neck. She stared into his piercing gray eyes, marveling at the gold flecks that seemed to draw the light around her, focusing her attention into the depth and concern.

  “Are you quite alright?” he asked, still holding onto her hand.

  The breath caught in her throat. Something in his touch, in the splash of blue that lay across his left cheek, and the seriousness of his gaze broke something inside her. She giggled. Not a demure, proper little laugh, but an outright trill of released tension and pent-up annoyance that escaped her like the effervescent bubbles in a fine champagne.

  Bemusement painted his features.

  “I’m fine, thanks to you.” She smiled at him, feeling the muscles in her face tugging upward.

  She looked down at her hand, still clasped in his. His eyes followed, and he released her suddenly, a rosy flush creeping up through unkempt whiskers.

  Agnes noticed then, his left hand held a palette. To his left, facing the cathedral stood an easel.

  “Oh, you’re a painter?” she asked.

  “Yes, I pretend to be,” he said, nodding his head slightly.

  She looked at the painting. The brush strokes were quite delicate, the colors blending pleasantly. The starkness of the cathedral’s spire shone against the inexplicably chartreuse sky. “It is lovely.”

  He blinked at her for a moment. “You think so? You don’t find the sky off-putting?”

  “I find it a wonderful compliment to the gold and tan of the cathedral.”

  His blush deepened. “Most people find my color choices too unrealistic, unnatural.”

  “Most people are boors.”

  They stood in silence then, looking at one another in wonder.

  “Quite a day, eh?” he said, finally.

  She turned to see the square awash in a human sea. The crowd moved in a great swirling circle out one end of the square and back in the other, all revolving around the nearly completed cathedral. “What is happening?”

  “Oh, haven’t you heard?” he asked. “They’ve had a visitation.”

  “A what?”

  “Apparently a young boy fell. He had been delivering supplies to those who worked at the top of the scaffolding. He would have most assuredly died from his injuries, but the foreman, a burly Romanian fellow, began yelling for the men around him to fetch a doctor. Then, out of the sky a lady descended. She came in a cloak of roses, alighted near the boy’s cracked and bleeding form. The men fell to their knees, making the sign of the cross. The chant went up, spreading through the city, Virgen de Guadalupe.”

  She turned, taking in the scene, watching the swell of humanity surge forward, hearing the murmuring of the prayers and the chants. How had she missed this washing through the city? “And you were here when it happened?”

  He shook his head, a wry smile slipping from his face. “Alas, no. I was at a coffee shop arguing politics with a rival of mine when the word spread. The bastard came and went, his camera capturing what events he could. I had to dash to my room and get my canvas.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Your friend captured this on film, and you decide to capture it on canvas?”

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “Wholly inadequate to the event, but it is what I know to do.”

  “I think it captures the scene splendidly.”

  They stood together, watching the crowd slowly converge on the cathedral.

  “Do you mind?” he asked. “My paints are drying out, and I can’t afford to waste them.”

  “No, please. Continue.” She waved her hand toward the cathedral. “If you don’t mind me watching.”

  He smiled. “It would please me to have a woman as fair as you watching me paint.” He turned toward the canvas, knelt and lifted a small jar of paint from a valise at his feet. He used a small silver blade to daub out a bit of yellow onto the board and mixed it with the paint already there. Once satisfied with the consistency, he carefully scraped the remaining paint from the instrument and replaced the stopper into the jar. He pulled a brush from the valise and stood. He stuck the fine hairs of the brush into his mouth, twisting it a half turn as he extracted it, creating a fine point. Then he tipped the brush into the bright yellow and turned toward the canvas. With a deep sigh, he slowly drew the brush upward from the uneven spire, creating a splash of light which erupted from the center of an empty square.

  She watched him, me
smerized by his creation—admiring the deftness of his strokes, the surety in his hand. The emergence of something from nothing, a miracle of creation in oil and fiber—it stirred something within her.

  And with that, her muse burst forth.

  “Like the sundering of a lover’s embrace

  The lady erupted over the crowd

  Leaving the body hale

  And the spirit renewed.”

  She stumbled as the words trailed off, the sky a spiral of chartreuse and gold. She felt his strong hands catch her, heard his voice through a cottony wall of murmured prayers. “Oh, my fair one,” she thought he said. Then the world went black.

  This city’s drab winter threatened what little of her muse remained. And the drab people in their drab clothes did the same.

  Agnes grieved for Mexico City in the months after they left. She missed the bright colors, the bright people, the lavish meals and high ritual.

  Naturally, her mother had been sleeping when the painter brought her home. Her father was working. The housekeeper had not thought to ask the young man his name. The physician called it heat exhaustion and she kept to the shade for three days, but those days had been glorious, her pen moving over page after page, some deep part of her triggered by the remnants of visitation or the firm hands or the mad, swirling sky of the painting. For the rest of the summer, Agnes wandered the plazas and cafes around the cathedral hoping to find him, perhaps to thank him for bringing her home, perhaps to thank him for finding her muse. She didn’t know for sure. Regardless, he was nowhere to be found.

  When summer ended, she returned to Boston with her parents but did not return to college. Her father insisted that she take a year to think through her choices, given her early withdrawal and poor marks at Wellesley. Autumn in New England bled into a winter in New York, the close of the War to End All Wars punctuating the season with relief.