The
kid sat on the edge of the stage as the house lights went down. Out of the
green glow of an ‘Exit’ sign came a shadow, walking slowly, carefully.
“Gutsy performance you put on
tonight.” An electronic lighter snapped, and something glowed red near the
shadow’s head. Fragrant blue smoke drifted out of the dark.
The kid sniffed. “Is that tobacco?”
“Embargo-era
Pointing to the medicuff
that peeked out from under the sleeve of the old man’s sequinned
jacket, the kid grinned knowingly. “Your insurers aren’t going to like that.
Tobacco’s illegal in this state.”
The old man matched the kid’s grin.
He rolled back his sleeve to show the dull black disc that clung magnetically
to the medicuff. “Cuff-dampers are illegal
everywhere, son. You don’t tell nobody, and I won’t
neither.” He stuck the end of the fat, brown cylinder into his mouth and drew
on it with obvious enjoyment. “Anyhow, you don’t inhale a cigar, kid. Don’t
they teach you anything at school these days?”
“I’m not in school.” The kid lowered
his head and drew up his knees. He was a gangling youngster, maybe eighteen
years old and new to his growth, but he carried himself with surprising grace. “Can’t afford it. I got Vox-school
like ‘most everybody else in this shitbird town.”
“Watch your mouth, son,” snapped the
old man, flicking cigar ash into the darkness.
“Didn’t have no Vox-school
when I was your age. Real schools weren’t the way you see ‘em
in 90210 on the Classic Reruns. Mostly, they were boring as hell and we all
wanted to get out as quick as we could.” He stuck the cigar back in his mouth
and puffed fiercely for a moment, continuing his tirade through a cloud of
smoke. “Didn’t have no Vox
back then. Didn’t even have much TV when I was a kid,
neither. Just broadcast stuff, and precious little of that. We had to
make our own fun.” He stabbed his cigar in the general direction of the kid.
“That’s how come he got famous, you know.”
The kid coughed, and ostentatiously
slid up the stage a little, out from the mess of smoke. “How come who got
famous?”
“Him,” said the old man impatiently.
“Him that you were doing up there, with the hips and the hair
and the hunka hunka burnin’ love.” He moved his pelvis arthritically
back and forth, to
the accompaniment of a loud clicking noise. “God-damn hip replacement,” he
snarled, resting a knobby hand on his backside. “See, back then the whole media
thing was new. We had radio — like wireless Vox,
except for audio only. That’s how we got the music. And there were musicians,
too. Lots of ‘em. That
fellow Elvis, they say he got his first guitar on his thirteenth birthday.”
“Everybody knows that,” said the
kid, sitting up. He curled his lip in a passable imitation of that legendary
sneer, and flicked the greased coil of hair off his forehead. “He wanted a
bike, but they gave him a guitar, so he taught himself to play. Paid four oldbux to make his first
recording. Wanted to hear how his voice sounded.”
The old man frowned. “They say that,
do they? You get this off your Vox-school?”
“Googled
it,” said the kid.
“I told you, watch your mouth.”
Creakily, the old man sat down on the edge of the stage next to the kid, and
looked into the darkness. His watery blue eyes went out of focus, like he was
seeing something that wasn’t really there, and one foot began to tap. He hummed
some kind of melody under his breath, but the kid couldn’t quite make it out.
“You ask me to stay for a reason, or
what? It’s not like I won your contest.
That Britney’s body-job must have cost her a few newbux,
but I guess it’s going to pay off. I didn’t like her moves much, though.” He
ran his hands down his chest and squirmed, woodenly miming passion as he
fondled imaginary breasts.
“Whatsat?” The old man looked around, startled. “Oh.
Yeah. Sorry about that, kid. Occupational hazard. You
get old, memory takes up more of your life than living.” He cackled uproariously,
and swatted the kid on the shoulder. “You can keep that one.”
Brown eyes, concealed behind blue
contact lenses, slid away into the dark. “Whatever you say,” said the kid.
“It’s late. I gotta go.” He put his hands under his
ass, and made as though to jump off the stage, but the old man grabbed his
sleeve and the kid stopped.
“Hey, leggo the jacket,” he
said. “That’s real leather.”
The old man nodded. “I know. That's
part of why I asked you to stay. There's not many jackets like that left since
they embargoed leather.”
“Yeah, well, my grandpop
flew in the early part of the Oil Wars. Mom got his jacket when he died.” He
plucked at the cracked black leather with pride, rolling it between his
fingertips. “This is licensed war memorabilia.”
"Real blue denim
jeans, too. With the copper rivets and everything.” The old man poked
the kid’s thigh with a bony finger. “Haven’t seen the like of those in — can’t
really think, to tell the truth. Levi’s quit making
them way back when.”
The kid’s chin came up. “They still
make some denim in
“Nice work,” said the old man.
"You got the stitching right too. Those things will last, kid. They used
to be workers' pants, back when. Your guy, Elvis — him and a bunch of others
made them fashionable, but they started out for workers and cowboys, and they
really used to last.” Without looking at the kid, he puffed again on his cigar,
and blew a fat, lazy smoke ring that writhed in the dull light. “Why’d you pick
him, anyway?”
“Elvis?”
For the first time, the kid swivelled his head to
look at the old man full-on. “Dunno. Mostly I wanted
somebody pre-digital, you know? I can't afford a full body-karaoke rig like
that Britney tonight. Besides, with the old analog stuff, there’s still some
variation. You can — you know.”
The old man nodded. “Yeah. I think I do. Interpret. Put a bit of yourself into
the show.” He glanced at the kid. “That’s how it was?”
“Yeah.”
This time, the grin was open and real. The kid had good teeth, just like the
real Elvis. “I know it takes a lot of
practice to follow the body-prompts and get the classic moves right and
everything, but I just — “ His voice trailed off.
“Let me guess. You’re what,
eighteen?” Seeing the kid nod, the old man went on. “You’re seeing the stuff on
Vox all the time, over and over, and when you go out,
the body-karaoke players are doing it too. Britney, Michael
Jackson, Cobain, Kylie, as good as the originals, maybe. Selling Coke,
selling Pepsi, selling Vox, selling...well, you name
it.” He shot the kid a sideways look. “But sometimes you wonder who the
originals were doing, and how they did it, if they didn’t have the gear and the
recordings. So you look it up on the Vox, only
there’s nothing really there. Nothing that says how they got
their inspiration, and where the words and the moves came from, except maybe a
few old stories that don’t make much sense these days. Am I about
right?”
“You’re right,” admitted the kid.
The old man smiled. “Most of all,
the thing that bothers you is: why aren’t there any new originals?”
“Post-modernism,” answered the kid,
catching the old man off guard. “We don’t need new originals, and there is no
such thing as originality anyhow.”
“You think so?" There was a
look in the old man’s eyes, and he threw his half-smoked cigar into a nearby
potted plant. “You really think that? Or is that just another piece of smarts
you got off your Vox?”
The youth recoiled. “Everybody
knows,” he said. “It’s all just remixing and borrowing,
isn’t it?”
“Nothing new under
the sun, eh?” The old man’s white brows came together. “So who said
that? Was it some critic? Maybe a Voxhead?
A Prof from one of the Smartplexes?
Nothing new under the
sun.”
“I dunno,”
said the kid. He was trying to keep cool, but his eyes were jumping,
skittering, left and right like a trapped mouse. “I could look it up on the Vox.”
“Course you could,” said the old
man, and there was a world of stinging scorn in his voice. “Ecclesiastes,
kid. The Bible. That line of bullshit is maybe
three thousand years old. And I know you don’t believe it any more than I do.
What was that third number you did?”
The kid’s eyes widened. He coughed,
and turned his head away. “Heartbreak Hotel. It's a classic.”
“You’re lying, son,” said the old
man. “You did Heartbreak Hotel
second. I remember what came next. The third song. In
the middle of the set, when the audience is warm and happy. Not so early
they’ll notice. Not so late they’ll remember. What did you call it? Don’t Give Me The Brush-Off?”
“Don’t
Brush Me Off,” corrected the kid. Then he bit his lip, and looked back at
the old man. “You line-dead sonofabitch! You set me
up!”
The old man shook his head. “You set
yourself up, kid. That’s your song, isn’t it? And you’re proud of it. You came
to a performance contest, and you didn’t just do the guy you said you were
going to do, like in the rules. You wrote your own song, and you put it in
there, in the middle, and you did it up on the stage tonight, in front of the
audience.” He leaned forward, and nailed the kid with his index finger. “You wanted people to know.”
There was a long silence. Then the
kid pulled his knees up under his chin and covered his head with his hands.
“They didn’t like it, did they?”
“Not really,” agreed the old man.
“Not your fault. It wasn’t an Elvis crowd. They liked that Britney. Didja notice she was done up pre-lift, but she had the
post-lift tits on her?” He shook his head. “Tits and ass, kid. That’s what beat
you.” He looked over at the youngster, but the kid was still staring down at
his feet. “Hey,” said the old man. “I liked it, you know? It was good. It was
the kind of thing Elvis might have done.”
“Yeah?” The
kid looked over, mild disbelief on his smooth young face. “How old are you,
anyway?”
“Never mind that,” said the old man.
“I don’t wanna think about it. But I really did like
that song, and I thought you did a bang-up job out there. Even got some of them
listening. So I brought you back here, thought we could have a talk.” He
stopped, and looked at the kid again. “You really wrote that?”
“Sure,” said the kid. “A bunch of
others, too. Not that it matters or anything. I just — I just like writing
them, you know? Singing them, too.” He let his legs
slide back down, and lifted his hands to talk.
The old man saw how the kid’s
fingers unconsciously curled around an imaginary guitar when he talked about
singing, and he smiled.
“Good stuff, kid,” he said. “Wait here. I’ve got
something for you. Out the back, where I live.” He
pulled himself to his feet, and shrugged apologetically. “Owner-manager, you
know? I don’t really like the body-karaoke stuff, but it keeps the bills paid.
Now, you wait here.” He lifted a hand warningly, and shuffled off into the
dark.
The kid waited, wondering. Once, he
made as if to get up and go, but he thought better of it.
Pretty soon, the old man came back,
puffing and blowing, dragging a big trolley behind him. There was a Steriseal crate on the trolley, the kind that pumped full
of nitrogen to preserve delicate stuff against the ages. He rolled the thing
out into the light with the kid, and gestured for the youngster to stand.
“Haven’t had this thing open in ten
years,” said the old man, fiddling with the catch. “That access code...” He
closed his eyes, then opened them again and stabbed a few numbers on the
keypad. The Steriseal crate hissed, and cracked in
the middle, yawning wide to reveal another case inside. This one was made of
heavy black leather, with metal catches and a leather handle. It was wide and
curved at one end, long and narrow at the other, and
the old man opened it with the kind of reverence the kid had never seen before.
“There it is,” said the old man. The
big guitar gleamed softly in the dim light. It was clearly old, and had seen
some use, but there was no question it had been well cared for.
The kid frowned, then
stared. One hand crept forwards, then retreated behind
his back. “That looks like a Gibson J-200,” he said. “Can’t
be, though.”
“Nineteen fifty-six model,” said the
old man softly. There were tears in his eyes, but he made no move to brush them
away. “Goddam good year.
Maybe the finest guitar Gibson ever made. Hell, maybe the best anybody ever
made. King of the flatbacks.
” He nodded to the kid. “Go ahead. Pick her up."
One look, one swift glance just to
be sure the old man was serious. Then both hands darted forward, and the guitar
rose from its long sleep to rest across the youngster’s belly. He plucked a
string, frowned, adjusted a knob, and plucked it again. Smiled,
with his eyes closed. Held the big, wooden body up to
his head, rubbing his cheek on the satiny polish as he tuned each string in
turn. Struck a chord that vibrated, resonated, almost
boomed in the big, empty hall.
Beside him, the old man closed his
eyes and sighed. “Oh, my Lord. That’s a beautiful
sound, boy.”
“Hey,” said the kid, with wonder in
his voice. “This — there’s a name inside.”
"You bet,” said the old man.
“Elvis Aron Presley. That’s what it says. Don’t ask
me how I got it, boy.”
The kid was staring now, his face
white. He held the big, old guitar like it was a struggling baby, with an
almost frightened intensity of care. “You’re not telling me...”
The old man nodded. “His favourite. You don’t have to
believe me. Turn it over. Look at the lacquer on the back. There’s
three hairs there. He put them there himself, when he had it re-lacquered
before the comeback concert in ‘68. For luck, he said. But you could check the
DNA, if you wanted.” He frowned. “Wouldn’t try to sell it, if
I were you. Be hard to explain how you got hold of it, because you can
bet I’m not going to tell anybody how it came to me.”
The kid’s stare had taken over his
whole face. He looked like a five-year-old boy on Christmas morning. “How could
I sell it?” he asked. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”
One brown-spotted, heavily wrinkled
hand reached out, sliding over the sleek curves with unmistakeable
affection. Then the old man shook his head. “Not any more. A lady like that,
she wants a man can treat her right.” He finally acknowledged the tears with an
angry swipe of his sleeve across his eyes. “Like I said, I haven’t opened that
case in ten years.” He pulled the leather case out of the Steriseal
crate, offering it up with his two hands. “I’ll print you a proper note, says
you won it as a consolation prize in the competition. But you got to promise me
something, kid,” he said, glaring.
“Anything,” said the boy, staring
raptly at the Gibson in his arms. “Anything in the world.”
“You gotta
keep singing your own stuff,” said the old man. “I’ll do you a favor. The folks
at Lazy Acres — “
“The old people’s
place?”
“Watch your mouth, kid. Mostly
they’re not as old as me,” said the old man. “They got a dance every two weeks
or so. They pay me a few newbux to find music for
them. Mostly, I give them old records. Really old, gotta
play them with a laser or they scratch up and you can’t play them any more.
They’ll love you. They remember him, and you’re as good as he was. Maybe better.”
Eyes shining, the kid just stood
there, holding the guitar to his chest. Like he was hit by
lightning.
The old man shoved the empty case at
him. “Go on, kid,” he said. “Get the hell out of here. It’s late.”
Moments later, he was alone.
Muttering to himself, the old man
set about closing up for the night. Just as he switched the last of the lights
down, his head jerked up, and he turned, listening. There was a sound. From
outside the old theatre, in the public transit area, he could hear singing — a
young, strong voice over the top of a powerful, richly toned guitar.
"A-one for the
money,
Two for the show,
Three to get ready and go, cat go!”
In the smoky darkness, the old man
smiled.