Power Trio

BASSIST WANTED

To play gigs in New Laytham and beyond. Festivals this summer. Everything is an even $plit. FUCK YR DAY JOB GET MONEY FOR YR MUSIC. 

We like Argyle & the Breakers, GreenAche, Ship of Fools. Come ready to play fast, heavy, locked in.

We have space + amp, you have bass + tude. Any species welcome* as long as you can rock.

 

*human supremacists fuck off and please die :)

The sign is mummified onto a crosswalk signal by a crinkled layer of clear tape. Trapped moisture splotches its text from last night’s springtime storm. There’s a phone number and an address, and a ragged edge suggesting a line of pull-off tabs, all gone. Who knows how long this thing’s been up.

Evan Houper takes the picture anyway, polaroid shutter clicking. The boxy camera would be charmingly retro if he hadn’t replaced his cell with it.

Like an idiot, he feeds a payphone a clutch of quarters that could have gone toward some bananas or a two-pack of muffins.

Then he waits, watching over the sharpie-coated booth as a pair of yuppies with thrift store workwear cross the street early to avoid him.

Fourth ring pickup. A woman’s voice on the line, thick and monotone: “You got Kell.”

“Hi! This—uh—you put out an ad?” Evan’s voice comes out bright and brittle. Come on, Evan. Be cool. “For a bassist?”

“Oh. Oh, shit.” A raspberry expulsion of air. It’s past noon on a Tuesday but by her gradual brightening he might have woken her up. “Yes. We put that up like months ago, dude, but...”

“I figured as much. Just thought I’d check.”

“No, hey, look, no worries! It’s cool. One second. Shit.” Rustling down the line. A barked rattle of syllables in a language Evan can’t identify. Orcish, maybe? “Sorry about that. Roommate being a cockhead. No, it’s cool that you called. Yeah. We had auditions and all, but none of them really worked out. What did you say your name was?”

He hadn’t. “Evan.”

“Evan. Human?”

“Yep.”

“Evan. Human. Sweet, OK. And I’m Kell. As mentioned. You called the right number. I’m putting on my pants, I’m finding my keys, I am facing the day. When can you swing by?”

“What, like, today?”

“Yeah, man!” A husky laugh. Whoever Kell is, she’s all the way awake now. “Fuck yeah. ASAP. Does that work? I can be at the spot in twenty.”

“Uhhh.” Cool! Be cool! Act like you’ve got anything going on. “Could we call it an hour? I’m at a friend’s in midtown right now, gotta catch the B train out.”

Evan regrets it as soon as the words leave his mouth. The fuck would you be doing in midtown? She’s gonna think you’re a Finance Gnome.

“Midtown?” Kell’s laugh lingers at the edges of her contralto voice. “All right, Mr. Moneybags. Say hi to Morgan & Glance for me. We’re at 22-26 Torres street, two blocks south from the Cable Square station. It’s gonna look like the wrong spot. It isn’t. When you get there, buzz STUDIO. Code on the door inside is star-6969.”

“Sounds good.”

“Sounds very good. Sounds sick.” She falsettos the last word. More shuffling down the line. Evan hears the contours of radio music, something thrashy. “OK, I’ll head out now. Gotta get warmed up.”

“I’ll meet you there. The ad said bass and ‘tude. Should I bring anything else? Cable or anything?” Not that I have one.

“Nah, not unless you’d prefer your own stuff. Come through whenever, an hour is fine, sooner, later, what the fuck ever. Uh—” The faint ding of a toaster at the edge of hearing. “Just at seven, I got a thing. So before then.”

“I won’t waste your time. Promise.”

“I believe it, Evan Human. See you soon. You’ll wanna bring earplugs, probably. Ciao!”

The background noise drops out as the call ends.

Evan is not in midtown. Evan is at a payphone outside a bakery from whose trash he just scavenged lunch. Evan does not have regular correspondence with Morgan & Glance of Morgan & Glance Banking, outside of the overdue notices he used to tear up. Before he saw the flyer he’d been filtering through his mental rolodex of couches to surf, concluding that he might need to park bench it again tonight.

Evan’s on his fourth week of homelessness. He sold his phone once he ran out of people who would text him back. He’s made a pledge to himself and to his memories. One last chance. One last month, and then he starts to pick up the pieces of his life, goes groveling back to the #ClawmarksPack, the apron and the burnt coffee and the trust fund lattes.

One last chance.

* * *

This is the place.

Evan pulls out the polaroid for what has to be the twelfth time, its picture smudged pale on the edges from his restless fiddling and his springtime sweat. Yes, this is the place.

The place is a graffiti-encrusted door in the alleyway of a shuttered Cable Square dispensary called HERBALISM, its gaudy Zaza neon signs dusty from misuse. 

He tries to get a look at his reflection in the dark glass of its derelict storefront. How wastoid do you look today, Evan? You’re skinny, but you’re not needle-in-the-arm skinny. This morning you slipped into the Y and showered before anyone checked your membership. The faded Thunderhead tour shirt, the scruffy beard, and the chin-length mop of chestnut hair could be affectations, they’re all clean enough. And hey, that hair doesn’t look half bad from this angle. Some guys wrestle through the second half of their 20s having to watch their scalp like a hawk. All you’ve got to worry about is sleeping on the streets. 

He hocked his carrying case in March. It was a big flight case, first bought on a stupid cloud of international dreams. Too heavy, anyway, for someone living on their feet. The pawnbroker had watched from behind bulletproof glass as Evan peeled each indiehead sticker off one by one, then offered him enough to cover the rest of that weekend’s meals if he was smart about it. He needs to be smart, now, about everything. 

That was the last piece of musical ephemera he owned besides his p-bass, which he now carries in a long duffel, cushioned by his laundry and clattering against his toothbrush and his ex’s camera. Everything he owns, stuffed into one lumpy bag. Maybe that’s cool. Maybe that’s rock and roll. This way, you’re a bum. That way, you’re a bohemian.

He examines the buzzer panel next to the door. Typed labels, yellow and peeling, almost certainly out-of-date with the churn of the city. STUDIO is written in black sharpie across the ground floor button, a bloodshot eye doodled in the O.

Deep breath. He rings.

A few seconds pass. He’s being stupid. One last month should have happened before he was considering a night in a public park. He’ll get that barista gig at Clawmarks back. If he begs—

And then a grinding buzz and a click as the lock disengages, and he’s in the foyer, striding down past the landlord paintjob stairwell and the waxy fluorescents, to the stickerbombed door at the far side of the hallway, propelled by desperate bravado.

STUDIO-CLOSE ME BEFORE YOU MAKE NOISE is sprayed in angry red stencil atop the patina of vinyl logos. A rumbling issues from behind it, like distant thunder. He punches the code, pushes a shoulder against the crash bar and it swings in, heavy on its bearings.

An immediate assault, a sound so furious he’s surprised the door doesn’t slam shut again.

The studio is a madhouse. Its walls are covered in crude drawings, splashes of paint, spraycanned streaks and half-peeled decals. In places the plaster has chipped away, revealing the ruddy brick beneath.

No windows in here, and the illumination is riotously colored, mismatched bulbs screwed into mismatched fixtures. A black box ghost light; a string of Christmas twinklers tangled in the horns of a papier mâché moose head; a half-melted salt lamp; a desk unit furnishing one of those social media galaxy lights.

In a pocket of darkness at the room’s far end, a drum kit's gleaming chrome catches and refracts it all. Two churning kicks, metal-style, a thicket of shrieking cymbals, a hi-hat clattering like a dinner set pushed down the stairs.

Behind this beast, the source of the noise. Sitting atop her throne, indistinct in the dark, shaking the room to its foundations. Evan makes out a shock of black hair in an asymmetrical side shave, and the taut, sweaty shine of lean muscle. The sticks are a blur as they round the kit, pausing for a moment to beat a ruthless fill into the floor tom, then returning to their doubletime detonations on the snare.

No wonder the door was so heavy; it must be soundproofed to shit in here.

Evan steps across a confusion of carpets, almost tripping over a layered lump where a plush persian’s corner lies atop a taupe shag. He crushes a cigarette butt under his heel.

Her sound. It’s vibrating his teeth. Hastily, he digs into his jean pocket and pulls out a pair of foam plugs, squashed into kidney shapes from far more uses than their disposable packaging had proposed. With the hellion noise muffled, he makes out the rhythm beneath the pyrotechnics.

She’s playing an odd, lurching line, one that takes him a second to glom onto. But as soon as he does, he feels that lift, that escape vector, like she’s syncing him up to some turning gear of creation. His head wants to bob, and he lets it for a few galloping bars before he sinks back down and tries for her attention.

“KELL?” He doesn’t need to yell again to know that she’s never gonna hear him over the unholy din. He steps in front of the kit instead, his shadow adding to the multivalent pool, and waves his arms. “KELL. HEY.”

A dusky purple hand shoots out and stills the crash cymbal with a shuddering hiss. Two painted nails tap out a last little roll on the brushed metal. Then his maybe-drummer hauls herself up and removes a pair of pillowy headphones. Now that she’s standing, she’s a full head taller than him. The dangling chain of a ceiling lamp hovers near her pointed ear. She clicks it on, spotlighting herself in amber.

Evan was right about those jagged syllables he heard on the phone. Kell is an orc. She’s wearing baggy black joggers and one of those three-to-a-pack ribbed tank tops, its hem not so much cutoff as shredded like a wild animal bit into it. Below the damage is a crescent of taut violet stomach. The silver ring set in her navel shocks his gaze back up and away, as if he’d already been caught staring. Do not ogle your prospective employer, Evan.

Heavy-lidded gray eyes, streaked with a raccoon mask of last night’s eyeshadow, meet his. “Evan Human. Righteous.” He detects a bit of telltale orcish burr In her plosives now that they’re speaking in person, a thickness around the r in her righteous. She offers her hand, her ropy arms reaching across the expanse of drum between them. Evan shakes it and feels the firm calluses all over her eclipsing palm. “I’m Kell. Talked to you on the phone. What’s good, man?”

“What’s good,” Evan echoes, then he finds his tongue and a bit of courage. “That playing, for a start. That was tight.”

“Thank you, my guy. Welcome to the Smoke Shed.” Kell indicates the mess as she steps out and around the drums, further into the carnival glow. She cocks a hip and gives him the once over. He haltingly does the same.

An out-of-place memory of his father’s supersport motorcycle comes to Evan when he looks at Kell, its clean lines and graceful curves and purring potential energy (Mom hated that thing, hated especially the one time he talked Dad into a ride on it, but he’s never forgotten how it felt). Her wide, bare shoulders are covered in whipcord gymnast muscle and geometric traditional tats. Her face is heart-shaped, with a narrow, strong chin. She has an incongruously delicate little upturned button nose that she’s stuck a ring through, maybe in an attempt to get it looking orkier. He knew orcs had something of a spectrum of tones, green to dun to purple, but he’s never seen one as violet as her. Maybe it’s the weird lighting.

Kell straightens up and grins, flashing a pair of stubby tusks. The left one’s got a tiny platinum stud hammered into it. “Nice shirt. Thunderhead. Classic.”

He cracks a smile back, shrugs. “The boomers are right sometimes.” He’s remembering how to talk to people who don’t want him gone.

“That they are, Evan Human. Rest of the band’s gonna be around soon, so let’s get you set up.” She pulls her phone out of one slouchy pocket, glances at the time. “Dunno how you like your coffee, so I just told them milk and two sugars. I texted the number you called from, but it didn’t go through. Sorry if you’re, like, diabetic.”

“Not that I know of,” Evan says. “But if my foot falls off, I won’t hold you liable.”

Kell gives him one of those laughs again, harder than he probably deserves. “Thought you might be type two, bringing that big ol’ belly in here.” Her elbow nudges his thin midsection as she steps past him toward a precarious stack of amps. He tries not to think about how that’s more physical contact than he’s experienced in the last several months. “You brought a bass?”

“I did indeed.” Evan drops his duffel to the floor and unzips it. He suppresses a wince as his socks and sleeves snake out from the opening. Don’t call attention to it. You’re not a vagrant and she’s not a cop. You’re here to rock. You can impress her.

He digs for a couple of seconds before his pinky brushes a machine head, and pulls his precision bass out from its scabbard, pausing for a second to shift a pair of skivvies off its top horn. He quickly closes back up and turns around.

If Kell noticed he carries his gear nestled in all of his worldly possessions, she’s nice enough not to say anything. Her attention is on his bass.

Nine pounds of sunburst alder and fretted maple, bearing the dings and scrapes from decades of use and hundreds of gigs. Older than he is, and the most valuable thing he has ever touched. The same split-coil humbucker that his mother, and his mother’s father, coaxed thunder from, filled arenas with.

Evan’s was the first shovelful of dirt on both of their caskets. If he were to pawn it, even at the bottom-floor rates that New Laytham’s brokers offered, he could afford at least two month’s rent in a nice apartment, like a nice apartment, maybe four months with a couple of roomies. He would sooner sleep under a bridge (and soon might).

“Fuck me, dude. Is that a vintage Prelate Precision?” Kell gives a low whistle.

“Yup. ‘74.”

“No fucking way. That, Evan Human, is some fucking hardware.”

“Pretty sweet, right?” Evan takes hold of the leather strap along its duct-taped shoulder pad and lashes his legacy to himself.

“I’m serious, dude,” Kell says. “Like, did you get that from the devil at a crossroads or what?”

Evan chuckles as he fishes an instrument cable from a bushel hanging off the wall. “My mom’s, actually. If I ever lost it I’d probably have to…” the joke putters out before he can finish it, because he isn’t sure what he’d do, really, and he isn’t sure how much he’s joking. “I’d be bummed.”

All-laughs Kell just gives him a smile this time and a light touch on the arm. A second brief whisper of physical contact. He isn’t another Houper family ghost yet.

“Let’s hear what your momma gave you to work with, then.” She gestures to the wall of amplifiers. “Any uncovered amp or cab is public use, so pick your poison. It’s just the two of us, but I figure the rhythm section is here. Got a couple guitars coming, but fuck a guitar, right? You wanna jam? See how we fit?”

“You got it,” Evan says. Her belly button ring glints at him. Here to rock. Focus.

There’s a familiar face on the scattershot stack in front of him—a Titania 410 amp head, a perennial favorite, atop an oversized Sparkx speaker cabinet. Solid and warm.

He plugs in, and takes a moment to feel the uneven floor below his sneakers and the still, stodgy air pressing at the tip of his nostrils.

Last chance.

He digs deep with his pointer and plucks a growling open E.

* * *

Years from this moment, the documentarian will ask him whether he felt any kind of destiny moving him. Did the first vibrating booms of his heirloom axe offer him any sort of portent at the fate they would bring, for him and for Kell and Thekla and Sion, and for the world?

“I had no clue,” he’ll lie.