Power Trio

Kell’s axe whirls down the range and bites, with violent vibration, into the plywood target.

“Second ring, four points!” She pumps her fist and swaggers back to their table, plopping down across from Thekla. “You’re up, killer.”

“This axe range needs daggers,” Thekla grumbles, climbing down from a stool almost as tall as she is to the sawdust floor. “I bet a goblin could throw the hell out of a dagger.”

It is her conviction that this throwing range is not goblin-friendly. When Thekla and Kell came in, the attendant looked at them and handed the guitarist a brace of junior-sized axes with cartoon racing cars on them.

“Have you ever thrown a dagger?” Kell asks as Thekla squares her hips up.

“No. But surely there’s some ancestral memory.” She grunts the last word as she overhand hurls her hatchet. Like the last two attempts, this one ends in the handle thokking into the target and her Baby’s First Axe skittering across the floor. “Fuck it, never mind. They gotta give me a gun or something.”

“You’ve stunned him, squire!” Kell hops up from their table. “Allow me to deliver the coup de grâce.”

“Fuck it up, my liege.” Thekla scoots out of the way and returns to their table by the range to supervise the action.

Kell takes position in front of their booth, towering over the gaudy cutout of a roaring viking propped up next to the counter. As spring gives way to the concrete heat of summer, she’s swapped her daily wear from baggy joggers to her vast collection of cutoff jean shorts, their cut severe enough for the tongues of their pockets to poke out along their hems. Thekla watches her hamstrings stretch taut as she winds up.

Thekla has adapted her mindset when it comes to ogling Kell. It is not weird, she has decided, to find your friends sexy. Dalma is always drawing her various collaborators in the nude. Sion makes platonic passes at just about everyone. Kell compliments her butt all the time, and before the Evan Situation she thought nothing of it, was happy to return the favor. Her drummer happens to have the body of a war goddess. So what? Thoughts can’t be intrusive if you invite them in. It’s not like she averts her eyes from hot movie stars just because she’s never going to jump their bones.

An axe easily twice the size of Thekla’s whistles downrange, and lands a little further off from center out in the third ring.

“Hmm. Not exactly a kill shot.” Kell squints. “If Evan came through with the jaws of life, he could still pull through.”

Kell shared Thekla’s shock when she was filled in on the night she missed at Tvnnel. Thekla told her everything except about the exchange with Ragan. That shithead doesn’t get the satisfaction of taking up space in Kell’s mind anymore.

Kell stands aside to watch Thekla’s last throw. Thekla sizes up the target and imagines a smirking phantom of Ragan, with his painted-on muscle tee and his indoor sunglasses.

Her axe flickers right into the bullseye.

“Holy shit!” cries Kell, and gives Thekla a congratulatory smack right on the ass. Thekla’s head fills with a hazy pink glow that she desperately excuses for the satisfaction of a hit on center mass; she’s made her peace with looking, but touching is still a tangled knot of confusion. The ambiance is loud enough, with the chatter and the 90s playlist, that a merciful God wouldn’t let Kell hear the little whining sound her throat just made.

Kell hurries off to get the conquering heroine some celebratory fries, and Thekla sits uneasily back at their table. It wasn’t a hard slap; there’s no sting. But the shape of it is tingling on her skin.

“What a throw.” Kell returns and slides her a stack full of bland crinkle-cut fries. “I was gonna run something kind of controversial past you, but now you’ve got me fearing for my life. Promise not to kill me, OK?”

“That isn’t a promise a dangerous woman like me can make,” Thekla says, swallowing her anxiety along with that strange pink feeling. Arousal. You’re a big girl, Thekla. Just call it what it is. You want her to do that again, harder.

“I got a call the other day,” Kell says, carefully, “from Teo Carver. Have you met him?”

“It’s ringing a bell.”

“He’s the bandleader for Masonry,” Kell says. “He’s landed a double billing at Ringside in a few Saturdays, and he’s looking for the other act. I’m not sure how he’s heard of us this early, but he says he’s gonna be at Glorie’s, and if he digs our sound, we can hop on the show with him.”

An immediate jumble of thoughts. Ringside is a great location. Playing it on a Saturday would be massive. Masonry is Ragan’s band.

“The twist is that my ex is their guitarist now,” Kell says. “Mr. Meathead.” She’s trying to be blasé, but Thekla knows she still doesn’t enjoy saying his name.

“That loser?” Thekla does her best to act like this is news. “There’s anyone left in New Laytham who wants him?”

“He can play,” Kell says. “I’d never tell anyone to even think about writing with him, but if you need a pinch hitter, I can see it. Hope Teo’s smart enough to keep him in the back seat of the ride.”

“Are you gonna go for it?” Thekla asks.

Kell chews her lip. Thekla wonders what that tastes like. “It’s the right move for the band. And it’s not like I need to talk to him.” She brightens. “If he doesn’t leave me alone, you can just hatchet him in the face.”

For Kell, Thekla would. She wasn’t there for most of their time together, but she bore witness to the way it ended. She remembers holding Kell through the worst nights, that muscular frame shaking like a leaf, tears staining her lap. She will let no one make her friend cry like that again.

Ragan was the only partner Thekla’s seen Kell have. If she’s taken anyone else to bed since, she hasn’t mentioned them. Thekla’s never pried into her romantic history, doesn’t really know what gets her motor running. She’d wondered, of course, about the beautiful woman under her tattoo gun, the willingness to touch, the free and easy physicality, but by the time Kell was back on her feet, they were already best friends and bandmates, and it didn’t matter in the same way. Not that it should now. She doesn’t exactly act straight as an arrow, though, does she, Thekla?

“I really think we’re on something, Thekla,” Kell says. “I think this is the configuration. I think we’d blow Ringside away.” She lays her hand on Thekla’s wrist. “But this is a joint decision. If you think it’s a bad idea, or if you’re not sure about our sound with Evan yet, you can tell me, okay?”

“I have zero worries about the sound,” Thekla says, truthfully. Their rehearsals in the Shed have flowed fantastically lately, and every finished draft feels stronger than the last one. They’re tackling Sion’s Rats conundrum last; the rest are coming together like they were always there, waiting to be plucked from the air.

Evan has changed since that evening, subtly but significantly. Or maybe her interpretation of him has. He’s not an extrovert by any stretch, but he isn’t the sad sack she thought he was. His quiet seems more meditative, and what she thought of as timidity she’d now call gentleness (never to his face). He doesn’t weigh in on the music until he’s had time to think his words through carefully, and most of his suggestions, followed through to the fullest, have made their songs better. The silences when they’re together don’t make her squirm anymore. She’s comfortable sitting in them. Safe, even.

Kell is watching her patiently, waiting for an answer. She realizes she’s been lost in her thoughts, and that she’s taken her glasses off to do that fiddling thing she does. “Yeah, the sound’s great. I don’t love the company we’ll have, but I’ll be fucked if we let him keep us from showing out. Let’s do it.”

Kell grins. “Fuck yeah, girl. Fuck him, right? We’ll kill at Glorie’s and then we’ll kill at Ringside and we’ll steal all his groupies and make out with them in front of him.”

They clink their cola glasses together.

“Can I ask you something?” Thekla asks, after a fortifying sip.

“Anything,” Kell says.

Thekla runs a thumb along the arm of her glasses, still in her hand. “Why don’t you date anymore? Is it because of him?”

“No way. This is the first time I’ve thought of him in, like, months.” Kell sits back. “I dunno. I guess I’m just busy with the music. It’s not like I’m a monk now. Like I don’t feel damaged or anything. I just don’t need the whole dramatic song-and-dance right now. I have the band. And you.” She smiles down at Thekla, and that pink warmth wraps its way back up the goblin’s body.