On he played, song after song, the crowd getting more into it, Rufus responding with the invitation to dive further.
When he opened his eyes this time, Danni’s stool was empty.
He felt a moment’s panic before he spotted her, moving through the throng towards the restroom. Still, that kernel of unease wouldn’t leave him. He didn’t know why. He…
Budweiser Boy had moved along the bar, towards the restrooms also. He faced away from Rufus, away from Danni, leaning on the bar chatting with Julie.
But he had definitely moved.
And, what was that?
The old guy had moved too, closer to where Danni had been sitting.
Once he saw it, he saw it clearly, around the outside of the crowd, there were people moving towards the restrooms. It was slow, almost undirected, just drifting, drifting, drifting, like reversed video of a stain spreading across a tile floor.
The old guy, Budweiser Boy, the old woman, all of them oozing towards the restrooms.
His panic became a taste in his mouth, fighting against his ability to sing the words of the song.
It was like watching ants, or termites; blind subterranean creatures moving in concert yet isolated; these expressionless wax-mask faces.
The old guy passed one of the family booths and, for a moment, the father looked up from his iPhone, looking about himself as if he’d felt a draught, or sensed someone walking over his grave.
Rufus saw all this, trapped in the hyper-aware moment of the song and flow.
He saw the old guy freeze, slowing imperceptibly, like an antelope sensing a lion.
The father shivered slightly, shook his head, said something to his kids, and then returned to his email, calendar or whatever else he was doing with his phone.
The old guy resumed that slow, magnetic motion.
Rufus was glad of the music, the amplification; fearing that, were he able to hear them, they would sound all too much like cockroaches chittering across a clean hospital floors.
* * *
Rufus decided to cut the set short, he’d played long enough for the moment and could justify a break.
He launched into his final song, once again feeling the deep, throbbing tug of the music; strong sense-memory of Danni’s back yard, of dancing in candlelight, dropping to the ground and feeling the music through hard-packed earth.
She changed, he thought, Danni changed.
His eyes snapped open and he scanned the audience, growing a little frantic beneath the song.
No. There she was, stepping out of the bathroom.
She glanced his way, eyes meeting his own.
Smiled.
She was still Danni.
Movement.
In the herd, in the colours of the music, movement.
Heads turning to look at Danni. Just a few. The old guy, make-up lady, Budweiser Boy.
Danni passed them all. As she drew level with Budweiser Boy he reoriented himself slightly, blocking her path. She stopped, looked at him.
No! Rufus thought. Don’t! Don’t talk to him!
Budweiser Boy’s face twisted into an ingratiating smile; louche, lascivious. He said something to her and she shook her head. Rufus couldn’t see her face; somehow knew she would not be smiling.
As she moved to pass Budweiser Boy, his hand moved to her shoulder and there was something in the gesture, something cold, something possessive, something almost predatory that Rufus felt a shock move through him; pulse exploding.
For a brief moment, the color-scape flared with blues and reds, and Danni blurred out a little.
Rufus fought against the flutter of panic rising in his diaphragm, his breath growing short, notes that he could have held normally suddenly choked before the word was out.
Danni was obscured in the colors of music, and those intrusive, flashing reds and blues. They had their own rhythm, a beat which he found interrupted his fingers. He fought to hold the tempo of his song, but it was leaving the same way his breath had gone. Rufus felt the music leaving him, swallowed by the blues and reds infecting his own musical kaleidoscope.
He’d never experienced anything like this before.
This felt like dying.
Desperate, he fought against the reds and blues, knowing that Danni was lost somewhere within.
And their heads are turning, he thought, their heads are turning.
He looked about himself, in the final stages of panic, feeling the song disappear, feeling the audience beginning to sense something was not right on the stage, that their entertainment was taking a turn for the surreal.
Gripping his guitar neck with white knuckles, fighting to get breath into his lungs, he glanced this way and that, and saw outside the flashing roof-lights of a police cruiser, parked out front of The Loaded Barrel.
On and on they cycled, blinding him for the moment.
Rufus closed his eyes once more, centering himself back at the microphone, visualized a lone candle, burning in the darkness of a lonely back-yard.
He played a verse as instrumental.
Saw the candle.
Saw another.
Remembered the feel of the earth, the thrumming of the bass, the colours of the music.
Shhh, she’d said, it’s time to listen.
It’s time to listen.
He felt the strings pressing into his calloused fingertips, the vibration of the low strings as his thumb stroked them to the giving. He felt the strings bump up against frets as he slid his hand along the fingerboard.
He opened his eyes, looked down at his left hand, fingering the chords, saw his right hand picking the rhythm.
Felt the panic release.
Glanced sideways to see the police cruiser heading away down the street.
Looked back into the bar, into Danni’s beautiful round eyes. She was back at her seat, watching him, listening to him.
Her smile warmed the air between them; a little thumbs-up.
She’s still here, Rufus thought, and was surprised by how reassuring it felt to know that.
He scanned the room and, sure enough, the old guy, make-up lady and Budweiser Boy had moved back to their previous positions; a loose circle around the perimeter of the audience.
No, he thought, around Danni.
The song eased to its finish, warm applause replacing its final chords.
“OK,” Rufus said into the microphone, “don’t know quite what happened in that last one, but it’s just about time for me to take a break. See you in ten.”
Another ripple of applause.
Rufus shrugged off his guitar.
RUFUS – A NOVEL is a novel-in-progress by Vincent Tuckwood, a Brit author living and working in Waterford, Connecticut, USA. Read more by Vincent Tuckwood.
