Strange Girl (3 page)

“Why the sudden interest in Aja’s background?” I said. But Mike ignored me and continued to speak to Aja, who appeared to fascinate him.

“Your accent—you remind me of my grandmother,” Mike said. “She could speak half a dozen languages. She sounded like she was from everywhere, and nowhere, if you know what I mean. Sort of like you.”

Aja lowered her head.
“Ninguém do nada.”

“What was that?” I asked quickly.

Apparently she’d answered in Portuguese, which neither Mike nor Dale understood. When I asked Aja what she’d said, all she did was shake her head like it didn’t matter.

Dale flashed Mike a sign that it was time to split and Mike, knowing my bad luck with girls, bid us a quick farewell. When they were gone Aja and I returned to eating our sandwiches and fries. A long silence settled between us but to my surprise it wasn’t uncomfortable. I suspected Aja had spent most of her life alone and wasn’t bothered by quiet.

“I apologize for Mike,” I said. “He can be a handful when you first meet him.”

“He has a fiery spirit.”

“I suppose that’s where all the smoke comes from.”

Aja turned her big, brown eyes on me. “They look up to you. Are you that good?”

I assumed she was asking about my musical abilities and shrugged. “As far as South Dakota is concerned, I could be the next Mozart. But if I performed at a club in Los Angeles or New York or Seattle I’d be laughed off the stage.” I took a gulp of Coke. “Trying to make a living as a singer/songwriter is probably the most irrational ambition a guy can have. One in a million—no, one in ten million—ends up making money at it.”

“But it’s what you want to do,” she said.

“Unfortunately.”

“Then you’ll do it.”

I chuckled. “You haven’t even seen us play.”

The remark was far from subtle. I was hoping she’d bite and say she’d like to come to a show. Also, it wasn’t by chance that I’d switched from talking about me to talking about the band. If she didn’t bite, then she was rejecting Half Life, not me. So went my crazy logic. The truth was I’d brought up being a musician to impress her. It was shameless, I know, but I figured I had to play what cards I held.

“Is it fun for you?” she asked.

“Being onstage? Sometimes—when I forget what I’m doing and that people are watching me. Then I love it. But most of the time I’m way too self-conscious and can’t wait until the gig is over. Seriously.”

Aja continued to stare at me and because she didn’t blink often, it was a bit disconcerting. “Play for me sometime,” she said.

There. I’d practically begged her to ask but now that she had I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. I shook my head. “I’m not a solo artist. Better to see me in the band.”

She nodded but I didn’t think she believed me.

“How about you?” I asked. “What’s your favorite hobby?”

She hesitated. “I don’t have any hobbies. I just . . . enjoy things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Bart told me to watch out for questions like that. He said they’d get me into trouble.”

Her response caught me off guard. “Huh?”

“I told you about Bart.”

“I know, I heard you. But he actually told you how to behave while you were at school today?”

Aja nodded. “He spent the weekend trying to teach me what to say and what not to say.”

“Isn’t that a little weird?”

If my question bothered her, she showed no sign. “Bart said he had to teach me so I wouldn’t appear weird to the rest of you.” As if to reassure me, she reached out and touched my arm. “He was trying to help.”

The instant she touched me, I felt something odd, a lapse of sorts, where I had trouble focusing. The scene around us, the guys and girls walking back and forth across the courtyard, they didn’t stop but they did seem to slow down. I shook my head to clear it and the sensation eased up, somewhat. I noticed Aja had taken back her hand. I had to struggle to get out my next remark.

“I should meet this guy. Maybe he can help me with my weirdness.”

Aja suddenly stood, leaving what was left of her food behind on the bench. She wasn’t tall but at that moment she could have been standing on a chair and looking down at me. I worried that my peculiar sensation had not passed, after all. Again, I had to remind myself that she was new to the school, the stranger in a strange land, but right then I was certain I had it all wrong, that she was more at home in Elder than I could ever hope to be.

“I’m glad we got to talk, Fred. I hope I see you again soon.”

With that she turned and walked away.

CHAPTER TWO

THAT EVENING AT ten fifteen I got together with the band at Shelly Wilson’s garage. The reason I was so late was because the hardware store where I worked was doing inventory and the boss wanted me counting the stock on the shelves until exactly ten o’clock. I was flying high from my lunch with Aja but the joy dimmed as I slipped back into the usual grind of my life.

Since a Walmart had opened in Balen, the hardware store was losing money and my boss was always tense and taking it out on us employees. He’d given me a dollar-an-hour raise at the start of summer but had since cut me back to minimum wage. The loss of the extra bucks hurt.

Still, I looked forward to playing with the band. We usually practiced at Shelly’s garage since her parents were the only ones who’d allowed us to insulate the space. We’d fastened large bags of powdered cellulose—a fancy name for ground-up wood pulp—to the ceiling and walls so that we could play as loud as we wanted and a person standing right outside the garage door couldn’t hear a thing.

Shelly’s parents had been supportive of her musical career from a young age. At sixty-one, her father was twenty-five years older than her mother and was retired, but in his prime he’d played piano with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra—no small feat. He’d developed serious arthritis in his hands when Shelly was only five yet had persisted in tutoring her on his favorite instrument. As a result Shelly was the most trained musician in our band. Anything she heard, she could play back on any form of keyboard; it didn’t matter how complex it was.

But despite Shelly’s skill and dedication, she had a major handicap. She never came up with anything new. Whenever we jammed, chasing one crazy riff or lyric after another, just throwing stuff out into the air, she’d get lost. Though it pained her, and her father, she was devoid of creativity. The flaw showed itself in the lack of emotion in her playing. Yet, because of her technical abilities, most audiences didn’t notice the problem.

But we did and so did Shelly.

Janet was also at our practice. As our manager, the one who set up our gigs and handled our finances—for 15 percent commission plus expenses—she wasn’t required to be at the garage but I suspected she was more interested in cornering me on Aja than in reviewing how much I still owed on my Marshall amp. And sure enough her eyes lit up the second I walked in, which told me I’d better get her outside quick.

The reason was Shelly. She’d had a crush on me since we were in middle school. I tried not talking about my love life around her. The short time I’d gone out with Nicole, Shelly hadn’t even come to practice, and it had been at her house.

“I saw everything,” Janet said the second we were alone. “I followed you to Aja’s locker, and the windows, and was watching the two of you the whole time you ate on the bench. By the way, that was a smart opening when you faked sharing a locker beside her.”

“Thanks. I assume you were able to read our lips so there’s no point in telling you what we talked about.”

“Don’t you dare! I want to hear everything!”

“On one condition. Get me her number.”

“You don’t have it yet?” Janet asked.

“No.”

“Done. Speak.”

Since the others were waiting, I gave her a condensed version of my conversation with Aja. Janet listened without interrupting; she was a good listener. When I was done she appeared puzzled.

“Why’d you get dizzy around her?” she asked.

I shrugged. “It was no big deal.”

“It was probably nerves.”

“I wasn’t that nervous.”

“Fred.”

“I’m telling you the truth. Look, I just met her. I like her, I don’t love her.” I added, “We’d better get back inside.”

Janet nodded. “I’m proud of you. It took guts to go after her the way you did. It sounds like she likes you.” She paused. “Why the long face?”

I shook my head. “On the surface I’d agree—she seemed to like me. The last thing she said is she wanted to talk again. But the way she sat so silent—it was like a part of her was far away, in her own little world.”

“That could be good. It could mean she has depth.”

“Depth can be a two-edged sword. Fall for a girl with too much depth and you can end up falling forever.”

“How poetic.” Janet patted me on the back. “I’ve got a good feeling about Aja. She could be the one, you know, who makes you feel so much you finally write a love song that sells. And if that doesn’t happen, you’ll at least get sex out of the deal.”

“I hope you got that in writing.”

Janet laughed. “Wake up! She’s from Brazil! Land of thong bikinis. Plus you’re cute. You always forget that. Of course she’ll have sex with you.”

I did
not
think I was cute. All I saw when I looked into the mirror was a standard guy: brown eyes, brown hair—which was beginning to curl now that I was letting it grow longer. Was there anything that made me unique?

Well, I suppose I did have nice hands. They were large, my fingers were long; they made it easier for me to play the guitar. And Nicole—and Janet, who seldom handed out compliments—said I looked thoughtful. I took that to mean I didn’t look stupid, but they acted like it was a rare quality. Still, no one ever raved about my smile, probably because I didn’t smile often. Frankly, except when I was playing guitar, my parents said I looked depressed. They were always asking me if I wanted to see someone.

Yeah, I thought. I wanted to see a pretty girl who wanted to love me, tell me I was going to be a rock star, and especially who wanted to have sex with me. It seemed too much to hope that that girl might be Aja.

Back inside the garage we had a mini–business meeting. Janet held court. First she went over the gigs we had coming up. Friday, we were playing at a high school in Stoker, which was an hour away. The pay was four hundred, not bad considering all we had to do was play our usual list of covers and break down our equipment by midnight.

Saturday night’s gig was at the Roadhouse; it was located a mile outside Ellsworth Air Force Base, ten miles east of Rapid City—the largest city in the state—and a two-hundred-mile drive from Elder. We all groaned when Janet made the announcement. We’d played for the boys at the base before and we still had the scars to prove it; none worse than Mike, who’d been lucky to escape with four cracked ribs. Me, I’d needed three stitches above my right eye.

“How come we never heard of this gig until now?” Mike demanded.

“Because you’d have canceled if I’d told you about it ahead of time,” Janet replied.

“To hell with the Roadhouse,” Mike said. “You can’t pay me enough to go back to that pigsty.”

“Fifteen hundred bucks,” Janet said.

“Huh?” the room gasped.

“Burrito Bill, the owner, said he’d give us fifteen hundred in cash if we play from nine in the evening until two in the morning. He promised we’d have security this time—a half-dozen MPs from the base.”

“Janet,” Dale groaned. “Last time it was the MPs who beat us up. When they’re off duty, they’re worse than the mechanics and the pilots. They never go anywhere without their guns.” He shook his head. “The money’s tempting but I don’t think we should go.”

“And we’d have to spring for a motel room,” Mike said. “No way I’m driving back at three in the morning.”

“I’ve already reserved a room,” Janet said.

“For how much?” Mike snapped.

“Cheap,” Janet said.

“Why are they paying us so much?” Shelly asked.

Janet continued. “Most of the soldiers are heading off to the Middle East next week and this is their last big night to party. And Burrito Bill said they loved us the last time we played there.”

“So that’s why they tried to kill us,” I muttered.

Janet nodded. “They’re trained to kill. It’s what makes them happy. The bottom line is we need the cash. Fred’s two months late on his guitar and amp payments and we promised Shelly new equipment. Besides, we knock them dead and we’ll get written up in Rapid City’s newspaper. I already put in a call to them and they promised to send someone to the show. Think about it. Now that summer’s over we don’t have that many gigs scheduled. We need the money.”

Mike shrugged. “This means we’re going to have to spend the whole week practicing Led Zeppelin and Rolling Stones covers.”

“Like I can mimic Jimmy Page,” I said sarcastically.

“That’s not what Burrito Bill wants at all,” Janet said. “Last time, he said it was Fred’s original material that blew the crowd away—especially his love songs. He told me the soldiers and their dates came in weeks after talking about Fred.”

“Nice try,” I said. “You just made that up.”

“It’s true,” Dale said. “During our break, when you guys ran off to the kitchen, I hung around and felt out the crowd. Except for the animals who beat the shit out of us, most of the audience loved Fred’s singing. And not just when he did covers.”

“Burrito Bill told me we have to play ‘Rose’ at least twice,” Janet added, mentioning one of my better creations.

“That’s great,” I said. “He wants us onstage five hours and I’ve got twenty minutes of original material.” I paused. “Mike’s right, we need to spend the rest of this week rehearsing classic rock.”

“And locating body armor,” Mike added.

Janet left to go do homework and we started to play a few Rolling Stones classics: “Satisfaction,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Because the Stones always performed with two guitars, Shelly grabbed my old Fender and played rhythm to my lead. She was a decent guitarist but never moved an inch onstage. For that reason Dale and I kept her hidden in the back beside Mike when we played live.