Shelter (closed)

[wideeyedone]

Anna Mitchell, left home years ago and moved to the city with her boyfriend. The home she grew up in was filled with anger, addiction and tumult.She still had the small curved scar on her jaw from the exploding beer bottle that her mother had thrown at her father.

Rodney was older and seemed secure and wanted to rescue her from her father's anger and her mother's stupor. It had been his plan that they run away. She loved him and she trusted him. She took the little bit of money that she had and one bag and they had made their way. They rented a small apartment. And he had loved to listen to her sing. But the shine had worn off. They had trouble making ends meet with their collection of minimum wage jobs. And then one day, she came home from work and he was gone.

There was a note on the table and an envelope with a little cash in it. He had gone home. In desperation, she called home but her father had told her not to come home. For a while now she had been couch surfing, moving in with girls she knew at work, offering part of her meager salary in exchange for a bad night's sleep.

Now. her job had disappeared and none of her friendships were strong enough to withstand free loading. She had all she owned in a well worn duffle. Her boots were worn in and if someone didn't look too closely, she might have passed for a college student dressed in vintage jeans and an oversized sweater. Her dark hair was tied back in a ponytail, her face was still striking, Anna had always been a pretty girl. But she was hungry and tired and alone.

When Anna had been waiting tables at a greasy dive, she had made friends with Hobart. Hobart McClain was a homeless vet. He played the guitar and sang on the streets and now Anna had joined him. They were perched on wall at the park. He was strumming and singing harmony, she was singing lead. His guitar case was open and passers by were being fairly generous. They had drawn a little bit of a crowd. She had pounded the pavement all morning looking for a job and Hobart had told her that he would share the take with her.

She had to do something. She couldn’t go home and Marta had told her that she needed to bring home atleast twenty bucks, or find someplace else to sleep.

 

[HermesVoice]

Jesse squinted at himself in the small mirror that hung above the stained porcelain. It was supposed to pass for a sink. “Screw it,” he sighed. At least the cold faucet worked.

Wetting his hands, he sluiced water over his face, trying hard to ignore the rust in it before pushing his fingers through the dark of his hair. After shaving his head nearly bald for the last nineteen years of his life, he was only just getting used to the addition - couldn’t tell how it made him look to the world. Gazing into the cracked mirror at twenty-five, he thought he looked ten years older … although whether it was true or merely a product of the shadows cast by the single bare bulb swinging above the toilet, he couldn’t tell. He only knew he FELT ten years older.

Turning with a muttered “shit,” he trudged to the room’s small canvas cot, collapsed onto it, and rubbed his temples, wondering what came next. He had a meeting with his parole officer tomorrow and could at least report he’d found work. Real work. Because of course the PO had never considered part-time gigging as anything more than “some convict fucking around with the state.” Jesse knew that Phillips, his PO, was firmly convinced that Jesse S. Thompson, felon, had no business being back on the street, much less spending time in bars – however shitty – playing bass in a small time band.

Maybe the welding job, even though it offered only limited hours, would get the guy to ease off … but probably not. Jesse was pretty sure only a return trip to Altona would satisfy the prick.

“Fuck it,” he growled, rolling onto his side to stare out the small, filthy window. “Maybe he’s right.” As shitholes went, the state penitentiary wasn’t much worse than the room in which he currently lay. As if to mark the thought with an exclamation point, he heard a rat scuttle behind the wall at the head of the cot. “And fuck YOU,” he muttered to the rat, before returning his attention to the outside world.

It was cold and looked like snow, but that didn’t stop some of the neighborhood mopes from hanging out, swaggering in too-loud laughter. He could hear the Stones drifting up from their radio. The music drifted in the loose joints of the window along with the smell of the oilcan fire they’d lit.

Oooooo-ooo-ooo, the floods is threatnin’ Mick was warning, and Jesse knew the power of the song’s truth. Rape. Murder. It all really was just a shot away. After all this time, he could still feel the warm solidity of the 9mm in his hand as he buried a pair of slugs in Freddie Jenkins’ chest and got himself sent up on a manslaughter charge. He could recall the gun just as he still felt the frigid tiles under his hands and knees while he was raped in the pen, screaming in agonized and impotent rage, a jagged piece of metal held to his throat while a huge, fat, laughing fucker named Billups rammed his cock into Jesse’s ass.

He often wished he had a follow-up memory of revenge against Billups, the rapist motherfucker, but none such existed. Billups was far too protected, and Jesse had wanted out of prison far too much to fuck around with revenge and the loss of early release. The release he’d earned after six years. The release that put him here. Now.

Ohhhh, children! It’s just a shot away! It’s just a shot away!

Jesse tossed over to put his back to the window, wrapping his arms around himself to ward off the cold while Merry Clayton wailed below that love ... was just a kiss away. The song was in his blood now. They would have to work it, him and Sydney. He could trust her to find the syncopation that would bring a new beginning to the decades-old song. He’d only known her for six months, but he could trust her, as his other musical half and as his friend.

And trust – with new beginnings - were what Jesse needed most.

 

[wideeyedone]

"Words fall through me
And always fool me
And I can't react
And games that never amount
To more than they're meant
Will play themselves out"

Anna's voice gracefully played with the melody. Hobart's gentle voice soothed the harmonies against her notes.

The take had been good. She watched one stranger drop a five dollar bill in the guitar case. She found herself sighing in relief.

After the commuter crowd disapated she and Hobart went to diner for hashed browns, crisp bacon and scrambled eggs. The warm food felt good in her stomach.

"We could try another park tomorrow, or a bus stop, my girl." Hobart offered her his gentle smile. Anna could picture him with a family, in a house with a job and a real life. But she knew that Hobart's story was more bleak than she knew.

"Marta is charging me rent and her skeevy boyfriend is there. And I don't want to take your money, Hobart."

Hobart ate his eggs and watched Anna.
"You can stay with me tonight. I have a friend, sometimes, he let's me sleep at the hotel where he works if there are vacancies. He told me that he has a room for me. Anna, you will be safe with me. I promise." Hobart was the closest thing she had to family in the city.

"Thanks, Hobart. I know I am safe with you."

They walked to the hotel. Anna had her duffle bag and Hobart with his pack and his guitar case. The Hammond Hotel was nothing luxurious. The room had two double beds. The coverlets didn't match, the toilet ran and the sink dripped, but it had been a long time since Anna had slept in a bed. She deposited her duffle at the foot of the bed and then took the first turn in the bathroom. She lingered under the hot water, washing her hair twice and then brushing it out. She dressed in a t shirt and a pair of shorts. Hobart had spread his bedroll on the carpet.

He looked up at Anna.
"I know it doesn't make sense. But it is the only way I can sleep."

Anna nodded. She curled up on the bed with a book to read. Hobart retreated and she heard the shower running. It was only a few minutes before Anna was sound asleep.

 

[HermesVoice]

“I’ll say this, Thompson.” Philips looked up from several papers in his hands. “You know how to game the system.”

“I don’t understand,” Jesse replied flatly. He’d been sitting for a half hour, listening to the sneered malice of the probation officer, and he was not inclined to fight the man even if it would have been wise. It had been a nearly sleepless night, one in which Jesse had tossed between lucid, disturbing dreams (composed mostly in indigos and crimsons) and fits of wakefulness, thinking about today’s interview, and a song, and the cold of the rented room.

“Well it says here that you’re ‘part-time, not to exceed twenty hours per week, on-call.’ Which means you’ll just be coming and going, won’t you?”

Jesse’s response, a continued blank look, seemed to satisfy Philips as it invited him to go on. “I mean, Thompson, that you think you’ve arranged things so you can just be around or not as you want, seeing as you have no schedule. Like I can’t keep track of you because I never know when you’re at work or not. Is that what you think?”

“Look. I told you, man. This is the job they offered me. I didn’t – “

“Just shut the fuck up, Thompson. Don’t bother telling me you didn’t get a say in your schedule. That’s bullshit. You took this job and you asked for these hours because you’re still trying to get over.”

Jesse didn’t bother defending himself. Philips was a prick but one with real muscle over Jesse’s life. It was better to let him flex the muscle talking than give the asshole a reason to start really messing around in his life.

“But here’s the good news, Thompson,” the PO went on after pausing to light a cigarette, one he’d been toying with for a good ten minutes. “I have the phone number for Scranton Welding and they have mine, and you’ll be seeing me there.”

Jesse didn’t doubt the sincerity of the man’s words. Philips had three times shown up to check on Jesse at his bar gigs. The first time he’d sat in the darkness of one corner of the bar, merely drinking and glaring at Jesse through three sets before he decided to go home. On his second visit, he introduced himself to the band, using the opportunity to tell them all Jesse’s status as a parolee: to lay out the convict’s history and, Jesse was certain, to destroy his relationship with the others. It had been a long night after that, one ending in several hours around a bottle of Jack Daniels, Jesse telling them – Mike, Zig, and Sydney - everything he dared about his past. About the killing and why it happened. About his time in prison. About his desperation.

And it had been Syd who’d stood up at the end of the confession, stubbed out with her sneaker the cigarette she’d been smoking, and with a simple “cool,” walked out. It was a gesture and a word that, in their simplicity, unmade his past, and in turn brought Mike and Zig into silent agreement. How much so, Jesse did not learn until the next show when Philips approached the band again between sets, only to be greeted by Sydney with a sneered, “Why don’t you fuck off, fat man?”

It was an event that still rankled Philips, and it reared its head again now as he leaned back in his chair and growled, “Still got that dyke bitch on drums?”

In moments like these, Jesse couldn’t wait for the day when his probation would be over and he might beat the piss out of the little fuck. Instead he merely grunted, “Yeah. Whatever Rich.“ Emphasizing his parole officer’s first name, suggesting a familiarity it was not his place to assume, was, for the time being, the only act of retribution within his ability.

For his part, confident in his authority, the PO merely chuckled maliciously and glanced down to his watch. “Well, Thompson, I guess we’re just about done here.”

But as Jesse rose and turned to go, Philips‘s voice brought him to a halt. “Oh, hell no, convict. Let’s not forget our little ritual, shall we?” It was a sneer and a dare for Jesse to refuse, to be written up, and to be one step back towards Altona.

“Ah, there it is!” the PO grinned behind him when Jesse peeled his shirt from his shoulders, revealing the ink across his shoulders and down his back. “You know why I relish these moments, Thompson?”

He didn’t wait for Jesse’s answer. His words, too, were part of the ceremony of humiliation that played itself out at the end of each session.

“I like seeing that because it reminds me why a piece of shit like you should still be in prison. And it reminds YOU why you’re here. Right, asshole?”

As Jesse slid the shirt back up over his shoulders and pulled on his second-hand army jacket, Philips went on. “What’d you say that shit meant again?”

“Work makes us free,” Jesse growled as he walked out of the office. He heard the greasy little troll laugh behind him as he shut the door and went out into the cold. He’d be late for practice if he didn’t hurry, and he had to stop by his room to pick up his bass.

 

[wideeyedone]

Hobart watched Anna sleep and sometime in the night he peeled the coverlet from the empty bed and covered her. She looked peaceful but she was curled up on herself like she was cold.

Hobart didn't like sleeping indoors. He hadn't since the war. But it was worth it to know that his Anna felt safe and rested. He had taken to her as soon as he met her in the greasy spoon she had waited tables in. He had watched her simple life implode. He had seen her come to work devastated when her useless boyfriend left with just a note as his explanation. Hobart had always felt a paternal connection with Anna and her boyfriend's disappearance. Hobart wondered about the scar that traced the curve of her jaw. It didn't make her any less pretty, but it made him wonder who could have hurt such a sweet girl.

Their musical connection had come early. He loved to sing and play with Anna. Her bluesy clear voice was a good match for his guitar playing. One of the young kids that had dropped money in the guitar case yesterday had said her voice was alot like someone called Adele, but Hobart hadn't listened to the radio much in the past few years. Occasionally Anna dragged him into some internet cafe to show him a video of a song she wanted him to play. His ear was quick and he could pick up songs fast, but he didn't remember the names of artists. So often, Anna was learning the music he knew rather than the other way around.

Anna began stirring long after Hobart had awakened. He felt at peace while she slept. She propped up on one elbow.

"I am sorry I slept so long. It has been a while since I have slept so deeply. I guess I needed it." Hobart smiled and told her to take her time. Anna took another shower and brushed her teeth and then dressed for a day singing in the park. She put on a pair of dark slim fitting jeans and a gauzy deep purple blouse that would be cool in the sun. She put her hair up in a pony tail and packed her duffle. But Hobart told her she could leave her bag.

"My friend is gonna let us stay for a couple nights if I fix a few things around the place. So today, we just have to sing for our supper." Hobart smiled behind his beard at Anna.

Anna sighed deeply. She was relieved to know where she was sleeping and to know she didn't have to carry her life on her back for the day. She tucked her few dollars and her id in her back pocket. She tugged on her boots.

Hobart and Anna shared cinnamon rolls and coffee and then found a busy corner. They serenaded the busy street with one song after another. Hobart had taught Anna a bunch of old standards, he liked the playful things she did with the melody and somehow he found that she made the songs new to him.

"There’s a saying old, says that love is blind
Still we’re often told, "seek and ye shall find"
So I’m going to seek a certain lad I’ve had in mind

Looking everywhere, haven’t found him yet
He’s the big affair I cannot forget
Only man I ever think of with regret

I’d like to add his initial to my monogram
Tell me, where is the shepherd for this lost lamb?"

Her clear voice gently played with the familiar melody, she had asked Hobart to play with the tempo and he had slowed it down in places to allow her to play with the notes. She felt like the message of the song was a lie, though. There was no one true love that would take care of a girl like her, she had had to learn to look out for herself.

 

[HermesVoice]

By the time he left Philips’ office, the sun had risen high enough to convince the city that spring had indeed come – no matter how chill the nights remained. Jesse reflexively began to remove his jacket when out of the shade of the buildings, but as if burned, he recalled that he wore only a tank underneath it and left the coat on. The early morning rush hour was over, but the streets remained crowded, and he didn’t want to be seen, to be acknowledged - especially in the ways that used to bring him such dark joy when moving among “those vanilla fucks” … as Sean had loved to call the suits and skirts of the city.

Entering Netherfield Park, Jesse broke into a jog for the sheer joy of it. Last spring, he’d been locked up, wearing inmate orange and shitty workboots, surrounded by grey. Now he darted between trees, ripped jeans letting in both sun and breeze, a secondhand pair of Adidas riding light on his feet. Freedom. Like at the end of Braveheart, he laughed to himself as he pulled to a stop and caught his breath, hands on knees, pitched forward at the waist.

“Little outta’ shape,” he smiled at an old couple walking by him, gazing at him with mild curiosity. The woman nodded with a warmer grin, and Jesse felt good nodding in reply. In the same spirit he heard faint strains of music – just guitar and a voice – and decided he had time enough to check it out, so long as it was someone playing in the park. Sound in the city had a strange way of projecting itself, but Jesse had pleased himself lately with his growing ability to better follow noises through the forests of steel and concrete. (He took it as a sign of his re-adjustment to life Outside.) He was glad to find his ears holding true to recent form when he rounded a bend that spilled the shadow-dappled park walkway onto the bright city streets, and he saw there the source of the music.

The guitar player was an old guy. Greying with a beard. Jesse could see that from where he stood. Seen from three-quarters rear, he could also see the other – the singer he guessed – was a girl. She was talking to one of a handful of onlookers around the duo, and when she nodded, the sway of her dark ponytail seemed to accentuate the slimness of her form. Jesse moved closer, swinging around to get a better look at the girl’s face as she began to sing again. Hers was a warm contralto, one that stopped people on the sidewalk and swelled the crowd slightly, but she sang a tune he didn’t know. The words spoke plaintive longing, their thread carried by a low smoke in her voice. She was good. He didn’t need to see her to hear that, and Jesse smiled at both song and singer as he eased himself between onlookers to check her out.

And as if knocked into a new rotation, the world spun suddenly slower and he gasped.

Her height – a few inches shorter than him. The angles of her face. Her eyes.

“Elise???” he offered in quiet, joyful incredulity. Some part of him recognized that several listeners must have turned to him, but he didn’t care. It HAD to be …

But when the girl glanced over – who knew if she’d heard him? – Jesse understood it couldn’t possibly be her. Elise wouldn’t look like this now; she’d be older. And she was long gone to Colorado. He’d heard that much in prison.

And yet this girl … even her movements! The uncertain grace of her gestures when she closed her eyes and lifted one hand, holding a single note across bars and measures that seemed, to Jesse, to expand through six years. The way one long strand of darkness had escaped her ponytail and fell unnoticed across her cheek.

He shook his head to clear it … because … well it couldn’t be, and only then noticed the old guy looking at him intently. Jesse couldn’t fix the man’s thoughts, something which, back in Altona, would have been reason enough to tighten his jaw and move to the balls of his feet. Challenging. Intimidating. Here though, in the growing warmth of the spring sun, he felt little need. Glancing again at the girl, he checked his pockets conspicuously for money before composing a smile and shrugging at her guitar player.

“I’m out,” he mouthed to the guy, and then for some absurd reason added “Hit you up later.”

As he turned away, he felt like a fool for the last bit. How could the old dude have possibly read his lips saying THAT? But he’d felt a compulsion to linger a second longer to listen to their song.

To listen to HER, he corrected himself. With the thought, he looked over his shoulder once more before moving on. Still there. It was a disorienting relief.

Jesse chastised himself for his idiocy and checked his watch. Now he actually was running late and he broke into a jog again, but he could hear her voice behind him.

Still there.

 

[wideeyedone]

Anna and Hobart spent the day singing in the park. Hobart had found them a good spot under some trees. Anna enjoyed the breeze rustling through the trees. It almost made her feel like the past year hadn't happened. She watched the light filter through the trees and dance in dapples onto the sidewalk.

The day had brought by many listeners. Even a sullen looking police officer had broken into a wide smile and dropped a few dollars in the case. Anna had watched lovers walk hand in hand, babies being pushed in strollers by their nannies and hurried workers on their lunches and breaks.

As the day drew to a close, Hobart offered Anna her jacket. She didn't even realize that she was cold but Hobart had noticed she was shivering. She slid her arms into his warm jacket and started the last song of the night. It was a new one that Anna had convinced Hobart to try.

Rolling in the Deep was easy for Anna to get in touch with. It was a song about heartache, but the lyrics about love's scar made her self concious. She wondered if the word scar made people focus on the scar that followed the line of her jaw.

She hoped that her worries would make the song seem more real. Hobart enjoyed the strong rythym of the song.

"Baby, I have no story to be told,
But I've heard one on you and I'm gonna make your head burn,
Think of me in the depths of your despair,
Make a home down there as mine sure won't be shared,

The scars of your love remind me of us,
(You're gonna wish you never had met me),
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all,
(Tears are gonna fall, rolling in the deep),
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless,
(You're gonna wish you never had met me)"

Hobart watched Anna sing. He shook his head, he didn't want her thinking of loss and heartache. He wanted her to sing about hope and romance. But damn, she was tearing the song up. He couldn't help but be proud.

 

[HermesVoice]

“Jesus Christ, Mikey, you’re coming in on TWO! How many times do we have to do this?”

Jesse grinned toward Zig behind Sydney’s back. The keyboardist didn’t notice, however, as he was studying with careful scrutiny something on his keys. It took no imagination at all to know that there was a grin stamped on his face, too, and that he was merely attempting to hide it from the band’s immensely flustered drummer.

“Yeah.” Mike, who was looking forlorn and scratching his blonde head, paused before going on uncertainly. “Y’know I’m just not FEELING that, Syd.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Mike, just DO it! And come in with a chord, not picking. It has to be a WALL.”

This time Jesse couldn’t help but burst out laughing. When he’d first been hired, Mike and he had gone out for a drink, the band’s guitarist-and-lead-singer summing up the dynamic of the group. “Syd,” he’d said, scratching his head in much the same way as he was currently doing, “Well … probably the best way to describe Syd is that she’s the world’s most pissed off faery.”

Mike had gone on to tell how the diminutive girl – at 19 the youngest in the band – had driven their last bass player to tears, literally, when she shredded him on stage one night. “She wants what she wants in a rhythm section. And she wants it right.”

Jesse was never sure if that was intended as an honest warning or merely something to frighten him off, because in the end it had come to nothing. He and little brunette, her hair chopped short and jagged, had come to a near-instant rapport, chasing and following each other across measures and through syncopations. Jesse didn’t understand the connection, but neither he nor Syd had ever questioned it. They’d merely taken the bond for granted, and it was something he held dear.

Zig and Mike liked it because, as Zig put it, the band had never been more “locked in.” And it was the keyboardist who now joined Sydney in explanation, flashing through his MP3 player as he spoke: “It’s about textures, dude.”

This almost brought Jesse to another laugh, “textures” being the keyboardist’s favorite word, as it embodied his entire philosophy of playing. Practices were few where Zig didn’t at least once hold forth on the significance of the word and its dying place in pop music.

“Here, listen,” he went on. Jesse instantly recognized Lush’s “Undertow” as it slithered through the practice room’s speakers, the music building quickly into –

“A wall!” Zig shouted over the tune, nodding toward Sydney who was now smiling herself, nodding excitedly and making a “See?” gesture at Mike.

For his part, the guitarist nodded and shrugged in resignation. “Got it,” he said after Zig flipped off the song. “But you really want to sing The Stones to THAT?”

“It’ll work,” Syd sniffed from her stool. “Right?” This was directed at Jesse who merely looked over at Mike.

“It’ll work.” And before waiting for Mike to speak again, Jesse was off, running through the alternating quarter and eighth notes that drove the insistent pulse of the song, and when Mike launched into the first chord on the second beat of the fourth measure, Jesse watched the guitarist smile and nod.

*************

“Yo, what would you think about doing that Lush tune and seguing directly into the Stones song,” Zig mused as he wrapped cords at the end of practice.

“Yeah? And who’s gonna’ sing it?” Sydney laughed, zipping her sticks into their bag.

“Tune it down and I’ll do it,” Mike shrugged. It was his easy willingness to try anything and make concessions that perpetually endeared him to the other three and, so far as Jesse was concerned, what made the band work. Mike’s looks and personality were what worked for him on stage. His attitude was the grease that kept everything else from going to pieces.

“Meh. Might work,” Sydney conceded. “Learn it by next week and we’ll give it a shot. Speaking of which, got my pay from the last gig, Mikey? And who’s coming over tonight?”

“I’m there –“ and “Me –“ chimed Zig and Mike together.

Jesse hedged the question while taking his money from Mike. “Not sure yet. I gotta’ do something.”

“A’ight. Maybe we’ll see you,” offered Syd with one eyebrow cocked. “Hot date?”

For his part, Jesse merely grunted. Her question had been offered in kidding. They were all careful about giving Jesse his space. He’d made it clear that this was a requirement of his life as an ex-com.

“I’ll call you,” he said, grabbing up his case and heading out.

The evening was just falling as he made for the park. He wasn’t sure how to feel about the near-compulsion of the gesture, but he felt he HAD to find the old guy and the girl. After all, hadn’t he promised them to come back? To throw some cash their way when he could?

The reason – sound as it was in his head – didn’t explain the hammerblow of his heart when he turned the corner leading to Netherfield’s east entrance and saw them both still there, him playing and her singing, the last rays of the sun falling on her through the park trees as if she were on stage and spotlighted. She was singing something about heartache, a song Jesse didn’t know, and not knowing it made him feel – as he often did – just how much of life he’d missed in Altona.
When it was over, the girl turned to the old guy with a nod and a smile. Jesse instantly recognized the exchanged looks of satisfaction of a new tune that came out right. When he’d first approached, he’d felt ill at ease. Stupidly nervous, like he was back in high school or something, but their exchange made him feel kinship; he knew the feeling.

“Hey, umm, you two were really good,” he smiled as he approached them uncertainly. “I mean, that last song kicked it.”

He thought he saw a flash of recognition in the old guy’s eyes, one from earlier in the day, but he couldn’t deny that his attention was honed on the girl.

“Listen,” he went on quickly, looking back and forth between them so as not to find himself staring at her, “I was by earlier and I was going to throw some money in, but I was pretty tapped out.”

Jesse smiled apologetically and indicated his bass, acknowledging the common plight of all small time musicians and artists. He felt strange going on but he forced himself to speak the words that had been rolling through his mind since he’d left practice: words he both hoped to speak if he found the girl still there, but words he also dreaded. He was no good at this sort of thing anymore, dammit.

“Do you guys want to grab something to eat? I’m kinda’ flush at the moment, and like I said, I meant to hit you up earlier.”

 

[wideeyedone]

Hobart offered Jesse his hand. "What has the world come to if one musician can't buy dinner for another." Hobart's smile split his leathery face. "I am Hobart and this is my dear friend, Anna. She and I have been singing together for a while."

Anna offered him a shy smile. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "There is a diner, down the street. We go there for pancakes sometimes."

Hobart stashed the cash from the guitar case in his pocket and then snapped the guitar case closed. Hobart swung his backpack on to his shoulder. They walked three across down to the diner. The dinner smelled like grilled burgers and fried potatoes. The waitress knew Anna and Hobart and she had Hobart's coffee poured before they were even seated. Anna ordered an iced tea and the breakfast special- with crisp hashed browns and crisp bacon.

Hobart smiled at Jesse but he seemed a little wary. "So, young man... tell me about yourself. I take it you play in a band... what kind of music?"

Hobart poured sugar into his coffee with a swirl of cream. Anna nervously fidgeted with the salt shaker, she rolled back and forth as Hobart spoke. Anna looked at Jesse through her eyeslashes. There was something about him. He had a sadness about him, she wondered what his story was. But she knew she wouldn't ask. She felt like people should be entitled to their secrets.

 

[HermesVoice]

Jesse had wondered briefly what Hobart meant by “dear friend” when he took the older man’s hand with a nod and a muttered “Jesse … pleasure.” He’d glanced over to the girl – Anna – just in time to catch her comment and noted with unspoken pleasure the delicacy of her movement. “Breakfast for dinner then,” he’d grinned, clutching his own guitar case more tightly and falling into step with the two of them.

On the walk to the diner, another place he’d never been, even though he’d lived in the neighborhood for close to a year, Jesse tried to settle the jitter of his nerves. He continually glanced sideways across Hobart’s broad frame to note Anna and try to get a sense of the relationship between this strange pair. Jesse would peg Hobart round sixty and a guy who’d seen a lot. He wondered for a moment if the older man had done time himself, for there could be no doubt he was hardened, weathered beyond what was likely for someone who was merely under the cloud of some bum luck. And he played like someone who’d seen a lot: hard but soulful. Jesse recognized something of his own playing in Hobart’s … or at least in the small snatch of it he’d heard on the street.

About Anna he could draw no suppositions. He guessed she was in her late 20s, a notion he revised when he sat across from her in the intimacy of a booth.

Twenty-three … twenty-four maybe, he guessed over the coffee the waitress placed in front him. He waved away without comment the woman’s “cream-and-sugar, hon?” and studied Anna again as she gave her order. Beyond her age, though, he could make nothing of the enigma that was the girl or the turbulence of his own feelings. So much like Elise …

But he couldn’t dwell on comparisons while he placed his own order: “The breakfast special seems to come recommended,” he quipped to the waitress, nodding toward Anna with a smile. “I’ll have that.”

He resolved with the words that he’d suppress comparisons. ”Shit that’s gone should stay gone,” Sean would have said. It was an idea that had truth to it – the speaker’s standing as an inveterate liar notwithstanding – and it had appeal. Yet as he looked across at the pretty brunette, toying with the salt shaker, he couldn’t help remembering –

“ … kind of music?” he heard, at first unaware that Hobart had been speaking to him. He desperately tried to reconstruct what the older man had said, piecing it together in the space of a silence that Jesse was certain must seem an eternity to the other two. In the background he heard a bell ring, the small tinny kind that waitresses used in old-fashioned diners to tell the line cook a new order was in.

“Me?” he coughed, taking the moment to work through what seemed a reasonable question from Hobart. “I .. uh … I pretty much play everything.”

He offered it with an internal wince, hoping he’d guessed right, and he had to suppress a sigh of relief when neither of the two responded strangely. “I mean,” he went on, “I started with Blues … and a lot of gospel.” He paused a moment before plunging on. “That was kind of the background where I learned.”

Jesse had no idea why he’d told these strangers this. It touched dangerously close on things he’d told no one but the band, and he sure as hell had no reason to talk about Altona to these two. But there was something in the quiet calm of the old man that demanded confidence, and although the girl, Anna, had said nothing, he knew he wanted to trust her, even without a reason.

Goddam fool! he snarled at himself. Shit that’s gone should stay gone!

And with a resigned nod, he pushed the conversation away from himself. Away from his statement that invited questions.

“And what about you two?” he asked. “You seem like you’ve been playing together for years. I mean … you sound it … and you look it …”

He didn’t know what he was after with the question, and although he felt like there was some follow-up needed, he could find nothing else to say. He could only glance at Anna again, noting as he picked up his coffee that her eyes – behind the strands of darkness that continually fell before them – were jade.

 

[wideeyedone]

Anna smiled at Jesse's question. She laid her arm on Hobart's.

"We haven't known each other that long. I was waitressing in a little place not too far from here where the atmostphere and food are not as welcoming." She said with a playful grimace. "But things kept falling apart for me, just one thing after another and I had sung for Hobart a few times and he let me horn in on his gig."

Hobart smiled at her paternally. "This girl has the magic. Her voice makes the music new for me." Hobart's speaking voice was low and a little gravelled. The waitress arrived with platters of food. Hobart doused his eggs and hashed browns with ketchup and salt and pepper. Anna rolled her eyes at him.

Anna shook her head. SHe knew there was nothing magical about herself, but she loved to sing with Hobart. She had always loved to sing. Even back home where there was nothing to sing about.

Hobart told Jesse a little bit about himself. Hobart told him that he had always played and after the war... he had a hard time with a normal life. He found that he felt better sleeping outside and when he could set his own hours. So now he was singing and playing on the streets and doing a little handyman work at the hotel where he and Anna were sleeping on Meeker and 6th.

Anna shrugged and looked down at her plate. "I need to find another job so I can help earn my keep." Without thinking Anna swept her hair away from her face and off of her neck, putting the scar on her jawline on display. The red almost crescent shaped scar looked like someone had traced a red pen on the curve of her face. Sometimes she could almost forget it was there.

 

[HermesVoice]

Jesse smiled briefly when Hobart spoke of Anna and “magic” in the same breath. He understood that while the older man went on to talk about her singing, Hobart really meant something that ran more deeply in the girl. Layered into the duskiness of that voice, sheltered behind the midnight of the hair that she seemed to use as a kind of shield, there was a lucent presence. It glimmered in moments when she seemed least self-conscious: in the measures of her singing and the unknowing acts, like the smiling eye roll she offered her friend as he slathered his dinner with ketchup.

Jesse listened with interest as Hobart told him about life in Vietnam and about his return to the US. Without knowing it, he nodded in agreement when the older man talked about returning home, only to find himself a stranger in a strange land. But for all his interest in the vet’s story and sympathy for trials he knew himself, Jesse found himself looking to Anna to read her reactions, her emotions, her thoughts … insofar as she expressed any of them. Once when her glance met his own, he looked quickly down to his food in obvious embarrassment. The green of her eyes had unnerved him, and now he couldn’t help but wonder if he wasn’t beginning to look like some kind of stalker to both her and Hobart. He looked up quickly, but by then Anna’s attention had turned to her own food, and he cursed himself silently for his idiocy.

For Christ’s sake! What are you, a teenager again? he snarled, slapping himself mentally. With the kick, he promised himself better and worked to engage the girl through the rest of the meal. He laughed in ironic agreement when she told him about her need for steady work, sharing his own recent mixed luck: “It’s only part-time … but at least it means a decent meal every once in a while.”

He raised his coffee in appreciative toast to his fellow diners. “Here’s to the musician’s dream of a regular paycheck,” he chuckled.

Jesse hadn’t meant the remark as a spur, but Hobart seemed to take it that way. Setting down his own cup he prodded Jesse, “So you play out then, Jesse? I haven’t known many bass players to make a living on the street, but maybe you’re teamed up? Like Anna and me”

“Well … kind of, yeah,” Jesse replied looking over to Anna again. He went on to give a quick sketch of the band, but soon discovered to his surprise that he’d fallen into storytelling about gigs with Mike and Zig and Sydney. About the absurdities of dive bars and freezing practice spaces.

He didn’t know how long he’d gone on. He only noticed that they’d all finished their food when, embarrassed over what must seem to the other two like endless chatter, he retreated quickly with “So, we’re actually playing tomorrow night … if you know McNeely’s over on Baird Avenue.”

He almost blew out a sigh of genuine relief when he noticed the waitress standing at his shoulder. “I got that,” he said to her, taking the check.


“Pay at the counter, hon,” she smiled before tucking her pencil behind one ear, smiling at them all, and heading back toward the kitchen.

Jesse watched her go with a grin. He could see why the other two liked the place. It felt old and comfortable like a well worn t-shirt. He turned back to them, still grinning unknowlingly.

“Ready?”

 

[wideeyedone]

Hobart covered the tip. He left stacks of quarters. He looked at Jesse with his weather worn smile. "It is laundry night for our waitress, she appreciates the quarters." He left a big tip.

Anna followed Jesse to the register. "I would love to come see your show. And I bet Hobart would to. It was really great of you to take us to dinner. Hobart doesn't just open up to everyone. But he has a great sense of people. If he likes you, it means you are a good sort." She found herself smiling up at him.

She got the location and time of his gig. Hobart was charming the waitresses and offering his complements to the silver haired line cook in the kitchen. Anna smiled at Hobart affectionately.

"Take me out for a night of good music?" She asked playfully, tilting her head to the side. Hobart laughed and tugged on her ponytail.

"Of course...it would be good to hear someone else's music for a change. Maybe we will hear some music that inspires us to try something new."

The trio walked into the cold night air. Hobart wrapped his arm around Anna's shoulder. They began to amble down the road that was becoming filled with unsavory nightlife. At the corner there were a cluster of young women attempting to earn their keep while their pimp stood a few feet away. Most of the legitimate businesses were closing and now the night was about to take over.