Dead in Time

Chapter Fifteen

April 5th 1976

“…and hoooo-ooold it there. Sorry, boys, I wasn’t full on.” Damon’s Telecaster made a sad, metallic gurgle as his fingers left the strings. “Can we try it again, only not so fast, right? And Leon, man, you’ve gotta— You know, you’re not feelin’ it, man? All right? So let’s try to concentrate. All right. Once more.”

He counted off into the grim, irritable disquiet, apparently oblivious to the face Leon pulled behind his back. Joss tossed off a big double roll and struck up the rhythm, his muttered comment about human metronomes almost lost under the drawl of Charlie sliding into the bass riff. Leon wrinkled his nose and concentrated on his Les Paul. He knew how to play the damn song. He’d written it. Or had Day forgotten about that? Seemed like he managed to forget a lot of shit when he tried. Leon frowned and made the awkward chord change Day had wanted to include. Maybe it didn’t matter, the forgetting. Y’know. ’Cos… if the past was only something you remembered—like how you remembered being that person at that time, even if you weren’t anymore—who could say whether it had really been real or not?

Yeah. So maybe nothin’ mattered. Maybe nothin’ was real.

He hit a duff note on the D string and stared down at his hands like they had nothing to do with him. Dream It Better ground to a crunching, uncomfortable halt for the eighth time in almost as many bars, and it took Leon a while to realise Damon had started yelling at him.

“…sake, y’know? I can’t always be, like, checking it, y’know, man? ’Cos, when I’m singing I can’t, like, telepathically… fuckin’…. Y’know?”

Leon shook his head, still gazing at the Les Paul’s neck. A variety of dings and scratches marked the mahogany, and the binding looked a little whacked these days. He loved this guitar.

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “S’easy to blow it, I know. Sorry.”

“Well, that ain’t the point, man. I mean….”

Damon drew a breath, preparing to really let rip. Not fair, Leon thought vaguely. He heard Charlie scoff, set his bass down, and reach for the bottle of scotch that stood by his foot.

“Tin hats on, lads,” Charlie said cheerfully. “I think the lovebirds are gonna have a tiff.”

Leon glared at him. He turned to glare at Day as well, but he wasn’t paying attention, distracted into a general complaint—directed at the glass wall—that the tone didn’t sound punchy enough. They intended to do something about that, right? Cris took his cigarette out of his mouth and waved in wordless assurance, but Day had already hit his flow. The sound engineer rolled his eyes. Leon’s gaze fell to Joss instead, and softened a bit. Joss gave him a small, tucked-up smile.

“I thought it was all right, actually,” he volunteered.

Charlie’s snort of laughter wasn’t quite stifled by the scotch bottle. Leon curled his fingers back on the fretboard, back where everything made sense, and moved a shape further up the neck. Doors opened, on and off: Cris coming in to calm Day down, Joss pushing away from his kit and going out for a smoke… behind the glass, Inez got up and excused herself. Leon popped a couple of strings, and the partial chord echoed sweetly through the scuffle of voices.

“Inez?” Damon leaned past Cris and called after her even as the studio door swung shut. “Inez? Where you goin’, girl?”

Leon tried another partial version of the same shape; it sounded better. The melody, they’d had for years. Used to play it as an eight bar blues back when they were still gigging pubs down Jamaica Road. Everything was different now: the time signature, at least half the lyrics, the goddamn key… but the tune itself had stayed unchanged.