Luna Basswood's Arc

Chapter 9 of 14

Luna reached the tavern porch at four. Susie sat on an amp crate with a folded sheet on her knee. The stage lights were off. The field was empty except for a few crew coiling cable. Soundcheck. Finally. "Play it," Luna said. Susie unfolded the sheet and counted off. She started fast. Sharp downstrokes. A hook that jumped between two notes a fifth apart. It was loud and it was quick and it landed nothing like Luna's slow held opener. Luna's eight minutes ended on a low sustained D. Susie's song opened on a high jab of A. Luna heard the gap before Susie finished the first bar. Dead air. A held note dying into a jump-cut. The crowd would feel the seam like a dropped call. "Stop," Luna said. Susie stopped. "It's the song. I'm not changing it." "I'm not asking you to." Luna set the fish-shaped bass on her knee. "The seam is mine to fix. Give me a minute." She thought about the eight minutes she'd written in the pod. Sustained. Tuned to the ground hum. The last note was a low D she'd chosen because it was the deepest one her instrument held clean. Susie's first note was an A a fifth up. Between them, nothing. Luna needed a bridge. Not another song. One note that belonged to both. She walked her opener down in her head. The seventh bar. The eighth. If she bent the last note up, past the D, sliding a full step, she'd land on the E under Susie's A. Not the same note. The root of it. The floor Susie's jab would stand on. She tried it. Held the D for four beats. Bent the string slow, using the whole neck, letting the fish body rattle as the pitch climbed. The note thickened. She pushed it up to E and stopped. She held the E for one bar. Empty. Waiting. "Come in now," she said. Susie hit the A. The E was already under it. The two notes locked. No gap. The jab sounded like it had been waiting. Susie lowered her pencil. "Huh." "Again," Luna said. They ran the seam three more times. Every time, the bend caught the jab. The crowd would hear one song crossing into another, not two songs colliding. Susie folded the sheet. "That works." "It works," Luna said. She was still holding the bass. Her fingers ached from the bend. She hadn't sweated much. She'd thought her way through it in under ten minutes. That counted. A crew member walked past with a coil of cable and tapped his watch. Forty minutes to doors. The judges would be seated by then. The field would fill. Luna had a set that held together at the seam. She still hadn't played it in front of anyone.