“Protect what you love
Till that love kills you
’Cause life ain’t livin’
Without someone to thrill you.
Try to laugh harder than you cry
’Cause we ain’t really livin’, just waitin’ to die…”
I always feel like a king onstage. The greatest. My voice is like a flame at the feet of the people on the dance floor, making those feet rise up and pound down harder as their hips move. I slam on my guitar. Women sway and shake their hips. The beat moves me too, awakens the magic in me. Without me trying, my power bubbles up, like foam in a champagne bottle. It fizzes inside me and spills out of my guitar.
My sister notices. She sits up straighter on her barstool, looking wide-eyed and scared as blood-colored smoke bends and rises from the neck of my shiny guitar. The crowd can’t see it. But they feel it. The smoke snakes all over the room. A guy dancing across from Jayla’s seat is bopping in a stiff-collared white shirt, a waistcoat, and dark trousers. He dips a dark-skinned girl in a yellow dress. The girl stays down low, tilted at an impossible angle, with her skirt catching wind and her entire body balanced on a high heel.
The crowd moves in slow motion, almost frozen as their bodies windto the beat. The drunken joy is stuck on their euphoric faces, smiles barely changing, mouths wide with excitement. It’s like they forgot all their bills, their problems, and the hate they face outside these walls. Part of me wants to hold that happiness forever. Stay lost in the music, in the fun of being one with the beat and each other. But that would be like trading sure for unsure. It wouldn’t be right. If I use the power of my music on people for too long, it can create hypnotic delusions. Delusions that some would rather die than wake up from. That others would kill to have, like getting one last kiss from a dead lover.
It may be beautiful. But it isn’t real. Protecting their real joy is why I’m here. It’s why I helped Loot start this place to begin with. And it’s why I gotta shut it down tonight.
My head feels like it’s splitting in two. It burns between my eyes as I try to force the smoke back into the guitar. I gotta do it. Red clouds roll close as hell. Gold music notes flicker in them like lightning. They stretch and twist like arrows. I exhale slow, trying to stay calm and control the power before those arrows bend into knives and stab someone’s heart. Haze steams right in my face, and though I’m scared the pain will blaze hot enough to kill me, I stare into it. The notes and arrows shimmer around me, aimed at a ghostly thin picture flickering in the clouds.
It’s a beautiful Black girl with a broad nose and hair so long it looks like a dark river. She’s standing at the entrance to one of our concerts in a gleaming ruby-red dress. Her eyes find me. Dark brown with bursts of hazel like drizzles of honey on a praline. My mind feels locked until her image fades. A warmth flickers through me. She’s like seeing a dream that I didn’t know I needed. A dream I don’t want to wake from. Her face plays on repeat in my mind after the vision ends. Who is she?
The arrows become music notes again and vanish as the guitar smoke melts into thin air. The crowd speeds up like a movie on fast forward until the folks are dancing normally.
I gaze down at my guitar. It usually only shows me images, snapshots of the futures of those I’m around. I wonder if the vision girl will be part of my future, but it’s probably just wishful thinking. I’ve never seen my future before. That’s not how the gift works no matter what I do.
But I feel drawn to her in a way I’ve never felt drawn to anybody… like I’m supposed to know her. I have to find out who she is.
I finish the song and take a bow. The crowd explodes with applause. Riding the high, I head back to the bar.
“Do five more songs.” Loot slides three glasses in front of me. “Every time you hit the stage, people buy more drinks. Keep them happy—and our pockets full!”
I flash him a weak smile and wrap my fingers around a tumbler. Loot bops over to serve other folks at the bar. My thoughts spiral as I strategize the best way to help them. The echo of the girl’s face is distracting me from what needs to be done tonight.
The guy sitting on the other side of Jayla looks at her and starts humming. He’s sad ugly with a pointy beard and the kind of face his mama must have cried about. “Mmm, darlin’, if you was a book you’d gotta be the finest print.”
My sister rolls her eyes. “And you’d still never get in my covers.”
I laugh.
He fires off another corny overused pickup line. “Baby, you’re like pork chops and gravy. I wanna take you home and sop you up with a biscuit. Let’s—”
“Watch your mouth,” I say.
“Mind ya business,” he spits.
My sister scoots away as the man moves closer to her. Her face is all scrunched up because his breath probably reeks of booze and funk.
“I may not be the best-looking guy here, but—” He inches closer to Jayla. “My desire for you is like diarrhea, darlin’.” His thick hand grips her thigh. “It can go all night.”
Jayla pushes him off.
“If you put your hand on my sister again, you gone lose it.” I jump out of my seat, so he knows I’m not playing. I didn’t want to fight tonight. But I will if I have to.
“Didn’t I tell you to mind ya business.” He tries to grab Jayla’s waist.
She stands up.
