Very Best of Charles de Lint, The (55 page)

She studied me for a moment.

“Well, at least you know your stuff,” she said. “Are you a musician?”

I nodded. “I used to play the trumpet, but I don’t have the lip for it anymore.”

“Did you ever play with him?”

“No, I was in an R&B cover band in the seventies, but times were hard and I ended up living in the squats for a while, same as him. The closest I got to playing the punk scene was when I was in a ska band, and later doing some Two-Tone. But the music I loved to play the most was always jazz.”

“What’s your name?”

“Eddie Ramone.”

“You’re kidding.”

I smiled. “No, and before you ask, I got my name honestly—from my dad.”

“I’m Sarah Blue.”

I glanced at her hair. “So which came first?”

“The name. Like you, it came with the family.”

“I guess people who knew you could really say they knew the Blues.”

“Ha ha.”

“Sorry.”

“’sokay.”

I waited a moment, then asked, “So is there more to your melancholy than the loss of an old favourite musician?”

She shrugged. “It just brought it all home to me, how that night at the Standish was, like, one of those pivotal moments in my life, only I didn’t recognize it. Or maybe it’s just that that’s when I started making a lot of bad choices.” She touched her hair. “It’s funny, but the first thing I did when I heard he’d died was put the eyebrow piercing back in and dye my hair blue like it was in those days—by way of mourning. But I think I’m mourning the me I lost as much as his passing.”

“We can change our lives.”

“Well, sure. But we can’t change the past. See that night I hooked up with Brian. I thought he was into all the things I was. I wanted to change the world and make a difference. Through music, but also through activism.”

“So you played?”

“Yeah. Guitar—
electric
guitar—and I sang. I wrote songs, too.”

“What happened?”

“I pissed it all away. Brian had no ambition except to party hearty and that whole way of life slipped into mine like a virus. I never even saw the years slide away.”

“And Brian?”

“I dumped him after a couple of years, but by then I’d just lost my momentum.”

“You could still regain it.”

She shook her head. “Music’s a young person’s game. I do what I can in terms of being an environmental and social activist, but the music was the soul of it for me. It was everything. Whatever I do now, I just feel like I’m going through the motions.”

“You don’t have to be young to make music.”

“Maybe not. But whatever muse I had back in those days pissed off and left me a long time ago. Believe me, I’ve tried. I used to get home from work and pick up my guitar almost every day, but the spark was just never there. I don’t even try anymore.”

“I hear you,” I said. “I never had the genius—I just saw it in others. And when you know what you
could
be doing, when the music in your head’s so far beyond what you can pull out of your instrument….”

“Why bother.”

I gave a slow nod, then studied her for a moment. “So if you could go back and change something, is that what it would be? You’d go to that night and go your own way instead of hooking up with this Brian guy?”

She laughed. “I guess. Though I’d have to
apply
myself as well.”

“I can send you back.”

“Yeah, right.”

I didn’t take my gaze from those blue eyes of hers. I just repeated what I’d said. “I can send you back.”

She let me hold her gaze for a couple of heartbeats, then shook her head.

“You almost had me going there,” she said.

“I can send you back,” I said a third time.

Third time’s the charm and she looked uneasy.

“Send me back in time.”

I nodded.

“To warn myself.”

“No.
You’d
go back, with all you know now. And it’s not really back. Time doesn’t run in a straight line, it all happens at the same time. Past, present, future. It’s like this is you now.” I touched my left shoulder. “And this is you then.” I touched the end of a finger on my left hand. “If I hold my arm straight, it seems linear, right?”

She gave me a dubious nod.

“But really—” I crooked my left arm so that my finger was touching my shoulder, “—the two times are right beside each other. It’s not such a big jump.”

“And you can send me there?”

I nodded. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“You come back here on this exact same day and ask for me.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s how it works.”

She shook her head. “This is nuts.”

“Nothing to lose, everything to gain.”

“I guess…”

I knew I almost had her, so I smiled and said, “Should you stay or should you go?”

Her blue gaze held mine again, then she shrugged. Picking up her beer, she chugged the last third down, then set the empty glass on the table.

“What the hell,” she said. “How does it work?”

I slipped off my stool and closed the few steps between us.

“You think about that night,” I said. “Think about it hard. Then I put two fingers on each of your temples—like this. And then I kiss your third eye.”

I leaned forward and pressed my lips against her brow, halfway between my fingers. Held my lips there for a heartbeat. Another. Then I stepped away.

She looked at me for a long moment, before standing up. She didn’t say a word, but they never do. She just laid a couple of bills on the bar to pay for her drink and walked out the door.

* * *

December 23, 2002

“I feel like I should know you,” the bartender said when the girl with the dark blue hair walked into the bar and pulled up a stool.

“My name’s Sarah Blue. What’s yours?”

“Alphonse,” he said and grinned. “And you’re really Sarah Blue?” He glanced towards the doorway. “I thought you big stars only travelled with an entourage.”

“All I’ve got is a cab waiting outside. And I’m not such a big star.”

“Yeah, right. Like ‘Take It to the Streets’ wasn’t the big hit of—when was it? Summer of ’89.”

“You’ve got a good memory.”

“It was a good song.”

“Yeah, it was. I never get tired of playing it. But my hit days were a long time ago. These days I’m just playing theatres and clubs again.”

“Nothing wrong with that. So what can I get you?”

“Actually, I was expecting to meet a guy in here today. Do you know an Eddie Ramone?”

“Sure, I do.” He shook his head. “I should have remembered.”

“Remembered what?”

“Hang on.”

He went to a drawer near the cash and pulled out a stack of envelopes held together with a rubber band. Flipping through them, he returned to where she was sitting and laid one out on the bar in front of her. In an unfamiliar hand was written:

Sarah Blue

December 23, 2002

“Do those all have names and dates on them?” she asked.

“Every one of them.”

He showed her the top one. It was addressed to:

Jonathan Block

January 27, 2003

“You think he’ll show?” she asked.

“You did.”

She shook her head. “What’s this all about?”

“Damned if I know. People just drop these off from time to time and sooner or later someone shows up to collect it.”

“It’s not just Eddie?”

“No. But most of the time it’s Eddie.”

“And he’s not here?”

“Not today. Maybe he tells you why in the letter.”

“The letter. Right.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” Alphonse said.

He walked back to where he’d left the drawer open and dropped the envelopes in. When he looked up, she was still watching him.

“You want a drink?” he asked.

“Sure. Whatever’s on tap that’s dark.”

“You’ve got it.”

She returned her attention to the letter, staring at it until Alphonse returned with her beer. She thanked him, had a sip, then slid her finger into the top of the envelope and tore it open. There was a single sheet inside, written in the same unfamiliar script that was on the envelope. It said:

Hello Sarah,

Well, if you’re reading this, I guess you’re a believer now. I sure hope your life went where you wanted it to go this time.

Funny thing, that might amuse you. I was talking to Joe, back in the Camden Town days, and I asked him if he had any advice for a big fan who’d be devastated when he finally went to the big gig in the sky.

The first thing he said was, “Get bent.”

The second was, “You really think we’re ever going to make it?”

When I nodded, he thought for a moment, then said, “You tell him or her—it’s a her?—tell her it’s never about the player, is it? It’s always about the music. And the music never dies.”

And if she wanted to be a musician? I asked him.

“Tell her that whatever she takes on, stay in for the duration. Maybe you can just bang out a tune or a lyric, maybe it takes you forever. It doesn’t matter how you put it together. All that matters is that it means something to you, and you play it like it means something to you. Anything else is just bollocks.”

I’m thinking, if you got your life straight this time, you’d probably agree with him.

But now to business. First off, the reason I’m not here to see you is that this isn’t the same future I sent you back from. That one still exists, running alongside this one, but it’s closed to you because you’re living that other life now. And you know there’s just no point in us meeting again, because we’ve done what needed to be done.

At least we did it for you.

If you’re in the music biz now, you know there’s no such thing as a free ride. What I need you to do is, pass it on. You know how to do it. All you’ve got to decide is who.

Eddie

Sarah read it twice before she folded the letter up, returned it to the envelope and stowed it in the pocket of her jacket. She had some more of her beer. Alphonse approached as she was setting her glass back down on the bar top.

“Did that clear it up for you?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Well, that’s Eddie for you. The original man of mystery. He ever start in on his time travel yarns with you?”

She shook her head again, but only because she wasn’t ready to admit it to anyone. To do so didn’t feel right, and that feeling had made her keep it to herself through all the years.

Alphonse held out his right hand. “He wanted to send me back to the day before I broke this—said I could turn my life around and live it right this time.”

“And…did you?”

Alphonse laughed. “What does it look like?”

Sarah smiled. Of course, he hadn’t. Not in this world. But maybe in one running parallel to it. .

She thought about that night at the Standish, so long ago. The Clash playing and she was dancing, dancing, so happy, so filled with music. And she was straight, too—no drinks, no drugs that night—but high all the same. On the music. And then right in the middle of a blistering version of “Clampdown,” her head just…
swelled
with this impossible lifetime that she’d never, she
couldn’t
have lived.

But she knew she’d connect with a guy named Brian. And she did.

And she
knew
how it would all go downhill from there, so after the concert, when they were leaving the theatre from a side door, she blew him off. And he got pissed off and gave her a shove that knocked her down. He looked at her, sobered by what he’d done, but she waved him off. He hesitated, then walked away, and she just sat there in the alley, thinking she was going crazy. Wanting to cry.

And then someone reached a hand to her to help her up.

“You okay there?” a voice with a British accent asked.

And she was looking into Joe Strummer’s face. The Joe Strummer she’d seen on stage. But superimposed over it, she saw Joe Strummers that were still to come.

The one she’d seen fronting the Pogues in…some other life.

The one she’d seen fronting the Mescaleros. .

The one who’d die of a heart attack at fifty years young. .

“You want me to call you a cab?” he asked.

“No. No, I’m okay. Great gig.”

“Thanks.”

On impulse, she gave him a kiss, then stepped back. Away. Out of his life. Into her new one.

She blinked, realizing that Alphonse was still standing by her. How long had she been spaced out?

“Well. . ” she said, looking for something to say. “Eddie seemed like a nice guy to me.”

Alphonse nodded. “He’s got a big heart—he’ll give you the shirt off his back. Hasn’t got much of a lip these days, but he still sits in with the band from time to time. You can’t say no to a guy like that and he never tries to showboat, like he thinks he plays better than he can. He keeps it simple and puts the heart into what he’s playing.”

“Maybe I’ll come back and catch him one night.”

“Door’s always open during business hours, Miss Blue.”

“Sarah.”

“Sarah, then. You come back any time.”

He left to serve a new customer and Sarah looked around the bar. No one stood out to her—the way she assumed she had to Eddie—so she’d have to come back. She put a couple of bills on the bar top to cover the cost of her beer and went out to look for her cab. As she got into the back seat, she found herself hoping that Eddie had made himself at least one world where he’d got his lip back. That was the only reason she could think that he kept passing along the magic of a second chance—paying back his own attempts at getting it right.

It was either that, or he was an angel.

* * *

January 27, 2003

Alphonse smiled when she came in. When he started to draw her a draught, she shook her head.

“I’ll have a coffee if you’ve got one,” she said.

“We don’t get much call for coffee, even at this time of day, so it’s kind of grungy. Let me put on a fresh pot.”

He busied himself at the coffee machine, throwing out the old grounds, inserting a filter full of new coffee.