Skipping a Beat

The evening crowd at Luna’s immediately fell in love with Reese. It was as if all he had to do was walk in and take the stage and he already had us twisted around that finger of his. He came in almost every night and when he did a calm anticipation would come over the crowd and they would almost hold their breath. Of course he would come in twenty minutes late and play much later into the night than he was supposed to and that pissed me off to no end. Claire didn’t seem to mind though, as long as he kept bringing in all the customers that he did. He could’ve done a striptease and she wouldn’t have minded if she could pay the bills from month to month.

I hadn’t said a single word to him the entire time he worked here. I knew his type and I knew what he thought of girls. There was nothing in the world that would make me want to befriend him or anything more than a simple and curt “Hello” when he came in or an icy “Thank you” when he assisted me in cleaning up the café.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t a nice person. He didn’t walk around throwing out insults or cussing all the time. In fact from what I had heard he was polite and kind and usually kept his meaner thoughts to himself. There were times when he’s slip and whatever was on his mind would fall out, but no one seemed to notice this and it usually earned him a few cackles from Claire when he helped clean.

It had been three weeks since he started working here and I was pretty sure that Claire was in love with him. She laughed more at his jokes than she ever had at mine, and she always perked up when he walked into the room. At first I had almost felt a little jealous over her actions and that she was getting a new favorite employee, but after a while the jealousy ebbed away to just an annoyance that was constantly there whenever he was around. There was nothing that Reese had done to me personally that offended me or upset me in any way, it was just his presence that set me on edge and made me angry and biting. Claire had noticed this but never said anything to me, instead she would send me disapproving looks or disappointed stares. I knew that I was acting immature over Reese, and I tried with all my might every time that I saw him to open up my mind to the possibility that he was a good guy, but there was something there that was blocking the way.

Maybe it was the guitar. And honestly, all I can think of to this day is that it was the damn guitar. It was light honey colored with strings that made amazing noise when he played it, but it looked exactly like the one that I had grown up with. The one that had sat in my parent’s room everyday my entire life, rarely ever played by my father, and the one that was missing the same day that he was. There was something about guitars and guitarists in general that made me upset some primal traumatic event when I was a child that was probably profound and the root of all my problems.

Our last regular guitar player wasn’t a professional musician. He had real dreams to go and be a doctor, and to make people better. He played guitar as a hobby to make some extra money to save up for college and he had taken his first escape route out. But Reese was a professional musician, even though I had never asked him this personally, I knew. It was something about the way he carried himself and that case, the way he looked when he was up on a stage. He had never done a single thing to me to make me hate him except that he played the guitar for a living. I told myself that this was no different than waiting tables for a living or serving coffee, but to me all I could see him as is the label of ‘musician’ and everything they were supposed to be, the good and the bad but mostly the bad.

“If you don’t try to be nicer when Reese is around I’m going to have to put you in a time-out,” Claire told me one day right before the evening shift was supposed to start. She was standing in front of me with her hands on her hips and trying to look serious. I stopped dead in my tracks, only one arm free from my coat and I looked up at her sheepishly.

“I know,” was all I could muster, because I really did know. I knew that I should be nicer to Reese; he was just a person trying to live his life. “Goddamn, I know I have to.”

“You better,” Claire said, her arms dropping to her side, “Wow that was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.”

I laughed once and shed the rest of my coat and hung it on a hook in the back, the air was warming back in the kitchen, all the machines going at once most of the time and the walls were thicker to keep the sound out of the rest of the café at night. I breathed in the air that smelt like coffee and burnt muffins and tried to remember what life was like before Luna’s.

“How’s your mother?” Claire asked her voice slightly uncertain and her back to me and I felt the anger rise up in my chest again.

“How should I know?” I said sharply before inhaling deeply through my nose like my second grade teacher taught me to do. “I’m sorry,” I apologized quickly and tried to recover from this, “She’s fine I guess, I haven’t seen her much lately but I think she’s okay.”

“I’m sorry hun,” Claire said with a sympathetic cluck of her tongue and I shoved my way out of the kitchen. I hated when people apologized about my mother, as if their apology would somehow make up for her lack of one. They always tried to understand and put themselves into my shoes, but I knew that was impossible, no one could understand what my mother was like, and if they could there was no way in hell they would try to apologize about it. She didn’t feel sorry, so fuck me sideways if I ever did.

The lights were still bright out in the front yard and it seemed like an insult to the evening. I turned on the coffee machine out front with a quickly flip or a switch and I started to organize everything that I would need. At exactly seven o’clock Claire unlocked the front door to announce that we were open and dimmed the lights in the room so that everything was set in a musky sort of haze and you could see dust motes in the air.

Customers rushed in with orders and I quickly tried to fill all of them with a smile and a ‘thank you’ and Reese didn’t stride in until seven-thirty, Claire didn’t reprimand him or anything for it, she just let him waltz over to the stage as a hush came over the crowd and they shifted in their seats as if this were the best part of their favorite movie.

I watched as he took the stage from my spot in the dark and swallowed the anger that rose up as the gleam in his eyes sparkled in the light and he grinned slowly at the crowd before beginning to play. The melody that spilled from his fingers was the same one that he always opened with, the slow one that took me somewhere far away and kept me there until he was finished playing, and even then I could still feel it winding its way around my heartstrings. Whenever he played the anger for Reese disappeared, replaced by awe for his songs and his notes that hung in the air, the romantic songs that made you want to sway in place or press yourself against someone in a slow winding dance.

When Reese finished playing and people began to slowly make their way towards the exits it seemed as if the magic of his performance was broken. It felt like that almost every night that he played that some sort of spell was broken once he set down his instrument, some sort of force field that kept us from the rest of the world was breeched and people realized they had lives and mortgages and kids back at home and they slowly shuffled their way back to reality where they had a million problems and only a dozen solutions.

Reese immediately began to stack the chairs on top of the tables. He seemed to be getting into the swing of Luna’s more and more each day, and only had to be reminded occasionally about a job left undone. Claire saw this as huge improvement and loved having a male around here to do the heavy lifting that neither of us were capable of. Reese never complained about having to work after his set was finished, in fact most of the time he looked pleased with himself as he worked, humming that same low song under his breath that was like a magnet and was meant to pull you into him.

“Are you going to wipe the tables?” A voice broke my train of thought and I realized that I was still leaning up lazily against the counter, making no effort to move whatsoever. It took me another moment to pinpoint the voice to Reese, who had never directly said anything to me before this and I quickly snapped straight up and grabbed the cleaning supplies from the counter.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” I apologized, even though I didn’t have to. Reese didn’t say the words with a mean tone or an accusatory one, just a plain and simple curious one, a tone that just wanted an answer, and I liked that.

He shrugged and continued on with his job, obviously not intending to turn this into an actual conversation and I felt a slight wave of relief in my toes. His voice had been deeper than I thought it would have been even though I had heard it before, it was slightly husky like he had smoked cigarettes but he had never once smelt like that thick smoke. It was the kind of voice that if I heard in the darkness would make my toes curl and my back arch and it made me thinking of fumbling limbs and lips coming together. All of that thought came just from the sound of his voice, and I shocked myself by thinking that, so shocked that I turned sharply and my elbow hit one of the chairs and slid it off the table and clambering to the floor.

“Jesus!” Claire shouted from the backroom, rushing forward to see what had happened.

“Nothing’s broken,” I said quickly, rushing to reassure her and she looked like she had just had a stroke.

“Are you okay? Did anyone get hurt? Is everything okay?” She asked even though I had just told her that nothing was broken, she had the wide and worried eyes of a new mother and I took a step back to reveal the toppled chair.

“We’re fine. No one is hurt and nothing is broken. I knocked a chair over, so sue me,” I said, trying to play off the hot embarrassment rushing to my cheeks.

“God Laura, be more careful,” Claire said, all the worry gone from her face and replaced with an amused kind of annoyed.

“Screw you I am careful,” I shot back, grinning slightly as I bent to pick up the forlorn looking chair. Claire retreated back to the kitchen and I tried my best to appear graceful while I restacked the chair. My cheeks felt hot under the few strands of thick hair that stuck to them. I avoided even looking in Reese’s direction because I knew that he if someone else had knocked over a chair I’d be trying my hardest not to laugh my ass off.

“Do you need help?” his voice rang out quietly from behind me, closer than I expected.

“No,” I said with a slightly pained tone to my voice that I wished wasn’t there. These chairs were some sort of solid wood and matted down with thick fabric, they were comfortable as all hell but a bitch to pick up. “I’ve got it,” I tried again to reassure both him and myself.

“Are you sure? Those chairs are fucking heavy,” he said his tone lighter this time and I knew that there was a dimpled smile in there somewhere.

“Really I’ve got it,” I said, my voice close to a snap but not really, and I felt ashamed for not being nicer, he was just trying to help. But I had already lifted it up onto the table and I no longer needed any help, my pride glowing in my chest like a hungry beast that needed to be fed.

“Sorry,” he said, and I could hear the verbal step back in his head, the equivalent of pushing himself away, removing himself from the situation that was me.

A beat of silence followed and I let out a loud exhale just for something to listen to, I placed my hand on my back like I was too tired to keep it up and shut my eyes tight, “No I’m sorry, I guess I’m just in a bad mood tonight.”

He muttered something low under his breath quickly as soon as I said that, but I heard the edges of it, the sounds of words that I couldn’t make out, “What was that?” I asked, the annoyance seeping back into my bloodstream faster than a flash flood.

“Nothing,” he said sheepishly, turning around and pretending to be busy with stacking chairs even though he was already done.

“You just said something!” I said, trying to sound more forceful this time.

He shook his head vigorously, “It was nothing, really.”

“You can’t just mutter something and then tell me that it’s nothing,” I said, my tone sharp like my mother’s when she gets angry with me.

He sighed and seemed to be thinking for a moment, I could almost see the gears turning in his head as he thought this over, and I didn’t move from where I was standing and staring at his back that was clad in a light gray T-shirt that was snug on his frame.

“I said that it seems like you’re in a bad mood every night then,” his tone bitter and apologetic at the same time.

I watched him turn around slowly to face me, his eyes resting on my face but not on my own eyes. I tried my best to make my gaze a glare, to get angry at him for saying something like this about me, but I found it impossible to do so, in fact, the truth in his words was so distinct that I secretly couldn’t help but agree with him.

“Listen,” I sighed, my arms resting on my hips in the ultimate stance of womanhood. “I’m going to be straight with you because you seem like an okay human being. But honestly? I don’t really like you, and I’m not sure why, but something about you makes me angry almost always. Just because we work together doesn’t mean we have to be best friends and we don’t even have to talk but we have to be pleasant with each other if we don’t want working here to seem like hell. So let’s agree that we’re never going to link arms and sing Kumbaya around a campfire, but I won’t be a bitch to you if you’re not an asshole to me,” I finished in a rush, as if I were running out of air in a room filling with water.

He was stony silent for a minute, and I didn’t meet his eyes as he stood there and slowly absorbed my words. It was then I realized that he did almost everything slowly. He was an old dog that had just about given up trying to do anything.

“That sounds fine to me, I hate that song anyway,” He said and I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle at that as I saw him grin.

“So then we agree to leave each other alone, am I understood?” I asked, holding out my hand like a peace offering.

“Yes ma’am,” Reese said with a salute that had me grinning again as I turned around to get back to wiping down tables. Reese breezed to the back of the room to empty the garbage and I could hear him humming the entire way out the door.

To this day, I can still here that humming sometimes when it’s silent outside, and it makes me smile.