Savy was a juggernaut of energy, dancing, gyrating. She twisted the volumes higher on their amps, and higher still. In the silence between songs Clay anticipated the approaching wail of sirens, or the rotors of an LAPD chopper, but all he ever heard were car horns, random shouts from the drunks below, and the faint chunka-chunka drone of a rockabilly band pouring it on at the Stone Fox eleven stories down. It was like they were ghosts themselves up here, able to escape the lame restrictions of the mortal world and invoke a decibel riot.
“Got any originals?” Savy asked, after they’d run through a Quicksand song everyone knew. And here was where she really knocked Clay on his ass. Fiasco and Spider spent a minute or two listening to “Voices in the Dark” before they found an appropriate rhythm-section groove to go with. But it was Savy who launched the song into orbit. Her guitar leads rode across his riffs as gracefully as a surfer over towering waves, giving it a melodic hook here, holding the song together while Clay soloed there, then tearing off a solo of her own that was so fast and flawless it made Clay’s eyes cross. “This is how I emp-tee pain!” he sang, and as Boyle predicted, no one wanted to let that line go, all four of them screaming it.
And if anyone ever asked Clay about the moment he knew that music was his life, he would surely cite this one, playing with Savy and her band under the fiercely glowing letters of The Knickerbocker Hotel.
While Fiasco shared a doobie with Spider on the fire escape (cannabis apparently being an exception to the no-drug policy), Clay climbed down to the honeymoon suite with Savy. There were no dead ballplayers or perennial sex symbols waiting there, just dark, completely empty rooms, and from Clay’s perspective he and Savy were as alone as two people could be.
“I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt so good,” he confessed.
“Right? If only we could feel that alive all the time.” Savy yanked the extension cords from the outlets and flung them out the window, where they dangled like jungle vines.
“I’m not as versed as you guys, I know that. I don’t have dozens of shows under my belt and the people I played with back home—”
“It’s going to take awhile to think it over,” Savy warned. “We’ve been looking for a frontman so long, I sometimes think Robert Plant would fail to make the cut. But whatever happens, you played your heart out. Even Fee didn’t have anything bad to say—which is the only compliment he ever gives.” She looked at Clay so fiercely then that he actually took a step backward. “And I don’t care if you can’t sheet-read music, Clay, you’re amusician. Don’tforget it.”
“Alright. Thanks, Sav,” he said, and because he didn’t trust that the dim room would conceal his shaking hands, and because he had already collected his guitar case, Clay slipped out of the room while Savy yelled up to her band and, like Elvis before him, left the building.
That night, Clay learned that Peter had been right. There were footsteps wandering the house. They were subtle at first, low creaks and faint echoes downstairs—the almost non-sound of a skulking burglar—but when they mounted the back staircase, there was no missing them.
Clay was alone, Peter already burning the midnight oil at his office, and this sounded nothing like his father’s purposeful gait; these were the slow, random steps of a nocturnal drifter. Instinctively Clay reached out for the object nearest his bed—which happened to be Boyle’s guitar—and pulled it from its stand.
The footfalls reached his bedroom door… and continued down the hall.
“Rocco?” Clay chanced, before fear could freeze his tongue.
The steps paused. Retraced their way to his door.
The knob rattled. The door parted from the jamb. Clay’s spit dried in his mouth, witnessing the black of the empty doorway. “I played for her,” he managed. “She dug our song, man. That outro blew them away, just like you said it would.”
Straining his ears, Clay heard no response. Only footsteps, advancing into his room.
“I didn’t come to celebrate ’cause Savy said it would take time to…”
Clay trailed off. Something was wrong. Boyle had crept to the foot of the bed and the feel of his presence had changed. It wasn’t the calm spirit from the Generator, but something…
Cold. Angry.
Gooseflesh rose on Clay’s arms. Even if he had willingly accepted the idea of Boyle’s benevolent presence, self-preservation had warned him it was too good to be true.
“Rocco, if you’re talking to me, I’m not picking it up. My antenna must be off tonight.”
The guitar was slowly pulled from his arms. For a second, half a second, Clay considered resisting, then thought better of it. The Rickenbacker made a soft dragging sound as it traveled over his bedsheets. Clay watched it slip off the edge and plunk down on the floor, neck angled upward as though Boyle was pulling the guitar behind him. “Hey,” Clay tried, “if you want the Rick back in the Generator, I get it. From now on, I’ll—”
Boyle flung the guitar at Clay’s window. It swung end over end and struck the pane with a heavy crunch.
“No!” Clay jumped up, ran over. He was lifting the guitar from the desktop under the window, when something, a fist—cold, angry—struck him in the chest. Clay gasped and flopped backward, landing across his mattress.
And he lay there as an unseen Boyle loomed over him.
“Please,” was all he could manage.
Boyle hesitated. Like he was deciding.
In the next instant a stiff breeze pushed in through the new fracture in the window, and though Clay could see nothing in the dark, he sensed that the spirit was using it, riding the current out of the room and back into the hallway. Where the footsteps resumed their restless procession, echoing downstairs
