Chapter 5: Part 5

By the following day, Lucia had reached something approximating calm.  It wasn’t peaceful inside her head, by any means, but she’d managed to push it all down and at least present as calm.  She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Vivian.  She was distracted during her lessons, and the bus rides she took flew by while she retreated into her head.  She almost missed her changeover twice.

 

For as long as they had been friends, bandmates, and whatever else they might have been, Lucia had almost universally preferred to play Vivian’s songs, at least in part because she’d had enough of a hand in the arrangement of them to feel a sense of ownership.  A taste of it.  They were still Vivian’s songs, but they were hers too.  Kevin had been opposed to cover songs on principle, and it had taken significant cajoling and, as she recalled, anal sex to convince him to allow her to record Bikini Kill’s Rebel Girl for their third album, which she sang on.

 

It was the only song on any of their albums where she sang.  She did not think of herself as a singer and did not possess a particularly appealing singing voice, thinking herself far too raspy and a little nasal, but Kevin had refused to participate at all.  She’d had to record the guitar parts herself, which wasn’t new; she had often re-recorded Kevin’s guitar parts without him knowing.  Kevin was much better live than in the studio.  As far as she knew, no one had ever noticed.

 

Insanity Hall had never performed Rebel Girl live, despite some chants from the crowds during the subsequent tour in support of that album, but that was okay with Lucia.  She had never wanted the spotlight.  She didn’t want to be front and center, and it would have been wrong to let Kevin sing it even if he’d wanted to.  Which he didn’t.

 

She did wish, though, that she could have played it.  It was anthemic.  Driving.  Powerful.  It would have been awesome to play.  Maybe the best song ever, as far as she was concerned.

 

As she stood in the back, behind rows of spectators who’d brought lawn chairs, watching her first derby jam, Lucia found herself absently drumming Rebel Girl on her thighs, and humming it in her head over and over and over.  The energy there was the perfect mix of raw, chaotic, and vicious.  Watching those women compete was like watching her abuela play the acoustic guitar for the first time in some way that she couldn’t explain but was maybe something like fate.  It was like being where she was supposed to be.

 

Helen played in about every third jam, and Lucia watched her and cheered her on with particular fervor.  She wasn’t the biggest, the fastest, or the strongest.  She might have even been completely stealth.  It was hard to tell.   At one point, in her second jam, she got knocked hard on her ass, and Lucia was right in her line of sight when she popped back up.  As soon as she saw Lucia, she got the biggest grin, which was cool, and every time she came flying around that turn and there wasn’t a jammer trying to scoot past her, Helen’s eyes found hers.

 

It appeared that Helen’s team, the Guerrillaz, all wore short shorts and calf socks as part of their uniform, and as far as Lucia was concerned nobody wore them better than Helen.

 

After a particularly nasty spill, from which Helen had gotten up bloody, Lucia started moving.  The match was being played on a flat track, with little bits of masking tape on the hardwood rink floor delineating the lanes and different spaces, and it seemed like the ‘player sideline’ and ‘spectator area’ were more ‘suggestion’ than ‘uncrossable border’.

 

“You came!” Helen said, sounding stuffed up.  She tried to wipe the blood from her nose but just ended up smearing it across her cheek, which was, frankly, awesome.  “It’s great, right?”

 

“Are you okay?” Lucia said, reaching up and trying to peer inside Helen’s nose.  Helen was a few inches taller than Lucia, but in roller skates the difference was so pronounced that she really just needed to stand next to her and look up to get a good view; there was nothing to see beyond shadow and blood.

 

“I don’t think it’s broken.  Just gave it a good bang.”

 

“Giggidy,” Lucia said.

 

“Don’t make me laugh,” Helen snorted, her face contorted in hysterical pain.  “Ahhh!”

 

Two of her teammates came over to check on her and so Lucia took a few steps back, but she liked the way Helen kept glancing at her out of the corner of her eye.  She also couldn’t help but notice that a few of Helen’s teammates were following Helen’s gaze too.  It didn’t look like any of them recognized her, which she was thankful for, but it also made her feel like Helen probably didn’t bring guests very often.

 

That made her feel special.

 

The longer the match went on, the more Helen’s team started to fall behind.  It had been close before Helen got injured, but afterward her team seemed to collectively wear down.  As near as she could tell, the two weren’t related.  What she found interesting was that the competitiveness between the teams didn’t conflict with the camaraderie.  As the seconds ticked down in the last jam, both teams were applauding each other, or holding each other’s arms up and encouraging the crowd to cheer for everyone.  The other team didn’t run up the score once it was in hand.  All of this appealed to her DIY work ethic, and the way she herself had always tried to use some time at the end of every show to get the crowd into the other bands she shared a stage with.

 

As the audience started to thin out, Lucia found herself staring at the skate rental counter, and was surprised to see someone standing behind it, actively renting skates even though it was well after nine.  A bunch of younger girls were renting skates, and going out around what remained of the taped-off track, which Lucia thought was amazing, and before she knew it she was in line to rent some too.

 

Helen looked surprised when Lucia come rolling up, as she stood conversing with a few of the women from the other team, and laughed at Lucia’s feeble attempts to stop herself.

 

“My last pair had a heel brake, not a toe brake!” Lucia cried.  “Jaaane!”

 

Helen helpfully hooked her arm out, latched onto Lucia as she went past, and altered the direction of her momentum from a straight line into a circle.  “You can skate?”

 

“I was always better at going fast than I was at stopping,” she said, thoughtfully.  “Kind of true about a lot of things, now that I think about it.”

 

Helen nodded, grinned, and followed her as Lucia started skating in a wide arc around the outermost part of the rink.  “So what’d you think?”

 

“I think that was the coolest thing I’ve seen in a long time,” Lucia said, through gritted teeth as she tried to remember how to do a crossover turn.  “You guys were awesome!”

 

“Well, most of us were,” Helen said, frowning briefly.  She made keeping up look incredibly trivial, which was both unfair and incredibly hot.  “How long has it been since you last laced up?”

 

“Ten years?  Maybe fifteen?”

 

The redhead took a few jumping steps, and then spun around in front of her.  Skating backwards like it was no big thing.

 

“Show off,” Lucia grumbled.

 

“Don’t think about your feet,” she said, laughing.  “It’s all about shifting your weight.  Back and forth, back and forth.  Keep your head up.”

 

When she stopped trying to think about how to do it, Lucia found the whole ordeal easier.  She just needed to get her brain out of the way and let her legs remember on their own, and the more she kept her head up the more she liked watching Helen move.  

 

It was easy to see how Helen had gotten her thighs.

 

As they rounded a corner, heading toward heavier traffic, Helen used some kind of sorcery to flip around and face forward again.  It took exactly one second for Lucia to lose all her focus, staring at Helen’s ass up close, before she felt her weight shifting too far forward and tipped.  Face plant.  Even before she’d stopped rolling, she was laughing.  It hurt like a beer-battered bitch, on her elbows and knees where she’d come down hardest, but that was as bad as it got.  What was there left to fear?

 

Helen circled her, staring down at her quizzically as Lucia lay on her back and continued to laugh.  It felt like being a kid again.

 

“You okay down there?”

 

“Yeah,” she said.  “I might never be able to get back on my feet, but I’m okay.”

 

Helen crouched, smiled, and held out her hand.

 

“You know,” Helen said, some time later, as they took slow laps.  Almost everyone else had gone, and none of the derby girls were left besides Helen.  “We lost one of our jammers a couple days ago.  She broke her ankle.  She’s gonna be out for a while.”

 

Lucia was panting, breathing hard to keep up, but it felt amazing.  She said, “The jammers… that’s the… with the stars?” and she pointed to her head.

 

The redhead nodded.  “They’re the ones that go fast, and zip around.  We might have won tonight if we’d had all three of ours.”

 

“I think I could... do that.”

 

“I think you could too, if you kept at it.  Some of the best jammers I’ve ever seen were real squirrely and elusive.”

 

When Lucia looked over she was getting that eyebrow, and it felt really good.

 

“I’m gonna be in pain tomorrow... aren’t I?”

 

“Oh yeah,” Helen said, laughing.  “Good luck standing up.”  Then, just to show off, Helen dropped down into a deep squat and took off.

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Lucia had spent most of her adult life drumming, and drumming did involve some leg work.  She’d never really gone for double bass drumming, and she’d almost never played anything that required it, but she could do it.  Kick drumming, through, worked the calves, and Lucia had some calves.  She couldn’t get as low as Helen did, but she could use her calves to launch herself off her toes.  It was almost like running with heavy shoes on, but she could go fast, quick.

 

“You should try out,” Helen called to her, as Lucia shot past her.  “You know, whenever you can get out of bed!”

 

Lucia gave her a double dose of the middle finger.

 

***

 

Lucia sat back and said, “Huh.”

 

The small practice rooms in the back of Bill’s Guitars didn’t have a lot of room to sit back, but the eggshell foam padding wasn’t uncomfortable.

 

Her student, Gene, smiled excitedly.  “What do you think?”

 

“I think your drummer keeps incredible time.”

 

He blinked in surprise as he picked up his phone and fiddled with it.  “Really?  I mean, I thought he was good, but what the fuck do I know?  You think so too?”

 

“It jumped out at me.  He might even be better than I am.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah!  It’s a good demo!  I mean, it sounds like shit, but that’s how all first demos are, man!”

 

“Thanks!” he said, grinning stupidly. 

 

“You and the bassist sound pretty tight too!”

 

“Yeah,” he said, his cheeks coloring dramatically.  “She’s really good.”

 

“Oh, is that who was singing?”

 

Gene nodded.  “I don’t know how she can do both, but she can pull it off.”

 

“Yeah,” she said, “some people can just multitask like that.  I can’t either, for what it’s worth.”  She nodded a few more times, processing what she’d heard, and smiled broadly.  “Yeah!”

 

“What about Kenny?”

 

Lucia swallowed hard and clenched her teeth.  She’d wanted to dance around that.  “That’s… lead guitar, I’m guessing?”

 

“Yeeeah.”

 

“Yeeeeeah,” she replied.  And shook her head.  “Not sure what he’s doing, but he’s trying to play a completely different song.  Like, you guys are kinda heading toward an alt-grunge thing maybe, and he’s trying shred with you.”

 

“Yes!” Gene said, throwing up his hands in frustration.  “God!”

 

“Aw, that sucks.  You were saying before that you were all coming from different directions, and it sounds like maybe this one doesn’t really jive?”

 

Gene shrugged, blushed, and then very slowly worked up to looking at her very directly.

 

“What?”

 

“We really only brought him on because he was the best guitarist any of us knew.”  He was still looking at her.

 

“Gene.”

 

“Luc.”

 

Lucia rolled her eyes, and rolled her hands over each other in rapid succession like she was tumbling something between them.  “What are you trying to say here?”

 

Gene rolled his head back and sighed, explosively.  “You’re the best guitarist any of us know.  Or, that I know, anyway.”

 

“Look, I’m flattered, but... “  Lucia sat back and folded her arms across her chest.  “You don’t want me.”

 

“No,” he said, “I think we do!  I played some of your albums for them.”

 

“I mean, I don’t sound anything like that guy there,” she said, pointing at Gene’s phone.  “Though, I guess that’s a good thing?”  She tried to think of who she played like, to give him a better idea of what he was in for, and before she could answer, he cut in.

 

“We’re gonna jam on Saturday.”

 

Looking that far ahead, past Friday, made the bottom of her stomach drop out.  Her mouth went dry, and her palms started sweating.  Instead of rattling off players she knew, she said, “Okay, so what do you guys want to sound like?”

 

“I don’t know,” he said.  “Incubus?  Faith No More?  Or… um… have you ever heard of Orange Goblin?”

 

“Orange Goblin,” Lucia repeated, thoughtfully.  “How do you even know who they are?”

 

“We’re thinking of calling ourselves Graviton.”

 

“Oh, I love that song,” she said.  “Yeah.  Yeah, that one is in my wheelhouse.  The others I like, and I can chameleon my way through a lot, but if Orange Goblin is what you wanna sound like, then I think I can help.”

 

“Coool,” Gene said, nodding emphatically.

 

The mention of Faith No More, though, got her brain thinking, and Lucia narrowed her eyes in thought.  Midlife Crisis was probably number 2 on her all-time song list, and she started thinking about playing it, except that without the keys they would need more guitarists.  She was almost always of the opinion that replacing keyboards with guitars was a net gain, and she’d need several more if she wanted to play Midlife Crisis live, to recreate the multiple tracks.

 

“Oh shit,” she said.  “I have an idea.”

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