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By Root 620 0

before the beer has a chance to settle into the microprocessors, or wait until later. A young woman with terrible posture and limp, cherry-red hair hanging from exactly one half of her scalp is still dancing right in front of the stage. Or rather, she is doing shallow knee bends, bobbing in a slow rotation with her eyes closed. She has been drilling herself into the same spot for nearly an hour, annoying Jax for no particular reason. He picks up the beer bottle that committed its crime against music, and rolls it toward her, hoping it will fall off the stage and shatter her reverie. It merely clonks loudly and rolls past her. He takes his keyboard off its legs and kicks some amp cables out of the way to clear a space for it on the floor.

Rucker, the lead guitarist, crosses the stage and stands over him. “Man, you drowned it.”

“Yeah. In beer, though, so it’s happy. Do you know CPR?”

“No, man, I don’t even pay my taxes.”

“Rucker, you have no appreciable IQ.”

“Jax, what do women see in you? The brunette working the bar sent you this note. She said it’s urgent.”

“Tell her I’ve got a disease, okay?” Jax takes a screwdriver out of his keyboard case and begins taking off the back plate.

“That’s not funny.”

“I’m only paid to entertain people with music here.”

“What’s wrong with you, some dog buried your bone? Did you see her? She’s luminous.”

“That’s nice.”

Rucker unfolds the note, which is inked on a cocktail napkin. “I’m reading this little love letter myself.”

“I didn’t know you could read.” Jax kneels down with his head near the floor and peers inside his machine. It always amazes him: it can produce sounds exactly like a piano, a Hammond organ, a muted French horn, even breaking glass or a marble rolling down the inside of a pipe, and yet there is practically nothing inside. He remembers feeling this same astonishment the first time he took apart a TV.

“Who’s Lou Ann?”

Jax looks up. “Let me see that.”

“Lou Ann called,” Rucker reads. “Super urgent emergency, call Taylor back at this number.”

Jax swipes the napkin out of Rucker’s hand and bounds off the stage, bumping into the bobbing half-bald dancer but still not waking her up. He makes a beeline for the pay phone between the bar and the kitchen. There’s no hope of quiet, but he can’t wait until he gets home. Taylor picks up on the first ring.

“Jax?”

“I’m going to die if I don’t kiss your navel within one hour. Tell me you’re calling from the Triple T Truck stop in south Tucson.”

“I’m not. It kind of looks like the Triple T, though. I’m at a pay phone in the parking lot between a Kwik Mart and, I think, an open-air festival of drug users.”

“Where’s Turtle?”

“Asleep in the car. Hey, listen, you, I don’t even know if I’ve forgiven you for screwing Gundi. Why would I let you kiss my navel?”

“Well, good, Taylor, you sound like yourself. You must be okay.”

“I don’t know if I am or not. I feel like I’m in hell. Do you have to pay rent and utilities in hell?”

“No. I think you make all the payments before you get there.”

“Jax, my life’s a mess.”

“I wrote you another song. Listen.”

“I don’t know if I can listen to another broken-heart song.”

“This one isn’t as bad. Listen:

I made you happy,

I made you breakfast,

The only thing you ever made me was crazy.

I gave you flowers,

You gave me migraines,

Starting today you’re going to give me the brushoff…”

“Broken-heart song,” Taylor diagnoses. “Pissed-off broken-heart song, which is worse. Jax, we’ve been over this. I didn’t leave you, I left a situation.”

“Would you mind writing that on the blackboard five hundred times?”

Her voice is quiet. “I miss you, Jax. Real bad. I get this aching in my throat sometimes and I’m not sure if you’re real or not. It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.” Jax hears her blowing her nose, the most heart-warming sound he has heard in his life to date. He wishes he could program that nose blow into his synthesizer.

“I don’t even have your picture anymore,” she says. “Goddamn Barbie stole it.”

“That’s a crime against nature,” says Jax. “She stole my photograph?”

“Well, there