Grave Refrain: A Love/Ghost Story Read Free Page A

intelligent or at least intelligible, but his excitement left him rocking back and forth like his seat was on fire.
    “We’re the rock geek darlings of the Internet,” Simon added, peering briefly over his glasses at his band mate. “We give our knickers away for free online, let ’em listen to our music, get them hooked, but make them pay at the door to hear it live.” His hand curled around the handle of his glass, the letters I-R-O-N tattooed on the back of his fingers. Simon wiggled his pinky, emblazoned with a Y .
    Over the next Guinness, Andrew could feel the anticipation hum around them much like the bristling nervous edge of walking onstage. It was apparent that Neil was interested; he seemed full of questions and noted their answers in errant scribbles on the paper placemats. How interested, who knew, but the communal sense of unease of a few minutes ago had given way to fast conversation, people talking over people, and in the back of Andrew’s mind the future was quickly being reduced to this booth on Saturday, December 27, 2009. Their first conversation, the anthologies would say. He could see the article in Spin, with a black and white picture of the four of them leaning against the tattered booth.
    “Wait, you’ve been touring for how long?” Neil asked, bringing Andrew back down to earth.
    “Two straight years with no breaks,” Christian answered, a hint of pride mingled with disbelief in his tone. “Unless you account for the time we took to record the album and the two weeks off for Christmas so my parents could scream at me for squandering my Cambridge scholarship. I told them I just couldn’t get enough of living in a van with Euro-trash degenerates and using travel-sized mini-soaps.”
    Neil laughed out loud at that, which allowed the rest of them to join along.
    “Christian was playing jazz downtown when we saved him from wasting his fine talents on decent pay,” Simon interrupted, wanting to set the record straight. “We had left university and thought it would be a healthy career choice for him as well.”
    “Proving that slavery never died,” added Christian.
    “And you two? How did you meet?” Neil looked between Andrew and Simon.
    “Go ahead,” Simon offered with a wave of his glass, R-O-N-Y stretching wide. It was a story they had recited countless times, never tiring in the retelling, as it always gave them the opportunity to get a rise out of the other. “I’ll correct it anyway. You always fuck it up, trying to make yourself look superior with that Byronic sex appeal.”
    “Christ.” Andrew blew the long hair out of his eyes and shook his head, to which Neil took a measured swig of his drink.
    “Simon ruined my otherwise exemplary boarding school experience. He got me thrown into detention more times than I can remember, the git. For the first two years of school we tortured each other—tor-tured each other,” Andrew said, grinning and slapping his hand against the table as he dragged out the syllables.
    “Then one day a music professor, who was either mental or more likely bloody sick of us, set us to compose our first piece of music together. He locked us in a rehearsal room—I mean literally locked us in with a few bottles of water and a tin of stale biscuits. We didn’t leave that godforsaken place for fifteen hours, despite the kicking and the screaming.”
    “And the begging,” interjected Simon.
    “You begged. I never begged.”
    “Paulie boy here had to get taken down a notch or two. He needed to realize that there was a greater talent other than his out there under the sun. Everyone thought he could walk on water.”
    “Paulie?” Neil asked, smirking at Andrew.
    “Simon is convinced he’s John Lennon’s love child. Long story,” Andrew explained with a dismissive wave at Simon. “So by default, I’m Paul. Or I should say, he requires a Paul.”
    “And I, of course, look exactly like George,” remarked Christian with a jangle of his dreads.