The Last Days Read Free Page B

under all that gear. I was wondering why Pearl, if she owned all this keyboard stuff, had risked falling toaster ovens just to save a vintage guitar.

    “Where do you sleep ?” Zahler asked. The bed was covered with scattered CDs, more cables, and a few harmonicas and hand drums.

    “The guest room, mostly,” Pearl said proudly. “I suffer for my art.”

    Zahler laughed but rolled me a look. Pearl wasn’t exactly suffering. She hadn’t showed us all of her mom’s apartment, but what we’d seen was already bigger than his parents’ and mine put together, the walls crowded with paintings and glass cases full of stuff from all over the world. Stairs led to more floors above, and we’d passed a pair of armed security guards down in the lobby. Pearl had probably seen the Taj Mahal in person.

    So why had she contemplated helping herself to the Strat, when she could obviously afford to buy one of her own?

    Maybe she was used to everything falling from the sky. She’d looked pretty annoyed when we weren’t on time, like this was a job interview or something.

    I sifted through the CDs on the bed, trying to peg her influences. What was Pearl really into, besides old Indian tombs, punctuality, and soundproofing? The discs left me clueless. They were hand-labeled with the names of bands I’d never heard of: Zombie Phoenix, Morgan’s Army, Nervous System . . .

    “Nervous System?” I asked.

    Pearl groaned. “That’s this band I was in. Bunch of Juilliard geeks and, um, me.”

    I glanced at Zahler: great. Not only did Pearl have lots of real gear, she also knew some real musicians, which meant she might not be too impressed with us. We weren’t exactly into virtuosity—we hadn’t taken any lessons since sixth grade. This jam session was going to be a bust.

    “Did you guys play any gigs?” Zahler asked.

    She shrugged. “We did, at their high school, mostly. But the System had no heart. Or it did, I guess, but then the heart exploded. You guys want to plug in?”

     
    The Stratocaster soothed my nerves.

    It swung from my shoulder, featherlight, lacquered back side cool against my thigh. The strings were six strands of spiderweb, with the easiest action my fingers had ever felt. I strummed a quick, unplugged E-major chord and was amazed to hear that even a three-story fall hadn’t knocked the Strat out of tune.

    Pearl pushed in the power button on a Marshall amp, a hulking old beast with tubes inside. (Why did a key-boardist have a guitar amp handy? Had it also fallen from the sky?) The tubes warmed up slowly, the hiss fading in like a wave breaking.

    “You guys have to share this amp,” Pearl apologized. “Nonoptimal, I know.”

    Zahler shrugged. “That’s fool.”

    She raised an eyebrow. Zahler says fool instead of cool , which is kind of confusing. But at least he didn’t mention that I’d never owned an amp, so we shared one over at his place too.

    Pearl tossed us cords, and I plugged in—a sizzle-snap of connection, then the familiar hum of six open strings. I dampened five of them and plucked a low E. Zahler tuned up to it, booming through his strings one by one, setting off a little plastic chorus of CD cases shivering against one another on the bed.

    The Marshall was set to 7, a volume we never dared in Zahler’s room, and I hoped Pearl’s egg cartons worked. Otherwise, her neighbors were going to feel us in their bones. But I was ready to risk someone calling the police. The Strat was squeaking impatiently as I slid my fingers along its neck, like it was ready too.

    Finally Zahler nodded, and Pearl rubbed her hands together, sitting down at the little desk jammed between the two racks of electronics. A computer waited there, cabled to a musical keyboard, the kind with elegant black and white keys instead of the usual jumble of letters, numbers, and symbol-junk.

    She rested one hand on the keys, the other on a mouse. At her double-click, dozens of lights on the towers flickered to