“I’ll tell Luce.” It must have been a bandmate’s phone.
“You look excited about something,” Sadie said, coming through the door.
“I don’t know yet.”
“You don’t know if you’re excited?”
“I don’t want to get my hopes up.”
Rosemary spent the next day waiting for the call and trying to decide where to go. She didn’t have to stay in North Carolina any longer—the cop hadn’t shown up and her charges had been dismissed—but she wasn’t sure where to go with the whole country in front of her. She couldn’t stay on Sadie’s couch much longer.
The bus took the better part of a day, giving Rosemary time to listen to Wilmington bands. Logistics took her new plans in stride. She asked for a room on the ocean and, after looking at maps, picked an area called Carolina Beach because it had “beach” in the name.
“It’s, like, fifteen miles away from Wilmington,” they warned. “There’s not much out there.”
“You let me go to my hometown without telling me it was too far from anything. Maybe I have a lead.” She didn’t, but that was beside the point.
“Do you know it’s hurricane season?”
“Of course,” she lied. She pulled up a weather map. “I don’t plan on being there long, and there’s nothing brewing.”
From the bus drop-off, she called a single-cell to take her to the motel Logistics had booked. When she stepped out of the vehicle, the sun felt hotter on her skin than it had in weeks, brighter, and the air tasted like salt.
The Silver Bell Motel was two stories tall, with the first floor on stilts ten feet above ground level and rooms that opened directly to the outdoor walkway, unlike her fortress-like hotel in Baltimore. It was possible she was the only guest; the parking lot was empty and the whole area looked deserted.
She found the beach across the street and over a small dune from the motel. Found. It hadn’t been lost. You couldn’t lose an ocean. She climbed the dune and caught her breath. How had she not expected it to be this big?
She pulled up her Hoodie and looked for an ocean backdrop she’d played before, just for reference, then dropped it again. There was no comparison. They’d gotten the horizon right, the colors, the sky. She remembered walking along the simulated beach, getting points for finding fancy shells and treasures washed in by the tide, listening to the waves lapping the shore.
What they’d missed: the wind, strong enough to freeze-frame the gulls as they took off and landed; the volume; the sand she kicked into her shoes within the first three steps, so that she had to take them off, then her socks, which she stuffed into the shoes to carry; the frigid water; the irregularity of the shells and other debris, when she’d always imagined each one perfect; the way the sea came closer, then receded, leaving her feet to sink in the muck. The multiple textures of sand: the dry dunes, the gritty debris that marked higher tides, the velvet damp closer in, if she braved getting wave-hit, which she did. The weight of the ocean. In the distance, the remains of houses on stilts, collapsed into themselves. Here was a thing that people had sullied, but you couldn’t tell it if you didn’t look that way. From where she stood, looking outward, the ocean won.
What was she doing here? That was the question of the hour. She’d arrived to find bands and to destroy their scene, or to fake the same. Was it such a bad future? Not if she could travel to places like this.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and when she looked, there was a message from the same mystery number giving a download code for one of the sites she could only access outside the Superwally/StageHolo networks. She entered the code, shielding her screen in the bright sun.
“Cassis Fire—Manifest Independence” appeared. The beach was empty, so she turned the volume up and played the song to the ocean.
When the last chord rang, she played it again. And again. And again, and again, until a low battery warning appeared. It didn’t matter; the song was part of her now. She would never hear it without thinking of the beach, the gulls, and the absolute, boundless joy that started at her chest and expanded outward to fill her entirely when a song connected perfectly with a moment.
The lyrics were taken from the things Luce had said at Graceland, or else the things she said had been taken from the lyrics. It was instructive without being pedantic: an invitation, a challenge, a call.
Her phone died. She hadn’t even responded yet. Hopefully Luce wouldn’t think that was rude. She knew she should head back and charge her phone so she could write back, but the ocean was too much for her. She zipped her jacket up to her neck and lowered herself to the sand.
Rosemary requested a meeting with Management the next morning. Something big, she’d said, trying to see if she could rustle up a nongeneric manager in the process, if such a person actually existed. They didn’t; not today, at least. Generic Management—Male (1 of 5) met her in the nonintimidating, regular-office setting.
“That was fast! You’ve only been in”—he paused before continuing—“Wilmington one night.”
“It’s not about here,” she said.
“Oh? The message said you had something. We figured—”
“Luce Cannon.”
“You found her again? In Wilmington?”
“I said it wasn’t about here. I know where she is.”
“And she’s willing to sign?”
“She’s willing to do one big show, then gone again.”
His gears were clearly turning. “Luce Cannon: One Night Only. We do a special on that big song, maybe make up something forensic about tracking her down, lead it all up to a show… What was the name of that famous article? ‘The Last Power Chord’? We call the concert the Last Last Power Chord, or the Next Power Chord, something like that, that she’s coming out of retirement for one show only…”
“She’ll be fine with all of that.” They’d had this talk and figured it would go this way. Luce was not a fan of the coming-out-of-retirement angle, but it fed into the fiction of the thing. “She does have some specific guidelines for how it has to go down, though.”
“The money, you mean? We’ll have Contracts make her a good offer.”
“No. She’ll only do it under certain conditions.”
“We’ll see what Legal says.”
Rosemary continued. “There has to be a live audience—”
Generic Management Man sighed. “Of course there does. Why should it matter if that’s illegal?”
“—and she wants to choose the location.”
“You mean which campus will host? That’s not a problem.”
“She doesn’t want to do it on a campus. She wants to do it at a real venue.” Those were Luce’s words, real venue. “Nonnegotiable.”
“We can’t do that.”
“Sure we can. We can do all of that. Patent Medicine did a ‘music festival’ on campus with an audience. It shouldn’t be impossible to transport a camera rig somewhere.”
“We have to apply for waivers from the state and federal government every time we do something like that. It’s not simple.”
“Who said anything about simple? This is going to be a logistical bear, and we’re going to do it because this concert is going to make us a ton of money.” She was careful to say us, not you. Rosemary Laws, Model Employee.
“Anything else?”
“We’ll own the concert recording, but we point song links to her own site.”
“Legal will never agree to that.”
“They can hash it out, then, and see if she walks, but she’ll probably give up merchandising if we give her that much.”