"That's, like, so cool," crooned Mandy Walker, a chubby, jiggly stoner girl sitting next to him.
"Yeah," agreed Cindy Stinson, a skinnier, younger girl who sat on the other side. "My brother can play, but nowhere near as good as you."
Castro shrugged modestly, obviously proud of his alleged skill. "It takes lots of practice and dedication," he said solemnly, having to stop playing while he talked since he could no longer look at his fingers. "I picked this acoustic up just to play around with at the park. You should hear me on my electric."
"I bet it's awesome," Mandy said. "You'll have to play for me sometime."
"One of these days," Castro said, inflecting just the right tone of non-committal. He began to pick at the strings again, playing the opening to Love Hurts by Nazareth this time. He made fewer mistakes on this riff but played a lot less of the song before starting over.
The Castro concert went on for almost fifteen minutes, which was the amount of time it took for him to go through his entire catalog of acoustic jams he'd been taught or had managed to pick up by looking at tablature charts. Jake watched in fascination the entire time, not at Castro himself since he was not good enough to even qualify as a hacker, but at the group of people watching him. They had abandoned the recorded and broadcast music to watch him play a few simple chords. They were not talking to each other or joking or engaging in the age-old game of flirtation, they were watching, enjoying. He was making something that approximated music and they were listening to it. There was a magic at work here. He could see that as plain as he could see the alluring bounce of Mandy's tits beneath her halter. If Castro could produce magic by mangling a few popular songs, what would Jake be able to do? Even with the low self-esteem he had for his music producing abilities, he knew without a doubt that he was exponentially better than Castro. What would these people do if he were the one playing for them? No matter how his mind tried to degenerate this thought, to whisper that they would laugh at him and ridicule him, that they would take the guitar from his hands and throw him in the river just to see the splash, he knew it wasn't true. It couldn't be true.
"I need a hit," Castro announced, setting down the guitar behind him. "Whose got some fuckin' weed?"
While several people scrambled to pull out a joint to share with the rock god in their midst, Jake began to walk forward. Later he would tell himself that it was the alcohol coursing through his veins that made him do something so wildly out of character. And perhaps that had a little to do with it. But it was unquestionably more than just liquid courage. Jake wanted to play for these people, wanted to see the adoration in their eyes directed at him.
"Wassup, dude?" Castro greeted Jake as he saw him standing before him, giving the standard head nod one gives a lesser whose name one can't remember.
"Nice guitar," Jake told him. "Do you mind if I... you know... check it out?"
"Do you play?"
Jake shrugged shyly. "A little bit," he said.
Castro smirked. "No shit?" he said. He picked up the guitar and handed it to Jake. "Here you go. Let's hear what you got." The expression on his face implied that this was going to be amusing.
Jake took it, hefting it a few times, getting the feel of it. It really was a cheap piece of shit, hardly worthy of being called a musical instrument, but it was magic in the making all the same. He stepped a few feet to the right and sat down on the other side of Mandy, who was ignoring him as she usually did. He ran his finger across the strings, producing a strum.
"Oooh yeah, baby," Castro said with a laugh. "You fuckin' rock, man."
"Fuck yeah," some other wise-ass put in. "Eric Clapton, eat your fuckin' heart out."
This produced a round of laughter from the crowd, a brief and mildly contemptuous round. Jake ignored it and strummed the E string a few times, listening to the tone. He reached up and adjusted the tuning knob half a turn.
"Hey, what the fuck you doing?" Castro said. "I just tuned that thing."
"It must've came out of tune when you were playing it," Jake told him. "I'm just getting it back."
"It sounds okay to me."
"Well, it's hard to tell without a tuning fork and all this noise out here. I'll have it close in a minute."
"Now hold on a minute..." Castro started.
The pivotal moment in Jake's life might have ended right there. Castro didn't want a little dweeb messing with his guitar and was about to snatch it back. Jake would not have fought him for it. If it were taken from his hands he would simply go back to his original group and go on with his evening. But then Doug Biel, a fringe member of the ruling stoner clique vying for full membership, stepped forward with a hand carved marijuana pipe and a butane lighter. "Here, Castro," he said. "Hit some of this. My brother picked it up in Hawaii. Best shit you'll ever smoke."
"Maui Wowie?" Castro said, immediately losing interest in Jake and the guitar.
"Bet your ass," Doug assured him. "This shit goes for twenty-five an eighth."
"I haven't smoked any Maui Wowie in a couple of months."
"Well fire it up, brother. Fire it up."
Castro took the pipe and the lighter from his hands and took a tremendous hit. He then passed the pipe to Mandy, who sucked up a hit almost as big. She passed the pipe over the top of Jake, to John Standman, who was sitting on the other side of him.
Jake didn't mind. He continued to tune the guitar, striking each string a few times and then adjusting the knob, working entirely by ear. By the time the pipe was sucked dry and passed back to Doug, he had it about as tuned as the cheap, saggy strings would allow. He strummed a few open chords and then grabbed a G chord and began to play.
He picked out a simple medley at first, a slow simple piece of his own composition. His left hand moved slowly and surely over the unfamiliar frets, his calloused fingertips grabbing and pressing with exact pressure, drawing sweet vibration from the strings as the fingers of his right hand picked at them.
The conversation around him stopped. The re-stuffing of the marijuana pipe stopped as well. Eyes turned to him in surprise and wonder.
"Wow," Mandy said, looking at him and acknowledging his existence for perhaps the first time ever. "That's pretty good."
"Thanks," Jake said, giving a slight smile. "I use this as a warm-up exercise when I play."
"What is that?" asked Castro, his mouth open wide, his expression that of a man who has just seen his pet dog start to talk to him. "Is that Kansas?"
"No," Jake said. "It's nothing. Just a warm-up to get the fingers limber."
Castro seemed to have a hard time with this concept. It was nothing? How was that possible? The only thing that could come out of a guitar had to be either random noise or something that one heard on the radio, right?
Jake began to play faster and with more complexity, his left hand making chord changes, his right strumming harder. As always happened when he played, his digits seemed to act independently, without conscious thought, transforming the notes and rhythm in his head instantaneously into music emitting from the guitar.
"Wow," he heard Mandy whisper beside her, something like respect in her tone now. She turned her body so she could see him better.
He picked up the tempo a little more, his fingers hitting the strings harder, changing chords faster, as his confidence increased. He looked at Castro and was gratified to see his mouth still hanging open. Nor was his the only one.
He did a brief solo of sorts, picking out a glowing trip up and down the neck and then settling back down into a strummed melody-an instrumental version of one of the songs he had written. He gradually worked that into an improvised riff that he played around with for a minute or two before working that into the opening bars of All Along the Watchtower.
"Yeah!" someone yelled out from the crowd.