We didn’t have proper patio furniture yet, so we arranged the folding lounge chairs in a circle. Trip and I made a fire in the middle, while the girls refreshed our drinks. The fire was more for ambiance than warmth, but it also kept the bugs away. We drank and talked and relaxed for several hours, until about ten o’clock, when Trip and Wren called it a night.
Christy and I went for a swim and made love in the darkened pool. Something about water made her even hornier than usual. I wasn’t about to complain, but I still thought it was amusing. Afterward, we took a shower to rinse off the chlorine and went to bed ourselves.
On the second evening, Trip brought out his guitar. Christy only hummed along at first, but then she began singing as well. He humored her and asked if she wanted to sing anything in particular.
“Do you know ‘Landslide’?”
“Fleetwood Mac? Are you sure? That’s Stevie Nicks.”
She shrugged with feigned indifference. “If you can’t play it…”
Poor Wren nearly burst a blood vessel trying not to laugh.
Trip shot her a glare but then focused on his guitar. He played the opening melody, and Christy closed her eyes to enjoy the familiar song. Her normal speaking voice was higher than Stevie Nicks’s, but she sounded exactly like her when she started singing. Trip was so surprised that he lost the tune.
“Sorry. Bug flew in my eye,” he claimed. He even blinked and rubbed it. “Start over?”
He did better the second time, and they finished the song to raucous applause. Well, as raucous as Wren and I could manage.
“Do you know ‘Rhiannon’?” he asked immediately.
“Of course.”
He started playing. And when he finished, he launched into another song, “Crazy on You,” by Heart. Christy didn’t miss a beat. The next few songs became a game. Could he suggest something she couldn’t sing?
He tried Blondie first, “Call Me.” I’d never heard an acoustic version, but Christy sang it perfectly. Then he tried Abba, “Super Trouper.” Same result. He finally suggested Simon & Garfunkel, “Scarborough Fair,” and he harmonized with her as she sang the melody.
“That was fun!” he said at last.
“It was,” she said. “Thanks.”
“I had no idea you were such a good singer.”
“You never asked.”
“She’s right,” Wren said. “She sings all the time around the house.”
“I guess I never noticed.”
“Mmm,” Christy agreed politely.
“You wanna keep going?” he asked.
“Sure. But your guitar’s out of tune.”
He frowned. “I tuned it last week.”
“Well, it’s out of tune now,” she insisted.
He strummed and then picked a few notes. “Sounds fine to me.”
“Whatever.”
“Get your thing,” Wren told him. She added to us, “He bought this fancy new contraption that tells him exactly what the note is.”
“It’s just a tuner, babe. But yeah… I’ll be right back.” He returned with a small gray box, which he set on the chair between his legs. He turned it on, and a little VU meter lit up. He strummed a note on the guitar, although he frowned at the reading from the little device.
“She’s right, isn’t she?” Wren said.
“Yeah, but it’s only five cents off. I can’t even hear it.”
“Ahh.”
“Can you?” he asked Christy.
“Of course.”
He tried to hide his disbelief, but he adjusted the tuning peg. He played another note, looked at the VU meter, and then glanced at Christy.
“Now it’s sharp,” she said.
He loosened the string a fraction and looked chagrined that she’d caught him. He began tuning the other strings. Christy decided to make a point, so she told him which ones were out of tune. She even told him flat or sharp. He tried to ignore her and focus on the tuner instead, but his expression told the tale.
“How’d she do?” Wren asked when he finished. “Right every time?
“Yeah,” he admitted. Then he thought of something and said to Christy, “Sing a middle C.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“I just wanna check something.”
“Okay.” She sang a single, clear note.
Trip glanced at the VU meter, and his eyes widened. “Now a G.”
She sang.
“How about a D? Now an A. F-sharp. E-flat.”
His eyebrows rose with each note. “Close your eyes,” he said at last. “Sorry. Please.”
She sighed.
“Humor me,” he asked politely. She closed her eyes, and he plucked a string. “What note was that?”
“Low E.”
“You aren’t peeking?”
She exhaled in growing annoyance and faced away from him.
He held a fret and played another note.
“B-flat,” she said without hesitation.
He played several more, and she named them all. Then he plucked three strings together.
She thought for a moment and said, “A, C-sharp, E.”
“How ’bout this one?”
“D, F-sharp, A.”
He strummed a full chord, and she named all six notes. He played several more, with increasingly complicated fingering, and she knew them all.
“You have perfect pitch,” he said.
She faced him again. “You could’ve just asked.”
“He’s stubborn sometimes,” Wren said.
“Not this time,” he insisted. “I’ve met thousands of musicians, but not one with perfect pitch.” He looked at Christy. “That’s… incredible. You’re incredible.”
“You finally noticed?” Wren said.
“Babe,” he said to her with exaggerated patience, “this is so rare that I’ve never seen it. And I’ve been around musicians all my life. Literally. Brenda Lee sang me a lullaby the day I was born. Have you always been able to do it?” he asked Christy.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I just do it. I’m not a freak or anything.”
“No, that isn’t what I meant,” he said quickly. “I just wanna know if there’s a trick or something.”
“Not that I know,” she lied. She saw my surprise and silently begged me not to say anything.
Fortunately, Wren and Trip couldn’t read her like I could. He turned off his little tuner device.
“Anything you wanna sing next?” he asked Christy.
“Do you know ‘Both Sides Now’?”
“Joni Mitchell? Seriously? You can sing that? Sorry, forget I asked. Of course you can.” He strummed a few notes and then looked to her for approval. “How’s the tune? Better?”
“Much better,” she agreed.
He started playing, and Christy joined in.
About halfway through the song, Wren leaned toward me and whispered, “I’m glad she finally did it.”
“Did what?”
“Knocked him off his high horse.”
* * *
“Okay, what was that about?” I asked Christy later, in the privacy of our bedroom.
“What was what?”
“You know.”
She stared at her hands.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“It isn’t that,” she said. “Only, I don’t want you to think I’m a freak or something. I’m not!”
“No, of course not.”
She thought about it for a long time, and I let her work through her feelings.
“I… have this thing,” she said at last, “sort of a brain defect.”
My eyebrows went up, but I didn’t say anything.
“It’s called chromesthesia. They discovered it when I was little. I see sounds.”
“For real?”
She nodded.
“Hold on, you see sounds instead of hearing them?”
“No, I hear them too.”
“So… that’s how you know the notes?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s so cool!”
“Maybe to you. It’s just normal to me. But it makes me different, so I don’t like to talk about it. It isn’t like my metabolism. People understand that. This is my brain, so they think I’m a freak or something.”
“I don’t.”
“Thank you.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
She looked up hopefully. “Do you really wanna know?”
“Absolutely! Do the notes have colors? Shapes? Patterns?”