She sighed, blushing a little, but settled the guitar on her lap and picked up a pick. She strummed the Brogan up and down a few times with open chords, getting the feel for the instrument and, undoubtedly, checking to see that it was in tune (it was — Jake did not allow an out-of-tune instrument in his house, even if it were just for display like his signed Les Paul). She then picked out a lightening fast piece with a decidedly Latin flavor to it before settling into a more sedate melody of moderate tempo.
"This is one I wrote for the last album," she said. "I thought it was the best of the bunch. It's called The Struggle."
"Sounds deep," Jake said, tapping the side of his own guitar to her rhythm.
"That's why they didn't like it," she said. "Too deep, too dark, too depressing for the target demographic."
"Yeah," Jake said. "I've heard that one before, although usually in reverse."
She strummed out the melody a few more times and then started to sing. Her throaty contralto voice sounded even prettier in person than it did on vinyl or on the radio. She sang of the basic differences between men and women and how those differences could tear a relationship apart if some accommodation was not made for them. As a verse-first composer her chorus sections all varied from each other, their purpose to support the verse just put down instead of the other way around like most of Jake's tunes.
Oh how we struggle, every day
We pick and pull each other every way
All the big things we try to ignore
And all the little things become so much more
That was the first chorus. The second was a little darker.
Why must we struggle? Why can't we work this out?
You're full of anger and I'm full of doubt
We can't make love and we can't go to sleep
All we can do is make sure the knife is in deep
It's such a struggle
Such a useless struggle
She did a guitar solo of her own, her nimble fingers flying over the fretboard and impressing Jake greatly. He took a moment to wonder what she would sound like with a fully distorted and amplified electric in her hands.
She ended the solo and picked up the main rhythm again, only this time a little more up-tempo, her pick hitting the strings harder and faster. She belted out another verse, this one dealing with the anger, the jealousy, the lack of communication, and, eventually, the hatred that marked the end of a relationship. That led into the final chorus.
Too much struggle, now we've fallen apart
It's finally over, out of room in my heart
All for nothing, all the time that we've spent
Our lives are shattered, we're twisted and bent
It ends in hatred, it ends with despair
Once there was love here, now I just don't care
Because of struggle... yeah
Useless struggle
Because of struggle... struggle...
Because of struggle
She sang the last two lines during a sharp reduction of tempo, until by the last word she was drawing out the syllables, focusing intently upon the last two. Her fingers then came to rest, her green eyes looking shyly at Jake.
"Well?" she asked.
"All I can say is wow," he said. "That was indeed a very deep song."
"Too deep?" she asked.
He shook his head strenuously. "I don't think there is any such thing as that. It did hit me a little close to home though. It reminds me of several previous relationships of mine."
"That's what it's supposed to do," she said. "People are supposed to relate to it. It's kind of like your song Point Of Futility."
"That song was written specifically about me," he said. "And specifically about the end of a certain relationship."
"Michelle Borrows?" she asked.
"The one and only," he said. "Don't ever tell her that though."
"I'll try to keep it to myself the next time Michelle and I have afternoon tea together."
They laughed and then discussed her song a little more, putting it through the same paces they had Jake's. Jake thought it would sound good with the acoustic guitar rhythm translated into a mildly distorted electric riff covered by heavy piano and enhanced by a background of intermittent lead guitar. Celia seemed to like this idea but thought a saxophone solo instead of a guitar solo would be better.
"Do another one," Celia told Jake when they finally ran out of things to say about The Struggle.
"Only if you match me," he said.
"Song for song," she promised. "But lets get another drink going first, huh?"
"Now you're talking my language," he said.
They played on for hours. Both dug into their archives of tunes they'd written, dredging them up one by one, singing them, and then analyzing the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. They got up frequently during their recitals to refresh their drinks. Before too long they were both stumbling back and forth from the couch to the bar (and quite frequently to the bathroom), their words becoming quite slurred when they talked (but not when they sang, although neither really noticed this). They eventually became giddy, laughing at everything, especially when they started to reach the bottoms of their song barrels and started digging up tunes that probably should have remained buried.
Jake played one he had written back in his early high school days, back before becoming interested in politics and human nature, when he'd been more into fast cars and the Oakland Raiders. That was actually the name of the song — Fast Cars And Football. It contained verses like: Gonna drive my Porsche to the Coliseum, gonna park it down in front then go in to beat 'em."
"Oh my God," Celia cried, in hysterics as she heard this. "That is so fucking terrible!"
"Hey," said Jake, who was laughing just as hard. "What do you want from me? I was fourteen years old. That was one of my first tunes."
"You're gonna be embarrassed that you sang that to me when you sober up."
"You're probably right," he agreed. "Now it's your turn. Sing me something that you will be embarrassed about."
She did. She sang a tune she'd composed when she was thirteen and obsessed with horses. A verse-first writer even then, the tune was full of hokey references to tall steeds with powerful shoulders and metal shoes on their feet, with thoughts of young thighs gripping furry backs on the beach.
"You call my shit terrible?" Jake said when she was done. "Your shit didn't even rhyme!"
"Well I wrote it in Spanish, you dope," she told him, her face red from laughter. "Of course it doesn't rhyme when you translate it into English."
"Sing it to me in Spanish," he told her. "I want it hear it in its original version."
"You don't speak Spanish," she reminded him.
"Oh yeah," he said, causing both of them to go into peels of fresh laughter.
They had run out of both rum and coke quite a few songs before and switched to beer. The empty Corona bottles littered the coffee table next to the couch. When Jake went back to the refrigerator to get them two more he found that they'd drank all of the beer as well.
"No more beer?" Celia asked. "What kind of a host are you? I've never been so insulted in my life."
"Sorry," Jake said, hanging his head low. "I'm ashamed. Maybe I can make a beer run." He looked up at the clock over the bar and thought it was wrong at first, that the batteries must have died during the afternoon. Only when he checked the kitchen clock did he conclude it really was 2:30 AM. They had been sitting in the entertainment room singing to each other for more than five hours.
"Wow," Celia said when he told her the beer run was cancelled on account of it being past last call. "I thought it was like ten."