“Glory,” I said, walking closer to her so she could hear my unamplifi ed voice. “That’s what you said at our warm-up gig on Metassus and your solo was completely off. .”
I saw her jaw clench as she made a little starting/stamping motion. “You deaf wretch!” She took a step towards me, swinging the Walker off her shoulder and brandishing it in one hand like a sceptre. “You wouldn’t know a good solo if it split your skull.” Her voice had gone shrill and Maynard modulated it through the PA to save all our ears. “Which one of us is the lead here?” And then she broke down into hurling epithets at me in Saturnal.
I didn’t hear what she called me; I started to shout back, “Fuck you, you egoistic bitch.” But all I got out was “Fuck. .” and then I threw off my head-mic and put my guitar in its stand and started to stalk off the stage. I couldn’t be reduced to calling her names. I had to walk past her to the stairs and, as I did, she pushed me on the shoulder. My arm fl ailed back and connected with her cheek and then she was trying to grab me by the hair and strangle me and bite me all at the same time. Then the road crew, uniformly burly, uniformly imperturbable, were pulling us apart. She’d scratched my arm hard enough that bright crimson blood began to trickle down my skin, lurid on the paleness of flesh that never sees sunlight. And she said, “You ungrateful bitch! Without me you’d still be rotting on your ass in moondust! You’ll never be anything more than a second-rate fill-in back-up stringer!”
I was gone before I heard any more — I didn’t need to. Fact is without her I’d never have been in this band or for that matter ever made it away from suburban Luna. Fact is I mostly believed the rest, too. Sometimes she told me I only had that one good song in me, and sometimes I believed her. We never recorded another one of mine after “Tears”, that’s true. Huiper, the paparazzi, the fan sites, were always making up stories about us. Sometimes it was hard even for me to tell truth from fiction. The legend they tell about me is that I sneaked backstage at a Seekers show on Luna with a demo in my back pocket, and, when she heard it, she fell in love with me. In some versions she is heartbroken over Saffron leaving, and that’s why she swore off men, and fell for me.
The true story is not like that. First of all, Glory’s heart never broke. And second, although I did go to that show on Luna, it hadn’t been my intention to meet her. My own band had just broken up from the force of apathy and neglect. I’d been ready to sell the guitar, maybe move to Earth where my parents wouldn’t have any more say about me, but I decided to spend at least one night forgetting all of that, suped up and dancing like a banshee at their show. It was at the Dome, huge crowd, thousands at the biggest gathering space on all of Luna. It was being simulcast all over Earth, a big event. I was in the general admission section down front where I elbowed my way to the stage. I can only speculate that she saw me then, and liked what she saw. Halfway through their final encore one of their road crew pulled me out of the crush at the front, over the security wall into the tech pit. I couldn’t make out what he was saying but I got the vague idea that I wasn’t being busted but invited to some kind of party. There were some others there, dressed like fans, looking lost too, so I figured we were all either equally safe or equally endangered.
It was a party. A tremendous party at the Lunar Grand Hotel. We were all a part of the entourage and never before had I felt so welcome wearing ragged black denim in the retro-look of the times. We were ushered into a grand ballroom where food and swirling lights were already in attendance as if the inanimate party had already begun. And at some point I recall being near her, Glory, and wanting to tell her something about how much I had enjoyed the show. Maybe I did tell her. Anyway, she led me to the true party within the party, an inner sanctum penthouse where the band members and all manner of miscellaneous wildlings were lounging, boozing, orgying and so on. And eventually she pulled me even deeper into things, and we were in her own room, and in her own bed, in the dimness, as I traced the curve of her stomach by the shine of the glitter there and she breathed hot on my sex and we did not sleep until well into the next morning.
I only remember that night in snatches now. I remember lavender lips and the way she closed her eyes when she kissed me. I kept mine open to watch the way her mouth moved, then closed them as her hand sought deep into my jeans. I remember her left hand seeking between my legs and I imagine that I even felt the callouses on her fingers as she dragged them over my slick clit. I remember being on my back on the expanse of her bed, her body pressing mine down as her tongue hunted in the forest of my bush and I stared at the cleft of her ass, her cunt, pistoning above my face until I reached out with my own tongue. I remember what seemed like hours with my legs over the edge of the bed, and her quick fingers playing over my clit again and again, and sinking her hand into me, first the cone of her fingers, and eventually her entire hand, balled inside. There was probably more, but it has been obliterated by time and drugs and overlayers of bad memories.
It wasn’t until after we woke up that afternoon that she began to ask me about myself. Or maybe I should say tell me about myself. I played guitar, right? And I sang. And I wrote about what was black and dripping in the human soul. “How do you know?” I must have asked, my jaw fl apping as she ran her fingers through my straight black hair and remarked how even my lips were moon-dust pale. And she started calling me Luna right then. She hinted that she was very good at reading people through sex, though of course now I know it could have been the Spark.
Then she told me she wanted to hear me play. She forced the Walker into my hands and made me play. I was too nervous to sing, but I let my fingers go by themselves, through riffs I’d fought with Derel over before we’d both begun to act like we didn’t care about the band or each other. And at the end of the song, the one that would later become “Tears” when I wrote words for it, she did have tears in her eyes and she told me she knew just how it was with me.
There is nothing like making love with your lover’s tears wetting your face. She kissed me then, and laid the guitar aside, and pushed me back on the bed, and it is not like we were wearing clothes anyway. She dragged her cunt along my thigh, hot and slick like her tear-stained face, until she came, and then I flipped her over and fucked her with my fingers and ate her at the same time, until I don’t know how many times she came, piling orgasm on top of orgasm, until she turned the tables and did the same back to me.
That was probably the last time I had been in charge at any time in our relationship. Because when her fingers were still inside me, after my third or fourth orgasm, as she sank her other hand into my hair, she asked me if I was interested in leaving Luna, and joining her as rhythm guitarist.
That’s the real story of how I got whisked away. Because of course I said yes. Had she already passed the Spark to me? I think she had. I think it happened when she fucked me right after I had played. What would have happened if I had said no? Would the Spark have died, and me with it? I just didn’t know. There was too much we didn’t know. I know that through the fire and heat of music and sex and losing ourselves in both she passed it to me, but even ten years later, I knew very little more than that.
Calla and Basil had not had such an initiation from her. They were still waiting.
I should have realized when Saffron died that I might be in over my head. But I was so caught up in her, and in music, in finally devoting my life to someone and something that I enjoyed, that I felt I was born to do, that I didn’t worry about how the Spark worked. It was just the lifeblood that fed us, that kept each of us going, writing, composing, playing. Some nights, when we’d played to a fever pitch, it boiled over, and there were always wildlings around to party with, to soak up that energy and go home tired and exhilarated both in the morning. Groupies don’t know it, but it’s the Spark they are attracted to, addicted to. Maybe they figure it’s just the drugs, or the excitement, they feel it during the sex we have, that thrill singing in their veins. But unless they have music in their souls, it can’t hurt them. It passes through them just like the drugs. It’s only people like me that it takes hold of and doesn’t let go. And Saffron. And Nura and Rose, who were both gone now for years, replaced by a string of studio musicians of Glory’s choosing, until now Calla and Basil. .