Page 41 of A Boy Called Lovesong

Fear.

Self-loathing.

Fury.

And now, as I stood with my hand still locked in the grip of a blind man who looked straight through me…

Utter humiliation.

CHAPTER 10

“You like music?”

I shrugged. Of course I liked music, I was one of the world’s most renowned music journalists, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. “Sure.”

I had been sorting through my suitcase which was open beside me on the bed, searching for a clean shirt, one that wasn’t soaked in perspiration from the heat of the day.

Lovesong was going through his records. He was feeling particular bends and small tears on the covers, faults and kinks he obviously knew well. He slid a record out of its sleeve and placed it on the turntable. He didn’t have to feel or fumble for the needle. His fingers knew exactly where to find it.

Instantly I heard the crackling sound of imperfections in the groove, followed by a tinny guitar and a muffled voice singing a song I knew to be almost a hundred years old.

“You know Robert Johnson?”

Of course I did. “Can’t say I do.”

The strum and twang of Johnson’s seminal blues song, “Cross Road Blues” filled the space between us, as Lovesong stepped back from the record player. His bare shoulders began moving in time with the music, so carefree and cool that it wasalmost as though he’d forgotten for a second that he was in the company of a complete stranger. It was as though he forgot everything in that moment, everything but the music.

What was that saying?Dance like nobody’s watching.

That’s exactly what he did.

His feet were like feathers, tapping lightly to the rhythm.

His hips tipped ever-so-casually from side to side.

One arm reached for the acoustic guitar on the wall, once again finding it with ease, and he slipped the strap over his dancing shoulders.

His fingers began thrumming and plucking along with Robert Johnson’s playing, as though the pair were performing a duet. His control over the guitar was masterful, mesmerizing, as though his fingers were weaving their way over the strings like they were weaving some dark and beautiful sorcery.

He wasn’t simply playing the guitar.

He was commanding it to obey his will.

From across the room, I stared in awe at the handsome, half-naked impresario, relieved that he couldn’t see me gawking at him, although something told me he wouldn’t care anyway.

He wasn’t performing for me.

He was worshipping the song.

He was practicing his religion.

He was falling under a spell that he himself was casting.

Then seamlessly Lovesong’s fingers slid in a different direction, switching up his melody completely, playing riffs and notes in harmony with Johnson’s original track, a harmony that didn’t exist in music history… until now.

I knew what he was doing. In technical terms he was performing a maneuver that Johnson himself created called the “boogie shuffle,” layering the music by oscillating several degrees above the root chord.

In not-so-technical terms, he had just led me into the Cave of Wonders where he turned his guitar into a magic lamp, setting a genie free.

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