Page 4 of Stolen Harmony
I grabbed my guitar case, the handle slick with condensation from the humid air. The weight of it felt unfamiliar in my hands, foreign, like holding someone else's limbs. The crowd was sparse but expectant, faces turned toward us in the dim light that made everyone look like ghosts.
I plugged in with movements that felt mechanical, muscle memory taking over where my brain had checked out. The opening chords of our first song rang out, notes that used to mean everything now just sound and fury. I sang the words I'd written in what felt like another lifetime, when I'd still believed they could change anything.
Halfway through the third song, my fingers stopped moving.
The bass line continued for a few beats before Caleb realized what was happening. The drums faded out awkwardly, leaving us standing in silence while the crowd murmured in confusion. I could see their faces in the stage lights—some annoyed, some concerned, all watching me like I might explode or disappear at any moment.
“Sorry,” I said into the microphone, my voice echoing strangely in the sudden quiet.
I unplugged and walked off stage, leaving Caleb to make excuses I couldn't bring myself to hear.
My apartment was a crime scene where the victim was my own life.
I kicked aside empty takeout containers—Chinese food from three days ago, the smell sour and cloying—and nearly tripped over a pile of unopened mail that had been growing by the door for weeks. Bills, mostly. Threatening letters from the electric company, final notices in red ink. Adult responsibilities I'd been avoiding with the dedication of a professional procrastinator.
The only light came from the muted music video channel, faces and colors dancing across the walls like ghosts. Faces I didn't recognize lip-syncing to songs I'd never heard, the sound turned down so low it was just visual noise. The whole place smelled like Chinese food and despair, with an underlying funk that might have been the garbage I'd forgotten to take out or might have been me.
I collapsed onto the couch, and the cushions wheezed under my weight, springs that had given up hope of everreturning to their original shape. The coffee table was an archaeological dig of my recent failures: beer bottles in various stages of emptiness, their labels peeling in the humidity; a pizza box from three days ago that I was afraid to open; my laptop buried under magazines I'd never read, their glossy covers promising secrets about success I'd clearly missed.
My guitar case sat in the corner where I'd dropped it, gathering dust like everything else in my life. I couldn't remember the last time I'd played for myself, just for the joy of making sound. Now it felt like an accusation, a reminder of everything I used to be, everything I'd let slip through my fingers like water.
I got up and opened the fridge, more out of habit than hunger. The interior light flickered once before staying on, revealing the sparse landscape of a man who'd forgotten how to take care of himself. Three beers, their condensation creating small puddles on the wire shelves. Half a lime that had seen better days, its skin wrinkled and brown at the edges. A carton of milk that expired last week, the smell hitting me even through the closed container.
I grabbed a beer and cracked it open, the sound too loud in the quiet apartment. The carbonation was flat, the taste stale, but I drank it anyway because everything tasted like nothing these days.
A shoebox on the floor caught my eye, probably knocked over when I'd stumbled in earlier. Old photos had spilled out across the hardwood like fallen leaves, memories I'd tried to keep buried scattered in the artificial light. I picked up a Polaroid that had landed face-up, the colors faded but still recognizable.
Me at twelve, gap-toothed and grinning, my arm around my mother at some long-forgotten birthday party. She was younger then, before life had worn her down, before the divorce and theyears of barely speaking. Her smile was real in the photo, not the careful one she'd learned to wear later, the one that never quite reached her eyes.
I could almost smell her perfume—something floral and cheap that she'd worn because she'd read in a magazine that it was what men liked. Could almost hear her laugh, the way it started low and bubbled up until she was snorting, which always made her embarrassed and laugh harder.
I shoved the picture back in the box and slammed the lid shut, but the damage was done. The memory was loose now, circling like a shark in the dark water of my thoughts, looking for something soft to bite.
She'd sent me letters sometimes, after I'd moved to New York. Birthday cards with twenty-dollar bills tucked inside and handwritten notes about how proud she was. Christmas wishes that arrived three days late because she'd forgotten to mail them on time.
Then she was gone, and all those unread letters felt like anchors around my neck, weighing me down in water that was already over my head.
The walls felt closer than they had an hour ago, the ceiling lower, the air thicker. I needed to move, needed to get out before the quiet made me crazy enough to do something I'd regret. Or maybe something I wouldn't regret, which was worse.
I grabbed my jacket from where I'd thrown it over a chair, the leather worn soft from years of wear. It smelled like cigarettes and the cologne I'd stopped wearing months ago, back when I'd still cared about making impressions. Now it just smelled like giving up.
The door slammed behind me with more force than necessary, the sound echoing in the narrow hallway that smelled like other people's cooking and disappointment. I took the stairs twoat a time, my footsteps echoing off the concrete walls, the sound bouncing back at me like an accusation.
Outside, the streets were slick with rain that fell in a fine mist, just enough to make everything look blurred around the edges. Neon bled across puddles like watercolors, red and blue and yellow mixing into muddy brown that matched my mood. New York at night had its own rhythm—footsteps and car horns and the distant wail of sirens mixing into something that used to sound like music. Now it just sounded like noise.
I walked without direction, letting my feet carry me through neighborhoods I'd learned by heart over the past few years. Past the bodega where I bought beer at 2 AM, the fluorescent lights harsh and unforgiving, making everyone look like they were dying slowly. Past the laundromat where I'd written some of my best songs on napkins while waiting for my clothes to dry, the machines humming lullabies to insomniacs and night shift workers.
Past the corner where I'd played my first street performance and made seventeen dollars in tips, back when seventeen dollars felt like a fortune and the future looked like something worth chasing.
All of it felt like someone else's life now, like I was walking through a museum of my own past, looking at exhibits of a person I used to be but couldn't remember how to become again.
A street musician was set up near the subway entrance, his guitar case open for donations like a beggar's bowl. He was playing something slow and aching, his voice rough with cigarettes and years of singing on corners that probably never led anywhere better. I used to stop for guys like him, throw a fewdollars in the case and listen for a while, connected by the invisible thread that bound all musicians together.
Tonight I walked past without looking up, just another face in the crowd of people too busy with their own disasters to care about anyone else's dreams.
I cut down an alley toward a dive bar I knew would serve me without asking too many questions. The Rusty Anchor was a place that attracted people who'd run out of better options, which made it perfect for my current state of mind. The neon sign flickered intermittently, casting everything in sickly pink light that made the puddles look like blood.
A drunk guy stumbled out of a doorway as I passed, shoulder-checking me hard enough to make me stagger. The smell of cheap whiskey and vomit hit me like a slap, so sharp and immediate that I gagged. He was young, maybe younger than me, but already carrying the weight of too many nights like this one.
