Before He Finds Her by Michael Kardos

that time, since before Allie was pregnant, there had never been talk of playing in public. There had never been a need. Playing a gig, they all knew—or at least suspected—meant hauling gear and negotiating payment with dickhead bar owners and hustling for people to show up, and that all seemed a lot like work, which was the opposite of why they came together to play.
    How many teenagers jammed in similar garages? Plenty—but teenagers appreciated nothing. You had to be over thirty and overburdened. You needed battle scars to prove you’d earned the right to a few hours of amplified jams and words sung with feeling and reverb.
    “Wayne called me earlier,” Paul said. “He can’t make it tonight.”
    Case in point: Wayne was under thirty. When you’re young and still have all your hair, apparently the rules of band practice don’t apply.
    “He’s not coming at all?” Eric asked.
    Paul gave a Hey, not my problem shrug.
    “What’s he got that’s so important?” Ramsey asked.
    “He’s performing brain surgery.” Paul drank from his beer. “He didn’t say, I didn’t ask. Probably a date.” He belched. “You remember those, don’t you?”
    “I just want to do these songs right on Sunday,” Ramsey said. “I want us to be good.”
    “I got sad news for you, pal.” Eric grinned. “We ain’t good.”
    “Well, it ain’t Sunday yet, either.” But Eric was right. Only Wayne had any real talent. Paul was especially weak on the drums. His tempos defied all logic. But he had problems of his own—handicapped son, wife who’d gone inpatient a couple of times for depression. He worked as an EMT, so it wasn’t as if he could veg out on the job. He was a good man who needed Rusted Wheels at least as much as any of them.
    Ramsey removed several sheets of paper from the back pocket of his jeans. He had composed the set list in his head while driving through New Mexico and written up four copies at a truck stop in Amarillo.
    “This is a lot of music,” Paul said, scanning the list.
    There were eighteen songs, many of them already part of the Rusted Wheels repertoire, plus three or four that they’d tried in the past and found too hard. “Some neighbors might be coming,” Ramsey said. “I want it to be a real show.”
    They’d slogged through a third of the list when, at 7:30, Allie came into the garage carrying pizza boxes. At eight Ramsey made them play quieter, but at nine they were still going strong. At a couple of minutes before ten, they settled on an ending to “Magic Carpet Ride,” called it quits, and made plans to meet up again the following afternoon.
    By then the garage felt superheated, three bodies working hard. Eric was slick with sweat. Paul had stripped down to his undershirt. Ramsey felt the urge to say something before they dispersed. “I can’t thank you men enough. This gig, your dedication. Your friendship.” He forced himself to look at Eric and Paul, rather than down at the concrete floor or across the garage at the ladders hanging on the wall. “It means more to me than you could know.” And with no one knowing what to say next, Ramsey decided to cut them all a break. “Okay, fuckheads, see you tomorrow.”
    Eric snapped open a can of Diet Coke. “So spill it, partner. What’s going on?”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Come on—the marathon rehearsal, your rousing speech...”
    Paul had left. Ramsey was changing his guitar strings. The instrument was damn fine, better than he deserved—a Telecaster with a sunburst finish, Allie’s gift to him for his thirtieth birthday. That guitar replaced the piece-of-shit knockoff-of-a-knockoff that followed him from lousy apartment to lousy apartment over the years.
    New strings brought out the Telecaster’s full depth, but Ramsey knew better than to change them right before the gig. They’d go flat every two seconds, and he wasn’t a good enough musician to make corrections on the fly. He wasn’t good enough to tune his new