Power Trio

They start slow, tentative. Kell feeds him a classic, a million-dollar boom-tiss, watching him over the chrome rim of her ride. When Evan was a cocky kid, he might have taken this and tried to sprint, shown some chops. But that’s not what Kell’s rhythm needs from him right now.

He shudders as he slides a murmuring squall across his low E string. An electric feed, like the juice goes from the wall to the amp to the bass to the man. How long has it been since he’s stood in front of a full stack and felt that pushed air? He misses his own bed, but he missed this more.

He meets her eyes as he meets her kick drum, meanders across a major scale, holds his horses on the dominant and lets it pulse, his music circling hers like a duelist.

Kell nods her approval. “Okay, Evan H,” she calls through the racket, on the edge of legibility. “You wanna fuck some shit up?”

“Hit it,” Evan says, but can’t imagine she hears him over the sudden splash of her hi-hat as it slaps shut. She taps out a sixteenth-note groove, chin jerking in time. Evan meets it, sits with it for a couple of bars, then picks his spot to dance his notes around it in frilly syncopated stabs. Now he’s peacocking. Just a bit.

Faster. She executes one of those hair-raising fills he heard. He tightens up, catching the downbeat she dangles in front of him. They’re much too loud for conversation now but her lips—full and dark, he can’t help but notice, like concord grapes—draw into a silent yesss.

Faster. The second kick drum has introduced itself. She’s good; not just a thrasher, deceptively technical. A little forbearance below the bluster, inviting him in. A subtle swing in the thunder of her toms. He finds the thread, follows it into her maze, and like handed-down prophecy, there it is.

The lift.

He’s in it with her, the two musicians alchemized into a single instrument. He feels the rise and fall of his breath and knows it’s matching hers. Kell gives him a look that jolts down his spine and somehow he already knows what it means, snaps his palm onto his strings, holds the beast back as she pours out a blistering avalanche of snare and ends on one crystallized quarter note of silence.

She takes a heaving breath, grey gaze wide and wild, in that beat of stillness they hold together, before she unleashes that crash again and he grinds all the way down the neck, back into the money zone, and it’s like he’s a kid again in Nashville, before things went south. And he’s never made his mistakes and fucked up his friendships. No calls from his father, overripe encouragement going rancid in the passing days. No calls from his mother, the get out and rock ‘em, kid she’d sign off with, harder and harder to hear every time as that golden voice’s foundations crumbled, until her lungs wouldn’t let her speak anymore.

Nothing left. Only Evan and Kell, in the eye of their own hurricane.

They’re playing around with each other now, switching up, goofing off. She sweeps him into a bluesy shuffle. He paces her out into a staccato krautrock march. They cycle through genres; he hits a ridiculous ska backbeat, cracks them both up. They lean in hard to a plodding shoegaze sludge. He doesn’t feel like he’s being tested. He feels like he’s on a playground. Kell is dancing as much as she’s playing, doing a little shimmy in her seat while the sheets of membrane and metal shake and roar around her. The tip of her tongue darts out as she concentrates on a hi-hat hemiola, fuchsia pink against her dark mouth.

And then—with one last unspoken frisson, a thing above consciousness stilling both their hands on one final crash—it’s over.

“Dude,” Kell says into the ringing silence. “We fucking cooked.”

“Locked in, right?” Evan takes his earplugs out. His hands are shaking.

“Locked in for sure. That was badass. Like if it was just my call, you’re hired.” Kell shudders out of her afterglow and digs for her phone. “Man. I should have recorded that. Let me bug the squad for an ETA.” She slides her messenger app open and starts tak-takking away. “You think you can bring that heat again for everyone else?”

”I can if you can.” And despite the slab of wood hanging off his chest, Evan’s spine goes a little straighter.

“Oh, it’s on tap, Evan Human.” Kell says, and winks at him. “This shit’s what I do. What we do, I guess.”

She winked. At him. What does that mean? Is that a common gesture for her? Does she wink at everyone? You’ve been quiet for like five seconds, Evan, say something.

The studio door swings in and interrupts/saves him.

In steps a slight, willowy elf so devoid of color he could be a grayscale printout. His face is angular and paperwhite, his tightly plaited braid platinum. Hexagonal black sunglasses cover his eyes. An oversize white cable-knit turtleneck, down almost to his knees, hangs over painted-on black denim. He’s got a jet leather guitar case at his back, stiff and molded like he’s an orchestra soloist.

He breezes past Evan into the center of the room, depositing a stainless-steel nuclear football attaché onto the carpet. “Hello, Kell,” he says, in a singsong voice as smooth as his enamel skin. “Hello, Kell’s bassist.”

“Evan has a name, Sion,” Kell says.

“It would be quite the shock if he didn’t,” the elf says. “I was brunching with several of my partners when you texted, Kellax Falrak. With ongoing discussion about making it a boozy brunch.”

Kell snorts. “You honor us with your sacrifice.”

“A bottomless boozy brunch. And yet: meeting and measuring your bassist was the priority. I want that known.”

“Our bassist, not my bassist.” Kell says, clicking a sidestick pattern on her snare’s tension rod. If she’s still buzzing as much as Evan is, she’s got nervous energy to burn off. “I didn’t, like, drag him here. Evan saw the flyer.”

“Did he.” Sion removes his sunglasses. His pupils are stained a wine-dark red. Ash elf, Evan’s internal fairfolk catalogue supplies.

“Yup.” Kell puffs her chest out. “The flyer a certain somebody thought was a corny waste of time.”

“I thought it was a waste of my time, Kellax. I make no assumption about the value of yours.” Sion flips the latch on his suitcase, revealing a tidy, compact pedalboard—tuner, compression, overdrive—with not a wire out of place. It even has little compartments for his picks, cables, and a set of spare strings. He nods to Evan. “I’m Sion Benefice. Lead guitar. You are Evan…?”

“H,” Evan says. “Evan H.”

Kell blinks. “Your last name isn’t actually Human, right?”

“Let’s call it H for now, if that’s okay.”

“That’s okay. That’s kinda catchy, Evan H. Beats Kellax Falrak, thanks so much Sion for spilling the beans.” She turns her attention to the guitarist, who has unsheathed a gleaming mother-of-pearl Prelate Stratus from his case. It’s sleek and modern, sans pickguard, with a line of single-coil pickups down its length like the brocade of a uniform. “You hear us from the hall?” she asks.

“I did,” Sion says, plugging everything in.

“And?” Evan asks.

He shrugs. “Good.”

“A ‘good’ from the ash elf.” Kell glances at Evan, wiggles her brows up and down. She’s got a piercing in the left one. It’s like there’s always something new whenever he looks at her—a stud in her nose, a blackwork rose tattoo. “You’re gonna find out how big a deal that is. One day he’s gonna call something great and the world will explode.”

Sion saddles up his guitar with a slick strip of black leather. “I see you’re a fellow Prelate liker, Mr. H. Very classical.”

“Thanks,” Evan says.

“Very safe.”

“Thanks?” Evan says.

“Play nice,” Kell says. “Thekla with you?”

“Locking up her bicycle.” Sion hits the bypass on his strobe tuner, his muted strings tinging sweetly as he stretches them into shape. “And manhandling the coffees. I would have offered to carry something, but, well. I didn’t.”

As if summoned, the coffees totter into the room, balanced precariously in the grip of a diminutive green-skinned woman. She’s wearing a bike helmet and trying to lug all four large orders, a tote, and a brown suede gig bag as tall as she is. “Yo!” a smoky voice calls. “Come take these from me before I spill Sion’s all over.”

Evan hastily grabs the crowded cardboard tray, revealing behind it a cherubic, sage-colored face, with big saffron eyes behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, and a dusting of dark green freckles across the bridge of her nose. “Hi, there,” she says, revealing twin rows of needle teeth. “Evan, right?”

“And you must be Thekla,” Evan says. He shouldn’t be surprised that she’s a goblin, but he isn’t used to being the only human in a room. “Good to meet you.”

“You too, man. Nice bass.” Thekla shoots him a quick smile as she flips Sion off. “Thanks for the help, Benefice.”

The elf plucks his cup from the stack. “You are welcome,” he says.

Thekla shucks her various items, piling them next to an armless, feather-boa’d mannequin in a corner of the studio. She pulls her helmet off, revealing copper-colored hair, and stands on tiptoes to place it on the mannequin’s chipped plastic head. Below the conglomeration of stuff, she’s wearing a boxy cream-colored t-shirt. Written on the front, in red serif font, is I WISH GOD HAD GIVEN ME SEROTONIN INSTEAD OF THESE FAT TITTIES. “Quick word outside, Kell?”

“One sec, guys,” Kell says, following the goblin out. She closes the soundproof door behind them.

Sion wanders over to a white plastic lawn chair and plops himself into it crosswise, like a cat, spidering his tapered fingers across his fretboard in an acoustic warmup. Evan has the twinging urge to reach for his phone and remembers he sold the thing.

He clears his throat. “So, Sion.”

“Evan H.”

“How long have you been playing?”

“Thirty years.”

“Nice.” Evan has no clue how elves are supposed to age, but everyone says it’s slow. “Pretty long time.”

“Indeed, Evan H.”

Twang, twang, go Sion’s strings. He’s evidently comfortable with silence. Evan finds his own seat on an upturned crate.

“What do you think they’re talking about?”

“I know what they’re talking about,” Sion says, breezily. “Thekla is angry at Kell because you’re here.”

Evan’s stomach drops. “She is?”

“She is.” Sion gets up, swans over with the zigzag gait of a graceful but tipsy dancer, still palpating up and down the guitar. With six-foot Evan sitting and him standing, he’s taller but not by much. “We recently parted ways with our last bass player under less-than-ideal circumstances. Thekla was going to change instruments, and we’d try a trio. I don’t believe she realized the flyer was still posted anywhere. Would you like to plug into my tuner, Mr. H? You were flat.”

“Shit, good idea,” Evan says, and swaps in at Sion’s cable. “So how mad are we talking? Surmountable mad?”

“Just play well,” Sion says. “She’s a people pleaser. She’ll resign herself.”

Resign herself. Great.

“Also, I don’t think she loves that you’re human,” Sion adds after a moment. “She had an idea that we’d all be fairfolk. She wouldn’t like my saying that to you.”

Evan grimaces. “I didn’t really like it either.”

“Just play well,” Sion repeats. “You played well earlier. I heard you. Just do that. Have you played shows?”

“Yeah. A few.”

“You know the drill, then. We’re looking at a very active summer; Thekla wants to get the name out in time to put us on the bill for The Vail.”

The Vail rings a bell—some kind of festival, he thinks?—but before he can ask Sion for a reminder, Kell and Thekla return. Neither seems in a hurry to speak. The orc murmurs something to herself as she takes her position at the kit, those acrobat shoulders bunched with tension. She catches his look and does wink number 2.

Thekla unspools a clutch of pedals from her tote and begins daisy-chaining them together. Evan spies candy-colored distortions and a muddle of modulators. The goblin girl clearly digs effects. Her guitar is a cherry red Alfons, compact and boxy, with a pair of semihollow cutouts and big silver wall-of-sound humbuckers. Here and there she’s pasted stickers to it; the most prominent, just under her bridge, is a pointy-eared fairfolk head, razor teeth bared, half its face melted into a leering red skull. ONE EXIT is written in bold blackletter beneath.

Though she’s only three and a half feet tall, the way her braided strap falls across the center of her chest when she hefts her guitar proves that her FAT TITTIES tee is not an empty boast. Nobody with eyes could mistake Thekla for anything but a grown woman.

Thekla nudges a couple of pedals on with the toe of a grubby brown combat boot, and a low hiss of noise uncoils from her cabinet, the static promise of a sonic tidal wave.

She adjusts the messy bun of ginger hair atop her head, tucking an errant strand into her scrunchie. “Kell mentioned you two are warmed up already,” she says. “We were thinking, if you’re up for it, we dive into an in-progress thing and give you a feel for the sound.”

“I’m up for it,” Evan says.

“How you feel about showing him Fossil Fuel, Sion?” Kell says. She pulls a wad of her tank top’s midsection up to her eye and rubs her lid, revealing an expanse of sculpted violet stomach and a flash of russet-colored bralette. Evan hopes that she’s as oblivious to the effect the motion has on him as she is to the little smudge of eyeshadow it leaves on the white fabric.

“No objections,” Sion says. He removes a band from his complicated hairstyle and runs his fingers through the braid, loosens it into a silvery curtain. “It’s as acceptable a draft as any.”

“Word.” Thekla swings the microphone arm down to aim it at her pint-sized position. Her scratchy voice fills the space. “So Fossil Fuel. it’s four-four, D minor, and the verse is just one, six, three, seven. Then the chorus is simple. I’m going from C to D back and forth, but there’s not a lot going on there right now. So maybe try something melodic. And we go verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus.” Evan’s preoccupation must show on his face, because her businesslike demeanor relents for a moment. “And we aren’t looking for perfect, OK? Just wanna see if you can catch the vibe and play the changes.”

Evan nods. Here to rock, his mantra echoes.

“Don’t forget the intro, babes.” Kell snaps her headcans back over her pointed ears, prompting Evan to remember his plugs.

“We axed the intro last week and added the riff to the bridge, remember?” Thekla pulls her glasses off and hangs them off her shirt collar.

“Oh right, right. So we’re just straight in?”

“You and Sion are. I don’t play until the third phrase.”

“Gooooood luck, Evan H!” Sion sings. “A-one two three four…”