Tabbs

Chapter 9

The following days hadn't been much easier following Gavin's sudden ejection from Tabbs' life, but she found she could hold her head up a little easier. When the grind of work, or just life, had gotten to her she recalled Gavin's naked, prepubescent form struggling to his mother's awaiting BMW. One couch cushion was pressed to his crotch, the other to his ass in some comical attempt to keep a shred of his dignity. She was surprised he hadn't plead to his mother to march up the stairs and give Tabbs a piece of her mind. Though maybe he did and his mother, at least, knew when a battle was already lost.

On her next day off, a rare treat, she went to a pawn store on a whim and bought a used tube amp. In her time clearing out her grandmother's house she wasn't able to find her old one, but she managed to locate a few of her old stomp boxes and she was practically frothing at the mouth to try them. After a much need vacuuming and general purging of her living room, she set up the tiny amp on the cushion-less bench of her couch and daisy chained the stomp boxes. Lowering the strap till it was nearly at her knees, she cranked the volume to a crisp yet humble seven, and played the opening rift to Stairway to Heaven. Maybe a little tacky for a guitar player, but hell if it didn't feel satisfying. Again her fingers tripped on the frets and she had to fudge a few notes, but her distortion pedal filled in a few of the gaps for her. Stomping the fat button on her looper peddle, she summoned a chorus of raging, fire-breathing guitars behind her as she improvised a lick in the upper octave of the guitar neck.

With her fingers leaking dabs of blood on the old strings and her forehead slick with sweat, she flicked off the old tube amp and listed to the satisfying 'pop' as the speaker withered and died. Wiping her brow with her short sleeve, she caught a look outside through the open blinds of her sliding glass door and found the sun nearly setting. She had been at it way longer then she had even thought. It was hard to recall the last time that time had slipped away so quickly. She laid her axe on the sofa, wiped up the dots of crimson with a rag, and washed off her hands in her clean kitchen sink.

She opened up her fridge, considered over its barren wastes, and closed it again. 'Hell,' she thought. 'Not like I have to support that little dweeb anymore.' The thought made another smile crinkle her cheeks. 'Might as well treat myself.' She shut the blinds, collected her army surplus backpack and keys and headed out the door. On her way down the tinny metal stairs, crunching a few pieces of plastic under her sneakers as she went, she spotted the two usual dads, smoking and sipping on forty's while chatting with each other in Spanish. They paused and looked at her when she neared the concrete landing, her heart skipping a beat from the sudden attention. 'Oh God,' she thought. 'They must have seen and heard everything from the other night.' A withered smile crept on her face. 'Great, now I'm the crazy bitch of the building.'

To her shock, the men smiled at her. "Chica!" one yelled. "Good job with that little turd!" The other man, nodding with approval, raised his ridiculously toned and tattooed arm up for a high five. Tabbs felt herself smile from ear to ear and met his calloused hand with her own. They whooped and hollered at her all the way to her car, which miraculously turned on the first time she tried. Today had been a great day indeed.

*

On her way to McDonalds - the nice one across town because she figured she was worth it - she noticed a Guitar Center at a strip mall near her old high school while stopped at a stop light. The same one, if she remembered right, that Spacey Dave had worked at after school. He managed to get them some amazing discounts there on the supplies they couldn't scrounge from pawn shops, or when in desperation, from the trash. Typical shopping trips there were fronted by Dot's mom's emergency credit card. They had splurged enough times that Tabbs highly doubted she hadn't noticed the crazy amounts of emergencies her daughter appeared to be in, but she had never said anything about it. Her mom had been the only one that really seemed to believe in her old band, Monkey Grease, and didn't think of it as just some phase that everyone else prayed would pass soon.