Out of Tune

Prologue

Where words fail, music speaks—Hans Christian Anderson

The man was dying.

He'd been dying for a while; he just hadn't known it. And then he'd passed out as he walked off of the stage at one of his standard late-night gigs at The Vault. He didn't remember a lot of the stuff that happened after that. Not hitting his head on the railing as he fell down the stairs. Not hearing his old buddy Phil call his name. Not seeing his little girl climb into the ambulance alongside him and insist with a firm voice that she was going with him to the hospital.

That was where he'd woken up, dazed and disoriented, two days later. His daughter had been curled up in a chair beside him, fast asleep. She hadn't left his side the entire time he'd been unconscious and it showed. Her skin had been pale and sallow and her red hair, the hair that was just like her mother's, had been sticking up in all kinds of directions it had almost made him laugh.

And then the doctors had come in and explained what'd happened.

Cancer, they'd told him. And not just any kind of cancer. Pancreatic. That was a bad one, even if you had an early diagnosis, which he hadn't. His doctors didn't tell him any of that, of course, but he'd been able to read it on their faces. He'd always been good at things like that, at knowing what other people were thinking and how to respond to it.

But he hadn't been quite sure how to respond when they said that the cancer had progressed to stage four and that surgery was not an option. The unspoken words with their dark meaning had hung there in the air for a few moments.

He was dying. Would be dead soon.

They'd given him three months at the most. He knew it would be less. He was able to recognize the signs now: loss of appetite, pain in the upper abdomen radiating out towards his back—pain he'd gotten before his diagnosis and assumed that it had been the result of a small car accident he'd gotten into a few weeks earlier—and fatigue. He was constantly tired, like it was taking everything he had to stay awake.

Taking everything he had to stay alive.

The man wasn't ready to go. He was still young, in his early forties, and felt as if he had a lot of things to live for. His daughter was only seventeen. He knew that he wouldn't make it to her next birthday, would never see her get picked up by her date for the Prom or walk down an aisle towards her partner-to-be. He would never have the chance to see her get signed to a record label—as he knew she one day would.

He was a good musician. He grew up playing piano lessons and had eventually picked up the guitar and the bass. He knew how to string along a melody and play a song as it was meant to be played, with love and heartbreak and passion.

Music had been one of his only true loves throughout his life, third only to his daughter and his ex-wife who he'd never quite given up on, even after she'd left him and remarried. It was the one thing that had always been there for him, through the deaths of his parents and dropping out of college after two semesters. After all the times his heart had gotten broken and all the time he'd thought that he just couldn't do it anymore. Music was there.

There'd been a time that he thought he'd find his name written on billboards in shiny bright lights and perform in front of sold-out stadiums across the world. He'd dreamt about hearing adoring crowds scream out his name and feeling that rush of heat and excitement as the opening chords to one of his songs began.

But those dreams had faded along with his youth. He performed at sketchy bars in the outskirts of Manhattan and the occasional coffee shop. The Vault was the only nice establishment he'd been able to perform in, and then only because he knew the owner. He'd even tried to self-produce an album, hoping to distribute it to local radio stations and start getting his stuff on the air. He'd handed out over a hundred copies and sold about a dozen online but nothing had ever come from it.

He'd known then that his chance was over, that there was no hope for him, but music was who he was and so if that meant playing in crappy dive bars for the rest of his life he would do it. Because music was his passion, his life, and he loved it.

He was a good musician.

His daughter was a great one.

She could string together a song in under an hour, from the lyrics to the strum pattern on the guitar. She could do it and do it well, like it was no big deal. And she could sing. He'd never heard someone with such a voice. Perhaps he was biased, she was his daughter, but he would swear that there wasn't a single person in the world who could dislike her after hearing her voice.

Leaving her would be the hardest thing about death. He wasn't afraid to die. He was afraid to leave her alone, to leave her with her mother, who didn't quite understand music and would likely do anything in her power to suck it out of her daughter.

It wasn't like she was a terrible mom, her brain just worked differently than theirs. Music was a language to him and his daughter, one that they were completely fluent in. His ex-wife was like a tourist thrust into another country after only studying their language for a week. She understood small things about the art form but he knew that she'd never really understood him and their daughter and how music was more than art. It was the oxygen in the air that they breathed. It kept them not only living, but alive.

He sat at the kitchen table in the small apartment that he and his daughter shared. It wasn't much, but it was home. Several sheets of paper sat in front of him, filled with lyrics and chords. He was dedicating the song to his daughter. If there was one thing he didn't quite know how to do, it was say goodbye to her. He didn't know how to put that emotion, that heartbreak, into words. And this song, he knew, wouldn't even begin to cover the extent of how much he loved her. He just hoped that she would understand all that he was trying to say with it.

The song was just finished. He'd written the last chord only an hour ago. He would be playing it the next night, during his final gig at The Vault, in front of his daughter and all of his friends who had supported him throughout his life. He would need help on stage, he had difficulty playing his guitar now, his fingers ached and refused to do what he told them, and he was finding it difficult to stand for extended periods of time. He was determined to play the guitar for this piece though. If just to see his daughter smile.

He walked over to the case of his guitar and peeled back a section of the felt on the roof of the interior of the case. It was where he kept all of his original pieces—a hiding place that none but he knew of. He slid the song into the small compartment and felt contentment. He couldn't give his daughter much. He didn't have very many possessions and he wasn't a rich man. But he could give her this song and this guitar and pray that she thought of him whenever she picked it up to play.

He closed the case of the guitar and made for his bedroom. His daughter had fallen asleep on the couch hours ago and he paused to throw an afghan over her. The cancer had not only taken his toll on him but her as well. She'd begun to look both younger and older than ever before.

The man paused to kiss her on the forehead and whisper, "Goodnight. I love you." And then he went off to bed, yawning, as he fell asleep.

Those were the last words he ever spoke.