Moonlight Water Read Online Free Page B

guitar and left after rehearsals and concerts. He came for the music—he lived to sing—and he gave nothing of himself anywhere else. In some odd way Robbie understood, though he couldn’t have explained it. Couldn’t have lived it.
    When they played live that first time, instead of pulling back to the straightforward renditions on Dead albums, Robbie and Kell let it fly, filled their musical sails, and followed wherever the winds blew. The crowd went with them. Wild, crazed, happy, all good things.
    At the end of that concert Gianni said to Robbie, “Hey, I can’t do what you guys do. Haven’t got the juice for it.” Gianni liked to sing music that was written down and stick with it. “You guys are tight, though. Go for it.”
    Robbie had looked at the hastily printed program sheet Gianni had put together. “This calls the band the Elegant Demons and me Rob Roy.” He pursed his mouth. “Are we stuck with those names?”
    Gianni gestured at the crowd, still milling around, no one ready to leave. “I wouldn’t exactly call this being stuck.”
    Soon they had all the Bay Area gigs they wanted. They added songs Robbie or Kell wrote, improvising, dancing with their skewed joint muse in epic jams. Rolling Stone took notice: “Kell sings lead vocals that break your heart wide open, and Rob Roy puts his soul into everything—composing, playing, and madman crash-dancing. The Elegant Demons are riding the edge of something brand-new.”
    A record company amped up the roller coaster, the band made the charts, and the cash registers went ching-a-ching-ching-ching. The musicians took in so much they hired accountants to keep track. The band simply enjoyed themselves and spent the dough buying million-dollar houses, fast cars, classic motorcycles, sleek boats, and leaving twenty-dollar tips for thirty-dollar beer tabs. Kell’s handsome face made the front pages of magazines, and the music world knew Rob Roy was the pulse of the Elegant Demons.
    Through the years, Gianni was there with encouragement and solid sense. He’d long since gone his own way. He went to law school, straight into a posh firm, and then formed his own business handling trusts. In other words, handling a lot of money.
    â€œHow can you give up music?” Robbie had asked him.
    Gianni answered, “I’m good, but I’m not in your league.” Still, he went to almost every one of the band’s concerts within five hundred miles, popped in on studio sessions, stood as best man at both of Robbie’s weddings, and was ready to go for a sail almost any time. Then Gianni would take a trip back home, disappear into the quiet, and get grounded.
    When Robbie asked if he wished things had shaken out differently for him with the music, Gianni said he liked his work, the money, and collecting Navajo art. “Robbie,” he’d said, “I love my life.”
    *   *   *
    Now Robbie Macgregor sat in Gianni’s cabin and thought, I damn well do not love mine. He shook his head, smiled, and looked at the eye-dazzler weaving on the wall next to him.
    He had relived his dream a hundred times since it had visited him. He pictured the high flight off the bridge, enjoyed the splash, felt the slow drift to the bottom, and saw himself standing buck naked on the shore. He looked again at the wooded hills to the east, rolling in shadow. What was out there?
    He still knew what he knew that night. Because of the divorce, even more so. Time to go. Where to go? He didn’t know.
    Here’s what he knew: It would be hard. Painful. Wrenching. A whole life gone. Money gone. Audiences gone. Thrills gone.
    And what might he find to take their place in his heart? What awaited, far out in the somewhere? Maybe nothing. He had to look that one square in the face.
    Well, he thought there would be music of some kind, anywhere. But maybe music alone. Loneliness, that’s