Free Encore to an Empty Room by Kevin Emerson Page A

essential trap we’re in: whenever we do find out anything about Eli, Caleb has to reckon with who his father was, and that’s only getting harder the more we learn.
    He shakes his head, returning from afar. “We should go find Val,” he says. “You think?”
    â€œYou go,” I say. “I’ll help clean up here.”
    I watch him leave and feel for him, for Val too. No matter how much either of them run, the ghosts keep following them.
    But at least now we have a lead.
    It’s time to stop running and get back to the hunt.

7
    We’re on edge for the rest of Christmas Day. But the phone never rings. The doorbell never chimes. It takes Caleb some time to talk Val down, and after they finally return from a walk, Val is determined to kill the rest of the day playing video games. When I leave the basement, she and Randy are infiltrating some sort of frat house full of naked coed zombies who have laser eyes. The puddles of vomit are lethal, too? Or something. Randy’s sharing a growler of beer with her, which Charity has decided to ignore for tonight.
    Before I go, Caleb tries putting his Telecaster into Eli’s old guitar case.
    â€œCheck out the metaphor,” he says when the guitar fits.
    â€œWell played.” It crosses my mind that the guitar case,with its soft padded lining, resembles a coffin. I know better than to try to make a joke about that. But I also know that seeing Caleb’s guitar in there gives me a chill.
    He closes the lid and runs his fingers over the chipped stickers. “It’s the closest I have to hearing his stories, you know? To hanging out with him. I think the thing that’s most annoying sometimes is that I actually do want to get to know him. To have him in my life, well, as much as he can be. I just wish there wasn’t all the noise around it.”
    I give him the biggest hug I can, and we kiss until Charity coincidentally bumps something downstairs as if to say, Okay, that’s enough.
    I wake up and send three emails for possible Denver gigs. Then I spend the morning working on my application. And by that I mean I spend the morning re-listening to all of the recent practice sessions that Dangerheart has recorded, taking notes on particularly great moments that we can’t forget in the studio, or in Denver. Like the way Matt drove the second half of the second verse of “Catch Me” with that quarter note kick drum pattern. Or that cool rhythm that Val gave to the second chorus of “On My Sleeve” that one time back in October, the one that Jon said would go good with a motorik beat. Except then Matt didn’t really know what that was and you know how drummers get when they don’t know a reference. I’d beenthinking the other night that “Sleeve” needed one more thing. I think this is it.
    There’s also the way Caleb sang “Chem Lab” one time where it was just the right blend of his smile and his fret. Another time where Val gave a hopeful turn to her delivery on “The Spinelessness of Water” . . .
    I’ve listened to these songs so many times at this point that they feel like rooms, no, not even rooms: scenes that I inhabit. This drum fill is a staircase, that guitar line the blur of traffic lights out the window, this vocal sound the feel of the carpet as I approach the handsome gentleman in the corner (who’s Caleb, of course!). The bass line that is a murmur of conversation . . . There are so many times when I want to comment and share all of these tiny nuances, the late beat here, the overtone there, the second or two when the guitar sounds like the color cobalt . . . but how annoying would all those tweets and posts be? And no one would quite get it. Any listener who loves these songs as much as me has their own scenes that the music whisks them off to. That’s part of the awesome.
    Notes finished, I check my email again, looking for Denver replies. What