“Ya,” Robot replied. He was flushed with humiliation.

  “There’s no way Jordan…”

  “I should have known,” Robot said.

  “I can put the word out for you,” Matt said. “If you’re looking for private students.”

  “Fuck that,” Robot said.

  “Seriously, man. You’re the best.”

  “I got nothing right now. I got no studio to teach in. I don’t even have an instrument.”

  “I wondered about that. Pretty sure I saw your LP on Kijiji a few months ago. That must have been your mom who did that, right? That must fucking suck.”

  “Any idea who bought it?”

  Matt shook his head. “You could put up another ad. Looking for who bought it.”

  “I don’t have the money for it now, anyway. You still living on Lemon Street? Over at The Old Hotel?”

  Matt chuckled. “I’m living here now.”

  “No way.”

  Matt pointed at the ceiling. “You know the rooms behind the teaching studio? Jordan converted them to an apartment.”

  “So…he’s signing your paycheque and then you’re signing it right back to him for rent?”

  “Rent’s reasonable.”

  “Your landlord isn’t.”

  “The apartment is brand new. New bathroom. New drywall. He even put in new windows. It’s all freshly painted. This is the first apartment I’ve ever had that wasn’t a dump.”

  There was a long silence that turned awkward as they realized there was no more point in Robot standing there.

  As Robot turned toward the door, he noticed a rack of tiny instruments behind Matt. Like mini-guitars, some of them. It took Robot a moment to register: ukuleles.

  “What are these?” Robot said, his curiosity piqued. Matt shot a quick look back at Jordan, who appeared to have chilled out about the situation and slunk back into his office. “Ukuleles,” Matt said.

  “Ya. I can see they’re ukuleles. But ukuleles? And there’s, like, a thousand of them.”

  Matt was a real musician, someone with a true love and excitement about all things musical, and he could not suppress an enthusiastic grin as he said: “It’s crazy! They’re flying out the door.”

  “Ukuleles?”

  Matt shrugged.

  The ukuleles on the rack looked like real instruments, not the plasticky toy ukuleles which were the only ukes Robot had ever seen before. These had real wood in them. And the frets and nut and tuning machines looked like the hardware used on real instruments.

  “Come back some time it’s quieter,” Matt said. He raised his eyebrows and flipped his gaze in the direction of Jordan Jordan’s office.

  Out on the sidewalk in front of Jordan’s Music, Robot stood for several stunned moments and felt complicated emotions surge through him. Anger. Guilt. Embarrassment. Fear. Had Jordan Jordan heard that he had been released from Springtown? Had he been standing by all day, steps from the door, waiting to block his entry? It was probably just a coincidence. Jordan had probably just happened to be standing near the door and noticed Robot on the other side of it.

  Only a year ago he’d been Jordan’s golden boy. His face had once been at the centre of the instructor board. If there was ever a photo for the newspaper, Jordan made sure Robot was in it. When some new gear came in: the flame top Schechters two years back, a new Boss Loop Station, Jordan liked to put a two- or three-minute demo video on the store’s YouTube channel, and it was always Jordan in the foreground talking about the new gear. A brief history of the company that made the item, a few specs for the tech heads. Robot would be winding away at low volume in the background, the rack of hanging electrics behind him. In every video there came a moment where Jordan would step aside and say: “Here’s the man they call the Robot, he’ll show you what this rig can do.”

  Anyone who had ever stuck with the practice of a musical instrument beyond the fumbling first few hours could tell from Robot’s demo videos that what they were seeing and hearing was not about a piece of gear they could buy. Musicianship, dedication, hours and years of practice: real musicians knew what that sounded like. All the same, Robot’s demo videos had “moved a lot of product” in Jordan’s words. People knew that money was not going to buy them Robot’s skill with the Boss DD-3 delay unit. But if you were sixteen years old, sitting at home looking at the paycheque McDonald’s had just deposited in your account on one Firefox tab, and on the other you were listening to the epic sounds of the Robot winding out like Hendrix, Van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Eric Clapton rolled into one, you might know what your hundred and twenty dollars could not buy. But it was plain and clear what it could.

  * * *

  The public library was only a few blocks from Jordan’s Music. It was a beautiful September day, a clear sky with a light breeze. The maples in this part of town were several hundred years old and towered above the two- and three-storey buildings. Their leaves shimmered golden green in the sun. None of the rank industrial smells of the town was present, and there was no trace of fall yet in the air, just the ripe scent of full-on summer. He caught a couple of wide-eyed and frightened looks on the sidewalk along the way. Several people craned their heads around quickly in cars that rode past. Three cars in a row full of teenagers went by just as he was arriving at the wide lawn in front of the library. There was a commotion at the sight of him. Someone shouted murderer! out the open window of a vehicle that had already gone a half-block past.

  On the landing inside the main library door, he stopped and pretended to look at the tack board. There were posters for punk and metal shows, local indie band flyers with pastel artwork. Robot closed his eyes and gathered himself together. He felt like running for shelter, he felt like bursting out through the library doors and pelting home. But there was no shelter at home. He’d only have to deal with his mother there.

  In the little square of old-school desktop computers between the magazines and the main entrance, it would only take a moment to log on to the internet, but he sat motionless in front of the screen for some time before he did so.

  The internet had gone toxic on him before he’d been sent to Springtown. There was a video of his one-punch fight with Travis Cody Mancomb. There were comments about the video. There were videos about the comments, videos about the video, and videos about the videos about the comments.

  When he finally clicked on the Jordan’s Music YouTube channel, it was just as he’d expected: all of his videos had been deleted. In the year since his sentencing, only five new videos had been put up on the Jordan’s Music channel, all of them two minutes in length, all of them featuring Jordan Jordan only. It was all acoustic guitar, all Jordan alone, by himself in front of his ancient video camera on a tripod in the centre of the guitar room floor. All the videos were the same: Jordan Jordan holding up a newly arrived guitar. Describing its tonewoods and cosmetic features, explaining some of the characteristics of its sound and playability. Then Jordan would play it himself for a half-minute or so. He played the same hokey sixties-style fingerpicking patterns that were already out of date when he was learning them twenty years ago. But he played them well and smoothly and his face took on the same juvenile aspect it always did when Jordan Jordan played guitar: smug self-confidence.

  Robot sat back from the library computer monitor and let his gaze drift past the racks of newspapers and magazines to the light of the windows on the other side of the reading room. He felt ill and emptied out. He had worked at other jobs before his conviction. He was not even going to try to get those jobs back. He’d been nobody special there. And he had not expected to pick right up where he left off at Jordan’s. He did not expect Jordan Jordan to feature his name and photo at the centre of the instructor board again, as it had been. He’d even expected to be taken down from the YouTube channel. These were all business decisions. But he was a good musician and a good music teacher. And he’d hoped that some of his former students would come back. He valued and respected music. Revered it, even. He hoped his students knew who he was. He’d made a grievous error. But music went beyond that. It was something awesome and powerful, something that put people in touch with what was best in themselves and in the universe.

  And the truth was, he liked teaching music just as much as he liked playing. Sure, there was a lot of bullshit. There were kids who didn’t practice; they were taking lessons to please their parents. There were cancellations. Even the ones who called too late and still had to pay were a pain. You had to be there and be prepared, regardless. It was a letdown when they didn’t turn up.

  But there was no better feeling than when a kid came in excited about some song or some riff. They had a chart they’d downloaded off the internet, or a half-baked tab sheet somebody who did not know what they were doing had posted. And they wanted him to help them play. They needed him. Half the time it was a simple trick: a double-stop bend, or a riff that required hammer-ons. But there was no better feeling than helping someone connect with and reach a musical goal. He liked breaking complex songs down into teachable components. Zeroing in on what chord changes would be most challenging. He liked entering into what he called projects with students. Difficult skills or challenging tunes that were going to require work.

  The teaching at Jordan’s took place upstairs. They could have let him in the back way. They didn’t even have to advertise his name. It could be all word of mouth. There were so many things Jordan Jordan could have done aside from cutting him off like that.

  As he was about to click away from the Jordan’s Music YouTube page, he noticed a new link. There was a cartoonish icon of what might have been a guitar but obviously was meant to be a ukulele on the tab. And a box around the image said Keep on Ukin. He clicked through to the single video listed there.

  The video began with Jordan Jordan front and centre, but he was not in the Jordan’s Music guitar room. The National Association of Music Merchants logo was behind him. At his side was a rack of ukuleles identical to the one Robot had seen not an hour before. “This is Jordan Jordan from Jordan’s Music. And today we’re coming at you from NAMM, all the way down in Anaheim, California. This year at NAMM, everyone is talking ukulele. You heard that right. Ukulele. This right here,” he put his hand on the ukulele rack, “is a display we know is going to be a big hit at Jordan’s Music. Kaha Ukuleles from over in Eugene, Oregon. I was just talking to Jean Klempmann. She’s the Kaha representative here at NAMM. And Jean is doing the order up right now. You can’t see her over there on the other side of the camera. She’s doing up our order for a Kaha display just like this. Coming to Jordan’s Music soon. Kaha ukes are a good choice for beginners, and the entry-level instrument features real tonewoods and solid intonation, allowing beginners to grow into that great ukulele sound.”

  The camera moved in past Jordan to centre on the rack of ukuleles. There must have been a dozen or more instruments. There was an abrupt edit back to Jordan Jordan in the foreground. “Jean Klempmann just introduced me to her friend, ukulele virtuoso Ukulele Rick Hobart.” The camera panned out and swivelled slightly to the right until there were two men in the shot.

  Ukulele virtuoso, Robot thought. He snickered out loud in the library, then checked over his shoulders to make sure no one had heard. Leave it to Jordan Jordan. Robot had had the volume low at this point, the sound coming through the built-in speakers of the library desktop. But this Rick Hobart had caught his attention, so he pulled his iPod out of his pocket, disconnected the earbuds, and plugged into the front of the computer. He adjusted the volume up now that only he could hear it.

  “Now, Rick. The Kaha is not your regular instrument, is that right?” Jordan was saying.

  “That’s right, Jordan. I have several handmade ukuleles from some of the top ukulele luthiers in the world. And I don’t like dwelling too long on money. We ukulele players tend to get misty-eyed and cranky if we think about money too much…”

  Jordan Jordan laughed out loud and looked up at the camera.

  “But I think it’s safe to say that this Kaha in my hand here,” Ukelele Rick held up a model that looked like solid mahogany, “this sweet little thing here is a fraction of what my high-end ukes cost.”

  “And how do they play?”

  “Well,” Ukulele Rick looked meditatively downward a moment and paused, “these little Kahas are an excellent choice for a beginner or intermediate player.”

  “Could you…ah…” Jordan motioned at Ukulele Rick’s hands, where they clutched the ukulele in question.

  Ukulele Rick took on a suddenly polished aspect. His words became the practiced patter of an experienced showman. “I’m going to play a little tune here I wrote a while back. It’s a sort of bluegrass instrumental number I call ‘Cabbages for Balls.’”

  “Cabbages…for…balls,” Jordan repeated with uncertainty. He looked awkwardly at the camera.

  “Now. There’s a whole story that goes along with the title. But…ah…” Ukulele Rick pointed at the video camera. “How much tape you got in that thing?”

  Jordan stuck his head back into the shot and smiled at the camera. “Maybe you should just…”

  “Maybe I should just shut up and do what I came here for.”

  The camera zoomed in closer. Jordan Jordan had disappeared from the shot. Ukulele Rick’s eyes blinked hypnotically, and his knee moved tentatively with the tapping of his foot as he pulled the right tempo out of the air.

  What followed was a musical experience that Robot was completely unprepared for. The first three minutes of “Cabbages for Balls” was a blast of sophisticated, urbanized, jazz-aware bluegrass that was bursting with raw energy and virtuosic bravado. Then at the three-minute mark, just when Robot thought Ukulele Rick had played himself out, there came an almost impossible tempo increase. The whole tune repeated at double the speed.

  The low-tech camera did not do a good job of keeping up with Ukulele Rick’s fingerwork. All the same, Robot could tell by the fingerings of some of the scales he flew through that he had to be using a guitar-like tuning. At least the three highest strings had to be tuned to intervals similar to guitar.

  This was like nothing he had ever seen. The chord changes in the piece were slightly modified bluegrass changes. And the way Ukulele Rick’s phrases sidled away from and then rubbed back up against the one and the five note was so clever and funny. It was set up to sound like straight-ahead bluegrass, but there were slick, dissonant notes thrown in here and there that said: Look at me, I’m going to write a tune that you’re going to think is a bluegrass tune, but guess what notes I’m going to throw in! Guess where I’m going to resolve this phrase! Guess what chord I’m going to throw in now! This guy was doing the impossible. He was playing a tune that paid straight up homage to a whole genre of music while at the same time quietly giving the whole thing the finger. And he was doing it on a sixty-dollar shitbox of a ukulele.

  Robot stood up from the library computer in such a state of elation that he almost forgot to log out. He stepped back, then forward again. The earbuds reached the end of their tether and popped out of his ears.

  Once logged out, he turned and hurried for the library door. Outside, he moved faster. At first, he ran in the direction of his mother’s house. Halfway there he did a one-eighty on the sidewalk, and ran back the other way.

  He passed the library in a blur and came to a stop a few blocks later, on the sidewalk outside Jordan’s Music. He rested a hand on the wood frame of the display window until he caught his breath. He could see the back of the ukulele rack, could make out the differences between some lighter and darker tonewoods on the backs and on the necks of some instruments.

  Through the glass in the doorway, he could see that Jordan Jordan was out back, in his office. Bria was at the far end of the store, handing a woman a pamphlet Robot recognized as the Yamaha Keyboard model comparison sheet. Matt was behind the counter, digging guitar strings out of cardboard packing boxes and fitting them carefully into the squares in the display case where each belonged. Robot stayed back on the sidewalk, mostly hidden by the wooden post at the edge of the display window. As Matt was bending down for another handful of D’Addarios, Robot pushed the door open just to the point before it would set off the electric buzzer it was attached to, and squeezed into the store. He slid behind the ukulele rack, hunched down to make himself smaller, and perused the instruments from the reverse end.

  To a skilled eye like Robot’s, the back of an instrument revealed almost as much as the front. He was not one hundred percent sure what sort of tonewood a ukulele luthier might use, but these instruments seemed constructed a lot like guitars. The one closest to him looked like maple back and sides. Some of these woods seemed like mahogany. For under a hundred dollars, he was sure the backs and sides had to be laminate, not solid wood. And as guitar makers were doing, he’d bet the ukulele company was putting solid wood in the top of the instrument, where almost all the sound was generated.

  At the top of the rack, a dark-grained tonewood caught his eye. He grasped the headstock and yoinked the instrument over to where he stood. A tag dangled from the strap peg at the bottom. On one side of the cream-coloured cardstock, handwritten with an extra-fine-tipped Sharpie in the weirdly angled writing Robot recognized as Jordan Jordan’s, the price: $75. He could not help himself. He looked over his shoulder at the top rack of electric guitars. The tags twisted slowly in the currents of circulated air. The closest guitar to his Gibson LP Studio would be, he knew without looking at the tags, $750, $800. Minimum. Robot turned over the card that hung from the ukulele. It read: Solid spruce top, rosewood back and sides. Robot followed the grain lines in the spruce and saw how they continued over the lip of the wood at the soundhole: confirmation that this was indeed solid spruce. The top had a nice glossy finish that would protect the wood in the long term from heavy strumming and picking and the dings any instrument got just from being played.

 

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