Chapter 46

Chapter 46

By the time she Corey returned to Boston, she was exhausted and aching from her early morning wake-up and the jostling of the train. She took the T home, barely registering the stops and moving by sheer muscle memory. When she made it to her condo, Iggy found her on the couch and settled, purring, in her lap. She thought about sleeping or sprawling out right there, but as tired as she was, she had spent nearly a week in bed with the flu and returning to it held no appeal. And more than that, there was still the song.

Reveille

Her exhaustion and melancholy fit its mood perfectly.

Thanks to her experience at Academy, she had picked up some jargon by osmosis, but everything clicked when she devoured Vargas’s gift, her Running Light, on the train. Like the clerk in the record store who first introduced her to the records that didn’t just change her world, but opened her up to a universe of other worlds. It was the key, and the words began to appear to her on the train ride, and by the time she disembarked, the words were on the page. 

She’d already had the skeleton of a tune, and she grabbed her guitar after paying Iggy his due and started fleshing it out. Within an hour, the music was set and she’d run through it several times, filing away any rough parts so the lyrics and music complimented of one another, both sides of a coin, newly pressed and gleaming. By now, it was late and she was hungry, but she was energized again.

Two hours later, she had her guitar slung over her back and marched to The Bridge Sound & Stage in Cambridge. Though she was spent and the hour was late, the song was fresh and vibrant and she knew it would not let her sleep, so she marched along. One of the benefits of having Lou as her manager was that Lou had a stake in The Bridge, going back to when it was Fort Apache and recording some of the most influential rock and roll records of their generation. Corey had a key and could come and go, and as long as one of the studios wasn’t occupied, she could record gratis. Artists often work at night, but at this hour, unless there was an ambitious artist deep in the throes of making a record or some young guns who could only cobble together the night rate, she could claim a studio.

She entered The Bridge and knew instantly she wasn’t alone. There was no need for her to sneak around, but she just wasn’t in the mood to engage with anyone. Studio B was right beside the foyer and she made a beeline for it, and slipped inside just as an intern whizzed through the lounge and out the way she had just entered, probably on his way to acquire supplies for whatever band was recording in Studio A—beer, coffee, Twizzlers, who the hell knew. She turned on the lights and breathed a sigh of relief.

It was the smaller of the two studios, but that was fine. And she was alone, but that was fine too. She didn’t need an engineer or an intern. She played most of the instruments on her last few records and after twenty-plus years in the business, she could mix and master herself, thank you very much. And she had enough gear in her condo that she could have recorded it there, in the master closet where clothes should reside, but this place was as close to church as she could get at this hour. She needed an open, airy sound. The song needed to breathe, it needed space, and her voice needed to be way out in front, every breath heard, every crack evident. Raw, vulnerable, intimate to the point of mortification.

She hovered over the console, preparing everything, finding the right levels, and deciding to record video as well as audio, not for posterity, but for no other reason than she felt she deserved a red eye of judgment, even if it only belonged to a camera. Once everything was set up to her satisfaction, she exited the booth, snuck over to the microphone closet to select the perfect mic to capture every snap and crackle, then returned to the studio. After some deep, centering breaths, she let the words and her guitar mingle to the tune she had honed at home: 

Red sky at morning

Lovers take warning 

Awake on this parapet

Seeing things you can’t yet.

It’s not you, it’s me

It’s reveille

A two person formation

Until I broke ranks

I rained devastation

But you’ll give thanks

Maybe eventually

Some reveille

You offered safe harbor

But I burned it in effigy

And set fire to the charts

Leading back to me

My heart beats a sad tattoo  

For the future we dreamed of

But this light was born for running

So our song is Taps, my love

The sun always rises

No joy, no surprises

No, not for me

This reveille

Just reveille

Reveille