Less Than Nothing
Authors: R.E. Blake
Tags: #music coming of age, #new adult na ya romance love, #relationship teen runaway girl, #IDS@DPG, #dpgroup.org
Smashwords edition. Copyright © 2014 by R. E. Blake. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact:
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* D P G R O U P . O R G *
I’ve always loved coming-of-age novels as well as road books. Some of my favorites have been novels that combine both elements - a main character who’s on the road, in difficult circumstances, and through the journey discovers important lessons about herself and the world around her.
Less Than Nothing
is a romance, but it’s also an adventure, the story of two people growing into their own skins as their relationship develops. Love stories involving big changes, seismic shifts for the characters, sacrifices and compromises and difficult choices, are the ones I find the most satisfying as a reader. Less Than Nothing is that kind of book. I hope you enjoy it.
San Francisco, California
I used to wonder where homeless people came from.
What personality flaws or bad decisions resulted in them living on the streets? Maybe they were too lazy to work or drunk all the time or mentally ill?
I know that’s totally shallow, but that’s how I felt. I admit it.
I remember driving by groups of street people, peering at them from the quiet safety of my folks’ car, giving only seconds of thought to the question before moving on to more important things, like texting my friends or posting on Facebook.
Now that I’m one of them, I’m not so judgmental.
The morning air is crisp, the fog having burned off in the last hour, although if I look toward the Golden Gate Bridge I know I’ll see the russet towers rising from a white snowscape. I set my overstuffed backpack on the sidewalk and open the guitar case I carry everywhere I go. Its handle is broken, and the hard black plastic is as battered as I feel today after another restless night in the park.
The guitar’s caramel-colored top is scarred from the years, the varnish rubbed off where my forearm’s worn it away, the protective coating no match for my sweat.
Seven years playing it every day since I got it on my tenth birthday, my constant companion and friend, the one thing my father left me other than his blue eyes…no matter what chaos was going on around me, Yam was there. Not an original name, I know – it’s a Yamaha guitar – but it’s the one thing in my life that’s a constant, and now that I’m homeless, it’s doing double duty supporting me…or so I hope every day when I sing for my dinner.
Or lunch, in this case, but still.
A tall woman with long gray hair, wearing buckskin moccasins and a floral summer dress, slows as I croon the final words of “Yellow Bird.” When I finish, she places a quarter in my empty guitar case with the solemnity of a general awarding a medal. Her kindly hazel eyes have that washed-out look you see a lot in this area, a vacant quality. Probably one too many tabs of blotter acid for the old brain to handle.
“You got a beautiful voice,” she says, her voice sandpaper rough, and offers a faint smile, her skin crinkling like parchment in the corners of her eyes as a faint whiff of patchouli drifts to me.
“Thanks. Glad you like it,” I say, but she’s already moving on, her attention caught by something else. The constant parade of the shell-shocked and the stoned provide a daily spectacle in the Haight, where it’s always 1967 and the Summer of Love never ended.
I eye the coin, my reward for a half hour of singing my heart out, and do a quick, depressing calculation. Mondays are always the worst – few tourists and the locals broke from the weekend.
“Hey, Sage, whassup?” a familiar voice says from my left, and I turn to where a whippet-thin guy with a mop of dreadlocks and a stringy goatee, army surplus jacket over well-worn coveralls, stands with his mountain bike.
“Hey, Todd. You know. Same ol’. You on today?”
“Yeah, gotta earn my keep, you know?” He glances at the quarter. “Big money isn’t going to ruin you, is it?”
“Nah. I’ll still remember you when I’m accepting my Grammy.”
Todd’s harmless, a bike messenger who rents a room over the clothing store next to what I think of as “my” spot. He gave up hitting on me after a few weeks, transitioning into a friend after receiving my “I’m not going to blow you” vibe loud and clear. Best of all, he lets me use his bathroom to shower whenever I’m out of options – a simple thing you learn not to take for granted when living outdoors, as I like to think of it.
“All right. Later,” he says and darts between two parked cars, straddling the bike in one easy motion before disappearing in a blur, cheerfully ignoring the chorus of honking horns behind him as he cuts across traffic and runs the red light at the corner.
I’ve learned that harmless friends are good to have, living on the street. A lot of the other runaways I’ve met are pretty easygoing. The majority are just trying to make it day to day, get high, avoid the indifferent cops, and dodge the predators that prey on them. Some are aggressively crazy, but they’re easy to spot and don’t last long, and I quickly figured out how to stay out of their way. But the older street people, the adults, are a different story. A lot of them are mental, violent, and inhabit a ruthless jungle of their own devising.
And it’s all playing out in a city with limitless prosperity symbolized by gleaming high-rises jutting into the sky, luxury cars rolling down the streets, and a thin veneer of civility over the rot at its core.
“Don’t go all emo on your ass, girl,” I mutter to myself, a habit I’ve gotten into lately. I push my dyed black bangs aside and close my eyes for a second. “Sing the blues, don’t live ’em.” I shift on the blanket, my ragged Chuck Ts bleached a dull gray from the sun, and strum a few chords, checking the tuning of the high E, which always wants to go flat, and then launch into some Janis, a reliable favorite in this neighborhood and usually good for a few bits.
I’m halfway through the chorus of “Bobby McGee” when I notice him. Leaning against a parking meter, twin curtains of unruly hair framing a pair of bottle-green eyes, an amused smirk on his face, black jeans and scuffed leather motorcycle jacket in the best post-punk tradition, a cardboard guitar case dangling from one hand. I keep playing, singing like the devil himself is after my soul, and when the last note dies, he puts his guitar down and claps, slowly.
I look up, and my heart skips a beat when he brushes his hair back – chiseled jaw, high cheekbones, a nose that looks like it might have been broken at some point, which only makes him more attractive. No, not attractive. That word doesn’t come close. He’s more than that. He’s…he’s beautiful.
Before you think I was all “looking at his eyes was like staring at two blazing suns,” let me clarify. Some guys are Calvin Klein model hot, and some are ruggedly handsome, but this guy is…he’s thermonuclear, OH MY GOD, all-caps-warranted
hot
. Like take-a-picture-to-make-sure-it’s-not-your-imagination gorgeous. Not that I ordinarily pay attention. I’ve got a reputation on the street as cold, which is how I prefer it. But, crap. How often do you see a guy who should be carved in marble, fig leaf optional?
I gaze up at him and swallow hard. “Tip jar’s right here.”
He nods. “Wish I had more than admiration to offer,” he says, his smile making my stomach flutter, and then strides down the block, sits by the coffee shop entry, and pulls out his guitar.
Great. Competition. Another homeless dude trying to cut into my action
.
I rise to defend my turf when he strums a few chords left-handed and starts to sing. My stomach free-falls – his voice matches his looks. No, it’s actually better than that. It’s mesmerizing to listen to, the timing of his inflection just unexpected enough to make it seem like he’s toying with the words, rolling them around in his mouth like wine tasters do in the movies, then setting them down for gentle landings at the last possible instant. As a singer, it’s the equivalent of watching a dizzying high-wire act with no net, part of the fascination the wait for the inevitable fall…that never comes.
