“Okay,” he says quietly. And then, he perks up. “Okay, hang on.”
“What?”
“Hang on!” He shouts, already running up the stairs. When he comes back down as fast as he went up, he’s carrying a guitar case I’ve never seen before.
It’s in better condition than the cases I’ve seen him use, banged up from taking them to bars and leaving them lying around. Covered in discolored stickers from having beer spilled on them.
This case is tan, with no stickers or dents in sight.
He brings it over and sets it on the coffee table in front of me, unlatching it with a different care than the usual handling of his instruments.
Inside is an electric guitar.
A Fender Stratocaster with a wooden body, shining, like new.
“My dad was left-handed,” Mike says, looking down at the guitar. “He had one of these when I was a kid, and I thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. When he’d play, it was like he was a real rock star, you know?” He laughs a watery laugh, running his finger along the strings.
“I never got it back after they died. I don’t know where most of their stuff ended up. I was only able to take a few things. But I remembered the guitar. And when I had the money, I found an exact match.”
“Mike,” I say, resting my hand on his shoulder.
“I want you to have it.” He looks up at me. “And before you say anything—”
“I can’t take your dad’s—”
“It’s not his. His is gone.” His voice is steady, matter-of-fact, even though the truth is a painful reminder. “It’s a guitar that looks like his. And I want you to have it.”
“But I can’t. I’m not left-handed.”
Mike smiles at that, sitting beside me on the couch with a bounce. “Okay. You know whowasleft-handed?”
“Who?”
“Jimi Hendrix. You know what guitar he played?”
I shrug.
“A right-handed Stratocaster,” he says, pointing at me. “Paul Simon. Sting. David Bowie. All left-handed, all play a right-handed guitar.”
“Okay?”
“The point,” he continues, “is that you played guitar for eight years. You already know how. That doesn’t live in your hands. It lives up here.” He taps my temple. “Your hands just have to catch up to what your brain already knows.”
He looks at me, completely serious, using his masters in music theory onme.
“And you call me a nerd.”
“I’m not a nerd. I’m a rock star,” he says proudly, and I don’t even roll my eyes, because what he said is starting to sink in.
He lifts it out of the case and holds it out to me. I take it, settling the Strat across my lap the wrong way around, and it feels really bizarre.
“Play something.”
I look at the fretboard. My right hand finds the right shape on the neck, and when I press down, the strings cut into my skin in a way I haven’t felt since I was a kid when they would leave indentations in my fingers.
I strum with my left hand.
The chord rings out, a little buzzy, but otherwise normal.
