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She arched her eyebrows at us. I could tell she was curious about who I was, but I could also tell that she wasn’t going to ask. She made some general noise about letting her know if we needed anything, and turned to help another customer who’d come up behind us.
Two more people stopped to say hello to Sam as we walked through the store, which was I guessed my fault for wanting to come inside a place where he spent four to five hours a week, depending on who was signed up. I realized he’d never answered my question about the lessons he taught, so I asked it again.
“Guitar, mostly,” he said. “Some piano.”
“How many instruments do you play?”
He seemed chagrined, as if he knew the number was a lot and he was pre-embarrassed to have to reveal it. “Proficiently?” he said. “Not that many. Wind instruments are not my specialty, for example, so I can only play the saxophone at the level of a mediocre high school student.”
“So how many do you play proficiently?”
He ran his fingers over the ivory keys of a keyboard as we passed by, depressing one slightly with the dullthudof an electronic instrument that wasn’t plugged in. “Maybe nine? I think I should be allowed to count the tambourine. I play a mean tambourine.”
We’d ended up in a small room set off in the back, guitars double-stacked in rows hanging on the walls—acoustics all along one side and electrics on the other, with a few amps plugged innext to stools clearly designed for people wanting to sit down to try an instrument.
“Play something,” I said.
“Come on,” he said. “No.”
“Why not? I already know you’re good.” I widened my eyes. “Or is that the problem? Is this like me casually asking... who’s a great guitarist?”
“Which era? What style of—never mind. Off the top of my head, John Frusciante.”
I made a face. “Red Hot Chili Peppers? Okay, we’ll come back to that. So is this like me casually asking John Frusciante to just play me something, when it’s like, he doesn’t even touch a guitar pick for less than ten thousand dollars?”
Sam laughed, but I could tell he was embarrassed again. “No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”
“You’re worried I’ll be so impressed I’ll, like, drop my pants,” I said. “I won’t be able to help myself, because your playing is so magnetic. It’ll be like a John Mayer concert, or what I imagine a John Mayer concert would be like if I had the stomach for it.”
I reached up for one of the electric guitars, even though there were multiple signs that specifically said to ask an associate for help. Sam was here, still dressed in his neutral professional. Close enough.
“Play me the dorkiest thing imaginable, then,” I said. “And I promise I’ll keep my pants on.”
He took the guitar from me, giving me a dry tilt of his head like,really?To which I made an exaggerated gesture for him to take a seat on one of the stools like,yes, really. He reached downto plug a patch cord from the amp into the guitar, turning the volume knobs low before tuning the guitar up. Which of course he could do by ear, the bastard. One of the main reasons I’d stopped trying to learn to play was because I’d lost the digital tuner my mom had gotten for me one Christmas.
He stayed standing, having used the stool to set his library books on instead. Now he stared up at the ceiling, as if considering what to play, before he started picking out a slow, thoughtful melody on the strings. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place what it was, until he played it faster and faster, watching my face for recognition. When it finally hit me, I broke out into a grin.
“ ‘Farmer in the Dell’?” I said. “Joke’s on you, dude. That song speaks to me on a cellular level. This cheese has always stood alone.”
“It’s big with the kindergarten set,” Sam said.
“So how long have you taught elementary school music?”
“Five years.”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Yeah,” he said without hesitating. “I know this sounds obvious, but kids just love music. And not for how cool it is, or how deep the lyrics are, or anything like that. They just like hitting a xylophone with a mallet and hearing whatever sound comes out.”
He was still playing while we were talking, his fingers idly plucking out some random tune. It was the most at ease I’d ever seen him, and that included when he’d been standing in front of me barefoot or when he’d been wearing beach clothes. I hadn’t even realized until now, but there was a tension around Sam, a keeping to himself, that seemed to go away when he picked up the guitar.
“I tried out for fifth grade chorus,” I said. “Only because my friend Alison was going for it, and I thought, why not? I’d always heard that anyone could be in chorus in elementary school. If you didn’t have a great voice, they’d just stick you in the back and tell you to mouth along. But you’ll never guess what happened.”
He smiled, his eyes crinkling in the nicest way. “You didn’t make it.”
“Is your school’s chorus that cutthroat?”
“Not really,” he said. “All the competition is in going out for hall patrol. It’s a campus of narcs.”
