The Busker

It had been a tough week so far. Client retention had dropped by twelve percent and I was up to my ears in unfinished reports. I sighed and stared at my computer screen, willing the spreadsheets to complete themselves. It was simply one of those weeks. After a few more moments of mid-morning inertia, I figured the reports could wait a few more minutes. I needed a coffee.



I found comfort in my coffee runs. I liked to take in the sounds of passing traffic, unintelligible chatter and heels on concrete while my mind wandered through a forest of thoughts that had nothing to do with work. My ten minutes of intimacy among the bustling corporate grind.

As I passed by ANZAC Square, I couldn’t help but notice the faint melodies coming from the busker perched there, unkempt as ever with his long fingernails and wooly hair. He had this way of looking wild without looking filthy. I stopped to watch him, sitting happily on his crate, licking his lips in preparation as he painted a picture with each strum. Before he sang, I watched the corners of his mouth twitch up, the way they always did.

The smoky, familiar melody that escaped his vocal cords filled me with memories that set fire to the quiet forest in my head. Through the flames came memories of another life; a life where I clawed desperately at the ground trying to find a different one. The busker must have sensed that desperation in me the night we met. He saw that desperation and confused it with passion, spirit. He was an attractive fool, full of the passion and spirit I lacked.

He was so confident when he sidled up next to me at the bar, mouth corners twitching, his “Hello” as genuine as his music; the type of person who could enlarge small talk in an instant, dispelling awkwardness with the wave of his right hand. In one night, my pale attempts to dig through the ground didn’t matter because it had fallen from beneath me. A night that began as a whim and ended in the busker’s living room at 5 a.m., watching the delicate plucking of strings while strange new friends passed a joint and discussed society, art and love.

I never looked back after that first night, or the second or the third. The nights piled up like the foundations of a bonfire. Many of them were spent higher than Everest and many days were spent coming down that rocky mountain of euphoria. And in the middle of a week-long bender, the busker still laid down his hat every Thursday in ANZAC Square. I would spend that time breathing in his sheets and staring at the fanless ceiling, distinguishing insect from scuff mark.

I never went to the Square to hear him play; that music was played for others. I would wait in his bed and pretend to be asleep when he came through the door. He would sit at the edge of the bed and play a tune as yellow as the sunrise, making it impossible to maintain the sleepy facade. We would stay in that bed for hours, never tiring of each other. The passion we shared was more raw than his fingertips after hours of guitar practice.

As the busker hit a minor chord, memories of sunlit lullabies and starlit ecstasy abandoned me. For a slight moment I was back in that Square, feeling my heels on the concrete. The sun had gone behind the clouds and a cool breeze kissed my neck and made me shiver. It reminded me of the way he used to brush his lips against my ear and make the neurons across my face dance alongside my beating heart. My ears started buzzing just thinking about it. I rubbed them until the feeling subsided, which took longer than I expected.

He never made eye contact when he sang. At gigs, he would say, “I can’t play knowing you’re all looking at me, so I’ll do my best not to look at you. No offence, you’re all beautiful people, don’t you worry.”

His audience loved it. Every time he performed at a bar I would watch the same people cram in to see him play, followed by the newcomers. I don’t think he knew just how many fans he was gaining back then. I never talked to him about it because, well, I was selfish. It was never about fame or money anyway. It was about sunrises.

I wanted so badly for him to look at me. I believed I could be different. After all, I was the one who breathed in his sheets, awaiting the sunrise. One evening, I took off my clothes in time to his music, swaying my body in front of him while he looked towards the floor. The closer I leaned in, the more the strings twanged frustratedly until they stopped altogether.

“Stop it. Just stop.”

“Why should I stop? I just-”

“Because I’m practising. You know how I am when I’m practising.”

“But…it’s me, in front of you…not a crowd of strangers.”

“Oh, come on Claire, should that really make a difference?”

So many things broke that night. We never cleaned the walls properly; sometimes I wonder whether they’re still stained pink from the angry spaghetti sauce that was left too long before an attempt was made to wipe it. We ignored the congealing mess by locking ourselves away in the bathroom, whimpering apologies under a cleansing stream of water.

He experienced writer’s block for the first time and blamed me once. It took only three days to go back to him and make more mistakes. The nights were full of substances, smoke and strange friends, almost always ending in situations you wouldn’t tell your mother about. The days consisted of casual shifts in jobs that didn’t matter and raw afternoons in the busker’s arms. Wherever and whenever we were, there was always music.

Jefferson Airplane played as he prepared the needle. He glanced up at me and gave me a very rare, direct look as he said, “You’re going to love this.”

I did. I loved the way the heroin picked me up like a baby and carried me away to the sound of White Rabbit. As beautiful as it may have been, it was the aftermath that stuck with me. Experiencing the feeling that precedes a heroin coma was enough to ensure I never did it again. He felt differently.

I witnessed his eyes become downcast from missing the drug and not from playing music. I never pretended to be asleep on Thursdays anymore. Instead, I continued to breathe in his sheets while listening cautiously to his fragile breaths next to mine. One Wednesday afternoon, I walked through his door just in time to turn him on his side to let the vomit spill out onto the floor. I cried as I watched his the skin of his face return to a colour of life. As the blood reddened his cheeks he mumbled parts of words, but I knew what he was trying to say:

“I’m sorry.”

“That was the last time.”

“Never again.”

I hushed him while running my fingers through his hair, telling him everything was going to be okay. Among the soothing words and gestures, however, the fact remained. I turned to face his guitar, gathering dust in the corner. There had been no music for months.

I went an entire month without seeing or contacting him. In that month there had been 42 messages left on my answering machine, varying in context and emotion towards me. I took a full-time job as a distraction. There were five Thursdays in that month. Each of those Thursdays I sat in ANZAC Park and ate my lunch while a stark wind rustled the trees in my forest of thoughts. It was louder than the city’s thoroughfare. I would return to the office and complete every scrap of work I could get my hands on, focusing on nothing else. Slowly, the wind became a soft breeze and I accepted the empty Thursdays.

I was prepared for closure but I hoped for something else. I returned all 42 messages with one phone call.

“Hey, it’s Claire. I’ll come over tonight, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

The small talk was awful. It was as if everything we had learned about each other over the course of a year had slipped from our fingers and got carried away in the wind.

“So, I got a proper job. Full-time, in the city. It’s going pretty well.”

“Oh, that’s really good Claire. Really good.”

“What about you? Anything going on?”

“Don’t play nice, Claire. Why now? Do you feel better than me now? Got yourself a full-time city job in some swanky office, so now you want to come by and rub it in my face?”

He lifted his head so I could see his watery, red and yellow eyes, “Where were you?”

It was a weak and trembling busker who uttered those last three words. The breath caught in my throat. He held my gaze and I couldn’t look away. Reflected in those eyes, I saw the yellow lullabies, the whiskey stained ballads and the heroin induced coda. It was all there, staring back at me through beautiful, bloodshot eyes. I wanted to love that man with the weak, bloodshot eyes, but it was the busker I had loved.

He returned his gaze to the floor and I breathed again. There was nothing left to say. The silence clung to the air like dust particles. For one more lingering moment, I wanted to believe that I could fall in love with the man. He opened a drawer - one that I knew housed his guitar picks. He pulled out a syringe kit and I sat, silent and unfeeling, as the man laid the busker to sleep in his heart.

I looked at the guitar, still standing in the corner of the bedroom, dustier than ever. Before I left, I picked it up and felt the beautiful weight of the wood and strings in my arms. I let my fingers fall across the strings, letting out an ugly, mournful strum. The man let out a sound that resembled a chuckle. I turned to see his eyes, staring up at me, watching me with the busker’s guitar.

A mixture of sadness and rage overcame me while staring back at him. I thought nothing and felt everything as I slammed the guitar into the floor. I have never forgotten the sound of the splintering, hollow wood and snapping strings that reverberated through the room, disrupting the dust and leaving a toxic silence in its wake.

I let the broken pieces fall to my feet as his eyes fluttered shut. He was away.

I’ll never know what happened when he woke up. He’ll never know how I cried myself to sleep that night, praying to a god I didn’t believe in to fix him.

My heels met the concrete once again. He wasn’t playing for me anymore, but he was playing. The tune was bittersweet; the once yellow sunrises had transformed into deep purple sunsets. They were beautiful all the same. His downcast eyes remained, which allowed me to bask in the anonymity of a crowd of friendly strangers. I was no different, after all.

After purchasing my coffee I passed the Square again on my way back, eyeing the busker as he packed away his guitar. I caught a glimpse of familiar splinters and strings, mended, as the sun reappeared from behind the clouds. My little forest of thoughts, now charred and blackened from the fire, nurtured a single green sprout as I made my way back to the office.

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