Music of the Knight

Chapter 3-2

We’d only been inside the Knight store for a few minutes and I was already overwhelmed. Normally, Lou was an enthusiastic woman, but in her family store, she became the Tasmanian devil. We’d covered the two floors in a matter of sixty seconds. The whole thing was a blur. From what I could understand, the pianos and keyboards were upstairs, and the first floor was divided between guitars, acoustic or electric, and sound equipment. There were probably some violins and other fiddle-type things around, too. My knowledge of music stopped there. I’d played a plastic flute when I was eight. And last year, as a joke, my best friend Nash had given me an ocarina for my birthday.

Nevertheless, there was something appealing and comforting in being surrounded by all of these instruments.

Suddenly, I wished I could pick up a guitar and strum a tune. Better not even try.

“And you’ve had this store in your family for how many generations?” I asked, skimming my fingertip against the neck of sleek black electric guitar. I’d never been around musicians much. Had I ever known anyone who could play an instrument? I’d missed out on a whole fascinating demographic of men.

A musician. Kind of erotic, when I thought about it. How many times had I walked or driven by this store in the last ten years? Never even glimpsed the inside through the window.

“The Knight store dates back to 1913, before the Great War. My great-grandfather was a luthier. He made violins, and then his son, my grandfather, made violins and guitars. Later, in the forties, after the war, Grandpa went into repair and selling, and then my father inherited and turned the shop into what you see today.”

I looked around, finally paying attention to the finer details. The store took up the whole of a two-story stone building that had an antique feel to it. Each room had high ceilings and wood-paneled walls. Contrasting with the older architecture, the walls were covered with posters and autographed black-and-white pictures of many legendary bands of the seventies and so on. I moved closer to a picture of a handsome man who looked a lot like Lou, and whose arm was wrapped around Mick Jagger. “Is this your dad?”

“No, that’s Mick Jagger.”

“Ah. Ha. Funny. But your dad met the Stones?”

“Oh, my God, Micah! My dad met everybody. I mean, from Aretha Franklin, to Chris Cornell.” She gazed around at the walls. “Al Knight is sort of a legend himself.”

“Wow.” I wasn’t easily impressed, but this store, its history, and the fact that the same family had been running it for more than a hundred years made me feel humble. In my family, we could barely organize a brunch without someone quitting halfway through.

“Oh, look, Louie’s free.” She tossed her chin up at the front counter. “Let’s go talk to him before he gets another customer.”

Of course, I’d already checked out Louie the second we’d walked into the downtown store. He was a good-looking guy in his early thirties. Not too tall. A bit bulky around the ass and stomach, but in a sexy way. His hair was lighter than Lou’s but still very dark. I liked his style. Sleeve tattoos and a few piercings. He wore a plaid shirt over ripped black jeans. When we’d walked in, he’d looked up at his sister, and the genuine, loving smile on his face had put me at ease. He seemed like a nice guy. “Okay…let’s say hi.”

“Louie, Louie, Louie,” Lou sang, strutting up to the counter. “What’s up?”

Louie slammed shut the old cash register and leaned over the counter, grinning at his sister. “Is this him?”

Oh, it was nice that I was already a him.

“Yep, this is Micah, my boss.”

“I’m not really Lou’s boss. I mean—I’m more like—”

“What? You’re my f*****g boss, Micah!”

“Don’t argue with her. It’s pointless.” Smiling, Louie reached out and shook my hand over the counter. He had a solid grip, but didn’t try to crush my fingers. “It’s good to meet you,” he said, releasing my hand. “Lou’s been telling us about you. It’s pretty cool that you listen for a living.”

“Well, thank you,” I said, staring at his forearm and hand. It was as though he’d stuck his arm in a pool of black ink, all the way to his elbow, but part of his fingers were still their original color. The effect was actually quite spectacular. “I like this.”

He raised his hand and looked at it. “Yeah, me too.” He eyed me over for a second. He had warm brown eyes that lit up when he smiled. “Did Lou show you around?”

“We sort of ran around the store and she pointed at things.”

Louie liked that. He laughed out loud and shook his head at his sister. “Right. By the way, Mom’s in the office downstairs. She was asking about you.”

“Okay, we’ll go say hi.” Lou didn’t wait for my response and started walking backwards through the store. Obviously, she knew the set up by heart because she didn’t even come close to bumping into anything. She’d grown up here. “Where’s Dad?” she asked, signaling for me to follow her.

“In the back with Lei.” Louie was watching a few customers who’d just walked in. A group of four teenagers being loud.

“Lei’s here?” Lou’s expression turned dead-serious. “Since when?”

“Since a few hours ago.” Louie glanced at her. There was a trace of tension in his face. “He’s tuning the new Epiphone guitars.”

“He’s—he’s tuning?”

I stood there, watching the scene with pointed interest. I was an observer. That was my thing. I watched and listened. To me, life was a book and people were its pages.

“What.” Louie said, a little curtly. “It’s no big deal. He’s tuning. That’s his thing, right?”

“No, okay, that’s cool.” Lou looked at me. “My brother Lei’s the only one in the family with an absolute pitch.”

“Oh…” No clue whatsoever.

“You know, what they call the perfect pitch.”

“Right, okay, I saw the movie, yeah.”

She rubbed her face and tried again. “No. Lei hears a note and boom—he names it. Whatever he hears, a f*****g car horn across the street. He names it. He can tune a piano by ear.”

And here I thought I had a good ear. “How did learn to do that?”

“Lei was born that way,” Louie said, walking around the counter to join the group of young people checking out an amplifier.

“Let’s go introduce you to the matriarch.” Lou took my arm and pulled me along. “The one and only Lorraine Knight.”

“Okay…”

Something told me this woman wasn’t going to be ordinary.