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“Thanks again for filling in for Dex.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Carly,” said Mel, with a grin.  “Stop thanking me.  You know I love to do club gigs.”

“Yeah, but you got tour rehearsals during the day.”

Melody shrugged.  “So?  I used to have studio sessions during the day.” 

“I guess that’s true,” said Carly.  “So you’re going on tour?  Man, that’s so hard to believe…after all these years.”

“Jeez, Carly, do you have to make me sound like such a senior citizen?  I’m only 30.  Cripes, look at Keith Richard.”

“I’d rather not, thank you,” grimaced Carly.  Both women laughed.  “I’m just saying,” said Carly, “you’ve been at it a long time.”

A long time.

Yes, she had, thought Mel.  Her whole life, in fact.  She had made music almost from her birth.  Her mother told her that, when she was a baby, she hummed.  When she was in her crib drifting off to sleep or sitting propped up in her baby chair, she hummed.  And it wasn’t long before she was humming real tunes.

Melody ignored the television for the most part, but every time there was music – a commercial jingle or a program theme song – she would stop whatever she was doing and turn her head toward the TV.  When the music ended, she would go back to chewing on her plastic blocks or whatever she’d been doing.  Her favorite pre-school toys were her xylophone and her Playskool Music Maker.

Melody’s parents were aware of the joy that their daughter found in music and thought they had named her most appropriately.  (Melody agreed, especially since the alternate choice was Gladys, after some distant ancestor.)  Elizabeth and Hank Jones gave her every opportunity to further her love for music.  She sang in the church choir from an early age and started piano lessons when she was seven.  She attended some sort of music camp every summer.

It was at one of these camps, when Melody was twelve, that she was handed her first guitar.  And it was love at first sight.  During the two-week session, she made remarkable progress, prompting her camp instructor to call her parents and recommend private lessons.

There were several arguments about it.  Melody’s mother wanted her to continue with her piano lessons.  Her father said it was up to Melody but he could only afford to pay for one kind of lessons.  And it was hard enough to find a good piano teacher in Chino Hills, let alone one for guitar. 

The discussion went back and forth, ending when Elizabeth Jones broke down in tears and began chanting the litany of all she had done for her daughter and how she didn’t deserve the treatment she was now being given. 

No one could fight back against Elizabeth’s tears, so the piano lessons continued for six months, until the day Melody dragged home a battered guitar.  She had saved every penny of her allowance and combined it with babysitting revenue and birthday and Christmas cheques from out-of-state grandparents.  She had secretly taken the bus 35 miles into Los Angeles to a pawnshop she’d found in a phone book in the public library.  She’d bought the best guitar she could find for the money she had.  It only had five strings and she had no idea how to attach a sixth.

At dinner that night, Melody announced her intention to clean out a corner of the garage for her use.  She proudly displayed her new purchase and informed them all stubbornly that she was going to teach herself how to play, since they wouldn’t give her lessons, and that she would do it in the garage so that her mother wouldn’t be inconvenienced by having to listen to her.

Her mother was apoplectic at the thought of the thirteen-year old wandering around seedy L.A. by herself and promptly grounded her for two weeks.  All that did was make her brother Benjamin laugh.  His younger sister never went anywhere anyway.  Melody told him to be quiet.  Her mother told her not to be such a smart mouth.  Her father looked at her thoughtfully and said nothing.  But the next day, he helped her clean out the garage.   And he came home from work the next day with a ‘teach yourself to play the guitar’ book and a set of new guitar strings.

Melody hid herself in the garage for the next week, only coming out for school and meals…and even then, only at her mother’s insistence that Melody was enough of a stick already and if she didn’t eat properly, Elizabeth was going to confiscate the guitar.

At the end of the week, her father asked her how it was going.  Was the book easy to follow?  Melody told him that it was easy to follow and the years of piano lessons made it easy to pick out notes.

“Play something for us,” said her dad, expecting Row, Row, Row Your Boat or Happy Birthday to You.  Melody’s mother harrumphed that there were dishes to be done and Ben laughed at her and asked her if she thought she’d be the next Eddie Van Halen, but her dad shepherded his wife and son into the living room and lined them up on the sofa.

“I can’t do many chords yet,” Melody apologized in advance, “but…” 

She picked out the melody to How Great Thou Art, her father’s favorite hymn.  Tears shone from his eyes and her guitar lessons started the next day.

Melody’s mother acquiesced finally, when Ben stepped in on his sister’s side.  “Let her, Mom,” he said, “She’s really good.”

Elizabeth Jones couldn’t fight them all.  Her dreams of a classical pianist in the family were replaced by ones of a classical guitarist.  And Melody was playing hymns, after all.  Harmony reigned in the household until Melody was fifteen and then all hell broke loose because two things happened.  Melody hit puberty and she went electric!

She had always been small-boned.  She looked fragile but she wasn’t, a fact Ben would attest to.  He had sported many bruises, tokens of battle from wrestling matches with his little sister.  Her friends all said how lucky she was that she didn’t have to diet, that she could eat whatever she wanted and as much as she wanted.  But Melody eyed their slimming waists and burgeoning breasts with envy.  She listened to them talk about cramps and pads and wished with all her heart that she knew what it was really like.  She longed to be one of the girls, rather than one of the guys.

And then, the summer after grade nine, it all changed.  She shot up three whole inches…to 5’4”.  And she blossomed.  Almost overnight.  Sprouting full-grown breasts.  The rest of her stayed pretty much the same.  She was still thin and she didn’t have much of a butt but that didn’t matter, because no one was looking at that side of her anyway.

Melody spent the summer hanging out with her guitar teacher.  She had outgrown the first two who were used to working with children that decided they wanted to be rock stars when they were ten and gave up on the whole thing after a couple of years, when other less-challenging interests came along.  The teachers crammed as much basic theory and skill into them as they could.  Melody soon outdistanced both the other students and the teachers.

She was now working with Stevie Ray Latimer, a studio musician who supplemented his income by giving music lessons.  It was a painful way to make extra money and he was getting ready to give it up, when Melody Jones came into his life, recommended by her former teacher, his mother.  Stevie Ray recognized her talent immediately and also that she was a musical soulmate.  He never once regretted the weekly drive to Chino Hills to get a home-cooked meal from his mother and much musical satisfaction from working with Melody.

So under the guise of extra lessons, Stevie Ray let Mel hang out with him that summer when he went to the studio.  At first, the other musicians teased him about having to baby-sit but they soon came to enjoy having the eager young gofer around.  Melody used the opportunity to learn how a studio worked – what the equipment was for, what the different technicians did, how tracks were laid down, etc.

The week before school started, she was at the studio with Stevie Ray.  He was doing a session with Gary Madison, a temperamental rock star with a reputation for arriving late to sessions and in questionable states of sobriety.  Stevie Ray had not really noticed the physical changes in Melody.  He still thought of her as a skinny, little kid.

But Gary Madison noticed her the moment he stumbled through the door.

“Let’s get this thing started,” he bawled, as if it were he and not the rest of them who had sat around for 45 minutes.

Gary pulled his guitar strap over his head and picked at the strings.  A screech of feedback tore through the studio.

“What the fuck?” he yelled.  “You’re supposed to have all this shit done by the time I get here.  I don’t have time for this crap.  I’m here to play.”

“Sorry, Gary,” said the technician.  Everyone else looked at the floor.  Everyone but Mel.

“What are you looking at?” Gary growled at her.

“I’m not sure,” answered Mel but she stopped, when she saw Stevie Ray shake his head in warning.  She dropped her eyes. 

They started a song but Gary was too ‘under the influence’ to be effective.  He kept messing up and blaming someone else.  Everyone just took his turn when he got blamed and muttered, “Sorry, Gary.”  Someone distracted him – sorry, Gary; someone started too soon – sorry, Gary; someone came in too late – sorry, Gary.

Melody got more and more outraged but didn’t say anything and didn’t make eye contact with ‘the star’.  Until he turned his fury on Stevie Ray.  When Stevie Ray said the obligatory, “Sorry, Gary”, Mel could contain herself no longer and muttered, “Asshole” under her breath.

Gary turned to her, his eyes blazing.  He stared at her for almost thirty seconds waiting for her to break eye contact.  But Melody didn’t look away.  She held his gaze. 

Finally, Gary licked his lips very slowly and leered at her.  “Hey, little girl,” he said, “if you give me a blow job, I’ll teach you how to play the guitar.”

Melody stood up from her chair in the corner and walked slowly and deliberately toward the rock star, never taking her eyes from his.  When she reached him, she unsnapped the guitar strap and snaked it across his neck.  Then she lifted the guitar from his hands.

Gary looked around at the other guys, grinning.  Was she going to do him right here?  He turned back, one hand on his belt and the grin left his face.  Melody was perched on the edge of a stool, holding the guitar like it was part of her.  She grabbed a pick from a nearby amp and played the section of the song that Gary kept screwing up.  She played it perfectly and she played it without taking her eyes from his. 

When she was done, Melody handed the guitar back to Gary and said, “Thanks, but no thanks.”  Then she turned her back on him and walked back to the chair in the corner.

No one moved.  No one breathed.  Stevie Ray was trying to decide if it was worth his career to kick the shit out of Gary, if he laid a hand on Mel.  Stevie Ray decided that it was and carefully set down his guitar in preparation.  But the musician in Gary overcame the asshole.

“Holy shit, kid!” he exclaimed.  “What’s your name?”

Melody just looked at him.  She couldn’t speak – not because she was ignoring him or because she was afraid of him, but because he wasn’t even there.  The only thing she could see or feel was the power – the power of that electric guitar.

“Her name is Melody Jones,” said Stevie Ray, “and I guess we’re going to have to get her one of those.”