Times Square was buzzing.

Even in broad daylight, the battery of lights and billboards rattled me, rubbing my brain raw. Huge video screens were wrapped around the curving buildings over my head, shimmering like water in the rain, ads for computers and cosmetics flickering across them. News bites scrolled past on glittering strips, punctuated by nonsense stock-ticker symbols.

I was an insect in a canyon of giant TVs, mystified and irrelevant.

And penniless.

I’d never felt poor before, never once. I’d always thought it was moronic to ogle car ads and store windows, but now that I needed it, I saw money everywhere—in silver initials on thousand-dollar handbags, woven like gold threads into suits and silk scarves, and in the flickering images overhead. On the subway coming up here, I’d coveted the dollars invisibly stockpiled in magnetic strips on MetroCards, even the change rattling in beggars’ paper cups.

Money, money, everywhere.

I couldn’t go back to my piece-of-crap guitar after that Stratocaster. I had to own that same smooth action, those purring depths and crystal highs. Of course, maybe it didn’t have to be a ’75 with gold pickups. In the music stores on Forty-eighth Street, I’d found a few cheaper guitars I could live with, but I still needed to scrape together about two thousand bucks before the crazy woman returned.

Problem was, I had no idea how.

I’m not lazy, but money and me don’t mix. Every time I get a job, something always happens. The boss tells me to smile, pretending I want to be at work when I’d rather be anywhere else. Or makes me call in every week to ask for my hours, and it turns into a whole extra job finding out when I’m supposed to be at my job. And whenever I explain these issues, someone always asks me the dreaded question, If you hate it so much, why don’t you just quit?

And I say, “Good point.” And quit.

In that flickering canyon of advertising, two thousand dollars had never seemed so far away.

Zahler was waiting at the corner where he’d said to meet, seven dogs in tow.

He was panting and sweaty, but his entourage looked happy—gazing up at the signs, sniffing at tourists passing by. It was all just flickering lights to them.

No jobs, no money. Lucky dogs.

“How much you get paid for that, Zahler?”

“Not enough,” he panted. “Almost got killed on the way down here!”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. One of the little ones was nibbling me, and I knelt and petted him. “This guy looks deadly.”

“No really, Moz. There was this alley… and this cat.”

“An alley cat? And you with only seven dogs.” One of which was gigantic, like a horse with long, flowing hair. I stroked its head, laughing at Zahler.

Still panting, he pointed his free hand at one of the little ones. “It’s all his fault, for peeing.”

“Huh?”

“It was just—never mind.” He frowned. “Listen, you hear that drumming? It’s her. Come on.”

I grabbed the monster-dog’s leash from Zahler, and then two more, pulling the three of them away from a pretzel cart whose ripples of heat smelled like seared salt and fresh bread. “So, you think Pearl will approve of this drummer?”

“Sure. Pearl’s all about talent, and this girl is fexcellent.”

“But she plays on the street, Zahler? She could be homeless or something.”

He snorted. “Compared to Pearl, you and me are practically homeless. Didn’t you see that apartment?”

“Yeah, I saw that apartment.” I could still smell the money crammed into every corner.

“And there were stairs. More floors than we even saw.”

“Sure, Pearl’s insanely rich. And this is supposed to convince me she can deal with a homeless drummer?”

“We don’t know that this girl’s homeless, Moz. Anyway, all I’m saying is that if Pearl can deal with you and me, she’s no snob.”

I shrugged. Snob wasn’t the word I would’ve used.

“Are you still bummed because of what she did to the Riff?”

“No. Once I got used to the idea of flushing all those years of practice down the toilet, I got over it.”

“Dude! You are still bummed.”

“No, I mean it.”

“Look, I know it hurts, Moz. But she’s going to make us huge!”

“I get it, Zahler.” I sighed, angling my dogs away from a hot-dog cart. Of course, practicing yesterday had hurt—but so did getting a tattoo, or watching a perfect sunset, or playing till your fingers bled. Sometimes you just had to sit there and deal with the pain.

Pearl had rubbed me raw, but she knew how to listen. She could hear the heart of the Big Riff, and she hadn’t done anything I wouldn’t have if I’d been listening. I’d had six years to figure out what she’d recognized in six minutes. That’s what made me cringe.

That and the whammy she’d put on Zahler. He wouldn’t shut up about how brilliant Pearl was, how she was going to make us big, how things were finally going to happen. Like all those years with just the two of us had been a waste of time.

Zahler had a total crush on Pearl—that was obvious. But if I said so out loud, he’d just roast me with his death stare. And talk about wasting time: girls like her were about as likely to hook up with boys like us as Zahler’s dogs were to pull him to the moon.

“Okay, I thought you said she was a drummer.”

“What?” Zahler cried above the rumble. “You don’t call that drumming?”

“Well, she’s got drumsticks. But I thought drummers were to supposed to have drums.” I shook my head, trying to keep my three curious dogs from surging into the rapt crowd of tourists, Times Square locals, and loitering cops surrounding the woman.

“Yeah, well, imagine if she did have drums. Listen to how much sound she’s getting out of those paint cans!”

“Those are actually paint buckets, Zahler.”

“What’s the diff?”

I sighed. Painting had been one of my shorter-lived jobs, because they just gave you the colors to use, instead of letting you decide. “Paint cans are the metal containers that paint comes in. Paint buckets are the plastic tubs you mix it up in. Neither of them are drums.”

“But listen, Moz. Her sound is huge!”

My brain was already listening—my mouth was just giving Zahler a hard time out of habit and general annoyance—and the woman really did have a monster sound. Around her was arrayed every size of paint bucket you could buy, some stacked, some upside down, a few on their sides, making a sort of giant plastic xylophone.

It took me a minute to figure out how a bunch of paint buckets could have so much power. She’d set up on a subway grate, suspending herself over a vast concrete echo chamber. Her tempo matched the timing of the echoes rumbling up from below, as if a ghost drummer were down there following her, exactly one beat behind. As my head tilted, I heard other ghosts: quicker echoes from the walls around us and from the concrete awning overhead.

It was like an invisible drum chorus, led effortlessly from its center, her sticks flashing gracefully across battered white plastic, long black dreadlocks flying, eyes shut tight.

“She’s pretty fool, Zahler,” I admitted.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Especially if we could rebuild this chunk of Times Square every place we played.”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “What, the echoes? You never heard of digital delay?”

I shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the same. Wouldn’t be as big.”

“Doesn’t have to be as big, Moz. We don’t want her playing a gigantic drum solo like this; we want her smaller, fitting in with the rest of the band. Didn’t you learn anything yesterday?”

I glared at him, the anger spilling out from the place I thought I’d had it tucked away, rippling through me again. “Yeah, I did: that you’re a total sucker for every chick who comes along with an instrument. Even if it’s a bunch of paint buckets!”