TWO WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS

      “C’mon, bro—you gotta weigh in. We won’t leave until you do.”

      Tommy glanced up from the copy of Rolling Stone he’d been reading and shot a bored glance at the two garage-band wannabes standing before him. Four and a half hours into his eight-hour shift and he’d yet to sell so much as a single guitar pick. Unfortunately, these two wouldn’t change that.

      “Electric or acoustic?” they asked, voices overlapping.

      Tommy lingered on a pic of Taylor Swift’s mile-long legs before flipping the page and devoting equal time to Beyoncé. “There’s no right or wrong,” he finally said.

      “That’s what you always say.” The one in the beanie eyed him suspiciously.

      “And yet, you keep asking.” Tommy frowned, wondering how long they’d persist before they moved on.

      “Dude—you are like seriously the worst salesperson ever.” This came from the one wearing the Green Day Dookie T-shirt, who might’ve been named Ethan, but Tommy couldn’t be sure.

      Tommy pushed the magazine aside. “How would you know? You’ve never once tried to buy anything.”

      The two friends stood side by side, both of them rolling their eyes.

      “Is commission the only thing you care about?”

      “Are you really that big of a capitalist?”

      Tommy shrugged. “When the rent’s due, everyone’s a capitalist.”

      “You gotta have a preference,” Beanie Boy said, unwilling to let it go.

      Tommy glanced between them, wondering how much longer he could put them off. They dropped in at least once a week, and though Tommy always acted like their incessant questions and attention-seeking antics annoyed him, most days they provided the only entertainment in an otherwise boring job.

      But he was serious about the rent. Which meant he had no patience for bored little punks wasting his time, only to leave without buying so much as a single sheet of music.

      The gig was commission based, and if he wasn’t actively selling, Tommy figured his time was better spent either thumbing through unsold copies of Rolling Stone and dreaming of the day he’d grace the cover, or scouring the web for gigs—minimum effort for minimum wage, seemed fair to him.

      “Electric,” he finally said, surprised by the stunned silence that followed.

      “Yes!” Dookie Boy pumped his fist as though Tommy’s opinion mattered.

      It was unnerving the way they looked up to him. Especially when he wasn’t exactly living a life worth admiring.

      “Why?” Beanie Boy demanded, clearly offended.

      Tommy reached for the acoustic the kid was holding and strummed the opening riff of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.”

      “Hear that?”

      The kid nodded cautiously.

      Tommy returned the guitar and reached for the electric twelve-string he’d been eyeing from the moment he started working at Farrington’s. The one he’d be a lot closer to owning if one of these punks ever decided to make themselves useful and actually buy something.

      He played the same piece as the kids leaned toward him. “It’s louder, fuller, brighter. But that’s just me. Don’t go acting like it’s gospel or anything.”

      “That was good, bro. You should think about joining our band.”

      Tommy laughed, ran an appreciative hand over the neck of the guitar before returning it to its hook. “So, which one you gonna buy?” He glanced between them.

      “All of ‘em!” Dookie Boy grinned. He reminded Tommy of himself at that age—a lethal mix of insecure and cocky.

      “Yeah, as soon as he sells his MILF porn collection on eBay!” Beanie Boy laughed and ran for the door as his friend gave chase, shouting insults that weren’t nearly as good as the one he’d been served.

      Tommy watched them exit, the small silver bell attached to the handle jangling behind them, relieved to finally have some time to himself.

      Not that he disliked his customers—Farrington’s Vintage Guitar was known for attracting a pretty specific, music-obsessed crowd, but it wasn’t exactly the job he’d envisioned when he first arrived in LA. He had some serious skills, all of which were going to waste. If things didn’t pick up, he’d have no choice but to track those kids down and beg for an audition.

      Aside from playing the guitar, he could also sing. Not that anyone gave a shit. His last attempt to book some steady solo gigs was a fail. The hundred or so flyers he’d plastered around town (prominently featuring a picture of him in faded low-slung jeans with his guitar strapped across his bare chest) gleaned only two hits. One from some pervert asking him to “audition” (the sick giggle that followed had Tommy seriously considering changing his number), and an actual gig at a local coffee shop that seemed promising, until his original stuff was quashed by the manager, who insisted he play nothing but acoustic covers of John Mayer’s biggest hits for a full three hours. At least he’d managed to make a fan of the fortysomething blond who’d passed him a crumpled napkin with her hotel and room number scribbled in red, winking as she sashayed (no other way to describe it) out the door, sure that he’d follow.

      He didn’t.

      Though he had to admit he’d been tempted. It’d been a bleak six months since he’d arrived in LA, and she was damn good-looking. Fit too, judging by the dress that hugged every curve. And though he appreciated her directness, and while her body probably really was a wonderland, he couldn’t deal with the thought of being no more than an interesting diversion for a woman who’d grown bored with men her own age.

      More than anything, Tommy wanted to be taken seriously.

      It was the reason he moved halfway across the country with the entirety of his worldly possessions (a dozen or so T-shirts, some broken-in jeans, a turntable that once belonged to his mom, his prized vinyl collection, a pile of paperbacks, and a secondhand six-string guitar) shoved in the trunk of his car.

      Sure, he figured it might take some time to get settled, but the shortage of gigs was never part of the plan.

      Neither was the job hawking guitars, but at least he could tell his mom he was working in the music industry.