Know Your Beholder: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

garners guitar techs or roadies), Sheila Anne introduced herself. Those eyes of hers were set against pale, lightly freckled skin and marmalade hair, and although she hid her figure under tomboyish corduroys complete with fob chain running back pocket to belt loop, and an oversized plaid button-down shirt that at one time might have been her uncle’s, there was no doubt that she possessed a killer, extremely feminine body. But in the grand scheme of indie-rock regional chilliness, which was infecting my entire life at that time, it was her engaging warmth that was almost shocking.
    Later at the bar, after we’d loaded everything into our institutional-looking rental van, and following small talk during which I couldn’t really focus because I was so immediately smitten, she offered to take some photos of the band at our next gig in Cincinnati the following night. I hadn’t even noticed the digital camera around her neck. It was her spring break and she had some time off, and although she wasn’t a professional she’d studied photography as an undergraduate (College of Saint Benedict, MN) and had recently developed a passion for shooting the interiors of Louisville bars: those dank, old-school joints that still serve cheap bourbon and don’t give a shit about cleanliness, coolness, or closing time. Classic analog jukeboxes. Fading beer light signs. Bartenders donning flea-market wigs. Half-burnt-out Christmas tree lights twinkling sadly.
    Sheila Anne was only twenty-five at the time, with long braided hair and those eyes that never seem to tire, age, or lie. I invited her to have a few more drinks with the band over at Freddie’s, another local dive bar that kept later hours—and one that she’d recently photographed—but she declined the offer, saying that her boyfriend wouldn’t approve and that she always got herself into trouble when she went to Freddie’s because the Maker’s was so cheap. The fact that she drank Maker’s was an immediate turn-on, but the mention of her boyfriend made it a bitter one. Profound disappointment spread through my limbs like nerve damage. I wound up going to Freddie’s with Glose anyway and drinking several consecutive shots of said holy bourbon, chased by cans of aluminum-tasting Miller High Life, whereupon I passed out in a vinyl booth riddled with duct tape, knife lacerations, and cigarette burns.
    Nevertheless, Sheila Anne showed up in Cincinnati and shot much of what became the first images on the Third Policeman’s now semi-frozen website (it hasn’t been updated in well over a year). That night she decided to stay out late with us. We drank at a bar near the ballpark, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. While she was in the bathroom, Morris kept insisting that she was into me, which I didn’t believe, despite the fact that, as our resident chick shaman, Morris could suss out these kinds of things the way pigs can find truffles.
    Upon returning from the bathroom she took my hand under the table. Morris and Kent were at the jukebox, and Glose was skulking around, beating the busboys to leftover baskets of chicken wings. I was overwhelmed with the sensation that my stomach had disappeared and I was turning to powder. I think I fell in love with her at the precise moment she took my hand. And though it was brief and likely unremarkable, it is a feeling I will never forget and one I’m afraid I will never experience again. Elysian Fields and all that.
    She stayed with me in my hotel room that night, but we didn’t sleep together. We mostly shared a bottle of Louisville-purchased Maker’s Mark, passing it back and forth, with no assistance from the Quality Inn’s faulty ice machine. She really liked our music, especially the lyrics, and thought the way I played the guitar was “quietly sexy.” The highest compliment an attractive, intelligent woman can pay to a rhythm guitarist is to tell him that he is “quietly sexy.” It’s like telling a young center fielder