CROW: Keep it the color of the Killing Floor. Why create confusion?

HOSS: Don’t drift. I’ll be right back.

CROW: I’m where I’m supposed to be.

(HOSS exits. CROW walks the space.)

CROW: (to himself, on the move) Very razor. Gleaming. Polished. A sheen to the movement. Weighs out in the eighties from first to third. Keen on the left hand, although born on the right. Maybe forced his hand over. Butched some instinct down. Work it through the high range. Cut at the gait. Get past C. Middle C. The sweet simplicity. Cut at the gait. Heel toe rhymes of piano South. Deep blues bed. Can’t suss that particular. That’s well covered. Masked. Meshing patterns. Easy mistake here. Suss the bounce.

(CROW tries to get inside HOSS’s walk. Moving through space, experimenting.)

CROW: (continues moving) Too heavy on the toe. Work the brazos down. Hold a mode. Here’s one. Three/four cut time copped from Keith Moon. Early. Rare. Very spooky. Nihilistic era. Now. Where’s that pattern. Slipped. Gotta be in the “Happy Jack” album. When the world was round. Records were round flat things. Grooves. There. Right around there. Triplets. Six/eight. Here it comes. Battery. Double bass talk. Fresh Cream. Ginger Baker. Where’s that? Which track? Skip that. No. Skip. Skip. Yeah. Skip James! There it is! Skip James! Yeah. (sings) “I’m so glad, I’m so glad, I’m glad, I’m glad, I’m glad.” Yeah. Ancient. Inborn. (sings) “Don’t know what to do, don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.” Terrible attachment. Terrible, terrible attachment. Gotta be a surgery. Grind down.

(He hears HOSS coming, darts back to the chair and sits. HOSS enters with wine.)

HOSS: Ya know I had an instinct you were coming this way. I was on to a Gypsy pattern early yesterday. Even conjured going that way myself.

CROW: Cold, Leathers. Very icy.

HOSS: Yeah. It was a small lapse.

CROW: Backseat nights. Tuck and roll pillow time. You got fur on the hide in this trunk.

HOSS: Yeah, yeah. No accounting for it. I’m just gettin bored, I guess. I want out.

CROW: Out?

HOSS: Well—a changeup.

CROW: I pattern some conflict to that line. Animal says no. Blood won’t go the route. Redo me right or wrong?

HOSS: Could you—maybe back the language up a little.

CROW: Choose me an argot, Leathers. Singles, LPs, Lazer weave. Idiomatic mano. Radar band.

HOSS: I’m gettin a little gray to follow the flash, is all.

CROW: Solomon mist.

HOSS: I—I musta misfed my data somehow. I don’t know. I thought you were gonna be raw, unschooled. Ya know? I mean maybe the training’s changed since my time.

CROW: Very possible. Mighta been jumped altogether.