His fingers danced over the frets, and he didn’t even need to think, as he played the familiar song. His eyes were fixed onto the wall, bathed in the moonlight. The song drifted out of his mind as memories played across his vision. Short flashes.

A boy climbing out of his second story window and jumping to the ground painlessly. His silhouette blurring as he and his girlfriend ran across the street and down two blocks to just another boring suburban home. The knocked on the door, and when it opened, they slid in and hurried downstairs to the basement. Music thumped as the two bodies moved together. And then another flash.

Years later found the couple in a dingy club, the boy clutching his red fender guitar, and the redheaded girl dangling a cigarette from her fingers. The boy had just finished a gig, and the two of them sat in one corner, with his band, passing around little white baggies and a used needle. Then there was a flash, only a flash, of a picture he had tried to cast out of his mind for years. The redheaded girl lay still in a bathtub stained crimson.

He clenched his eyes shut for a moment, and the picture disappeared, replaced by a memory he had almost forgotten. The rocker laid on the couch, shivering next to a small, geeky, young, blond, man, who for once in his life, didn’t’ have a camera clutched in his hands. The rocker let out a moan, as his insides started to feel like they were burning up. The blond man pulled the rocker into his arms and brushed the sweat off his forehead. Slowly, he stopped convulsing, and the two of them fell asleep in each other’s arms.

And then the memories flashed forward again, and the rocker was standing on the rooftop, pulling the blond man close to him, with tears in his eyes. Santa Fe wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Roger sighed as the memory faded out, and he found himself, once again, staring at the empty wall in front of him. The moonlight turned the room to an eerie blue as the haunting notes of Musetta’s waltz faded from the loft.