You'd think, after that intense five minutes of guitar alchemy between the three of us, I'd be past being surprised by anything Curtis Lind pulled off in the way of music, wouldn't you? Yeah, well, I must be dim, because he wrote the lyric in eight minutes, and that surprised me.

Bree came back downstairs after just a couple of minutes. Turned out she'd gone up not only for my meds, but also for one of the little hard-cover notebooks she keeps all over the house. I wondered if she was still working on whatever the Big Secret Mystery Project was, if having the Hedley contingent pop round unexpectedly had messed with whatever she was doing...

"Here you go." She handed me my pills and water, and handed Curt a notebook and a pencil. "Something to write on, unless you're one of those 'paper, how medieval, my Treo is hardwired to my gall bladder' kids."

"I love paper." He grinned at her, but the burn was still there, moving in his eyes and the way his face wanted to work. "Thank you very much. Aren't the pills for me too?"

"Cheeky bugger." I'd caught the shadow of a smile on Bree's face, but I was grinning outright. "You look stoned enough, lad. No drugs for you. You need me to run that riff while you're working the words?"

"Yes please. Luke? Can you play it a step down, sort of to the bass side? Or does anyone here play piano? Because you could do the bass run on that nice little Bechstein over there..."

I fired up the board's recording function, and got back to my own stool; my legs were still wobbly. Luke had grabbed Curt's PRS, and I grabbed Big Mama Pearl back again. He likes playing PRS axes, and I'd started the song out on the Zemaitis, so it was all good, you know?

In the meantime, Curt had pushed his glasses all the way on the bridge of his nose, and started off writing. I mean, his fingers were flying. He was completely concentrated on what he was doing; either that, or he was possessed. There's not much difference, now I think about it.

"Okay." He looked up, first at me, then at Luke. He looked to have forgotten that Solange was still in the room, or maybe even on the planet. I slipped a look over at her, and saw her watching him, just digging it, not minding: musician's daughter, and she knows how it works. "Can one of you give me that first twelve-bar run, with that nifty little extended beat at the end? Do it once, give me a second, then do it again?"

I ran it through, letting the Zemaitis bite and scratch: one run, stop. Luke had the PRS ready in his lap. Curt nodded at us, a nice clear signal - play it again. Luke caught my eye, nodded, and we came in together. Curt opened his mouth and sang.

"Boy's got his shoes off, eyes closed, feet crossed, lying in a public park,  pretending it's a beach/Boy's just a dreamer, no job, no home can't even count the things that are out of his reach."

I hit the run again. There was something going on under my ribs, a big glorious noise, nice and happy. That feeling, the whole nailed it, nailed it, got it, keep it going thing, was just yelling. I remembered being down here with Mac and the Bombardiers, the first time we ever played “Liplock.” That had felt just like this, and that time, we’d damned near melted the walls of the studio the first try. Luke hadn’t been here for that one, but he was right there with me now. I could see it.&l