The G String
A/N – Although this is NOT a crossover fic, see if you can find the embedded reference to the TV show Cheers.
This story was written after exactly the same thing happened to me. I'm a musician too and I got locked out of my car and my house recently for exactly the same reason. This story was originally called Guitar Hero, and was written about House's guitars only, but I had lost my inspiration to finish it until I got locked out of my car and my house and had three hours to waste in the heat waiting for a locksmith. The only difference is I'm not disabled, and I didn't fall over anything. While I was baking in the heat outside, waiting for the one and only locksmith I could reach, the inspiration struck. Enjoy! This is how I imagined House would have bought his original Les Paul Custom (a guitar I'd love to own, but can't afford).
If you've never heard Dave Von Ronk (RIP, Dave), and if you're a fan of acoustic guitar blues, you should hear his stuff.
Chapter 1
It was a lazy Saturday afternoon and House had slept in late. As usual, he hadn't slept well during the night, so it was nice that he could finally relax and get some well-deserved sleep until he woke up for good at about 10 am. Years ago, he would have spent Friday night getting blasted at some corner bar with a good live jazz band, but no longer. Now, he just wanted to go home after work, play some music, pour a bourbon, prop his aching leg up on a nice comfy pillow, sack out in front of the TV watching Mythbusters or The New Yankee Workshop, and feel sorry for himself.
He was lying sprawled out, draped all over his couch, tuning his Gibson Flying V, watching Mythbusters on mute. Twiddling with the tuning knob trying to get a particularly flat-sounding string to stay in tune, the string suddenly snapped with a loud POP. The broken end of the string flew back and cut him sharply in the eyelid. "Of all days for a string to break," he mumbled as his hand shot up to his eye. Holding his hand over his eye, he put the guitar down and promptly tripped over the cane AND the guitar as he got up to get some ice for his eyelid. "Shit, this day is just shaping up wonderfully!" he yelled out to nobody, laying on the floor, cupping his left hand over his eye and his right hand on his right thigh. Surprisingly enough, the leg wasn't bothering him nearly as much as his wounded pride and the sting in his eye.
He lay on the floor feeling even more sorry for himself as he surveyed the damage. The cane was in splinters all over the floor. The Flying V managed to survive intact, despite having a 200 pound grown man fall on it. "What a sorry sight I must be," he commiserated. "Well, at least I got this five-stringed babe down here under me. Might as well see how much I knocked her out of shape." He gingerly opened his eye and found absolutely nothing wrong with it other than a superficial cut on the eyelid. "Freakin' crybaby," he thought as he rolled over off the guitar. With his newly freed hand, he propped himself up against the couch, picked up the V and idly plucked out a new tune on the five remaining strings.
"My Five String Blues" by Gregory House
"My string's done busted"
"And I'm so disgusted"
"I'm flat out on the floor and my cane is no more"
"Well I'm a low down man"
"and my baby got a busted string."
"Well I'm a low down man"
"and my baby got a busted string."
"And this old guitar"
"One a' my favorite things."
Awkwardly and painfully, he hauled himself back up into the seat of the couch and surveyed the damage. No cane. Now here was a dilemma. He had a few spare canes, but they were back in his closet, too far away to make it safely without some kind of support. Ordinarily he could hobble a short distance without his cane, but not now that his left eyelid was swelling shut. He could call Wilson for help, but how would that sound? "Hey Wilson, I fell over my cane and my guitar…"
Nope, that wouldn't work. Wilson would never let him live that down.
So he hopped over to the closet, hanging on to anything and everything within reach in order to avoid meeting the floor unceremoniously again.
SHIT. The golf club bag had only golf clubs in it. No cane!
The folding cane was in his car.
He'd left the brown cane at the crane site.
The flame cane had been a victim of the bus crash.
He gave the four-legged granny cane to that old guy at the elevator.
He gave the regular aluminum cane back to the Physical Therapy department.
Ergo, no cane.
Maybe one of the old opera handle canes was clipped to his motorcycle.
He debated going out to his motorcycle and taking the very real risk that there might be no cane clipped to it. His motorcycle was right in front of his apartment, and the car was parked farther away. The decision was clear. He'd have to hop all the way to his car. He couldn't hop all the way to his car with a backpack, so he'd have to hop to the car, grab the cane, come back, get his backpack, and THEN he could go to the music store to get his strings.
So he hopped, awkwardly, like a drunken lame Easter bunny, down the front step and all the way to his car.. only to find, after he got to the car, that he'd left his car keys back in the apartment and of course the car was locked.
So, back to the apartment he hopped.
The apartment door was locked. Of course he was now locked out of his apartment. He'd mostly alienated his neighbors, so none of the neighbors had a spare key to his place. He had a spare key but it was up on top of the door frame. Normally he'd have no difficulty reaching it, but now his LEFT leg was giving out from all the hopping on it, and his left eyelid was completely swollen shut. He had no chance in hell of jumping on his left leg to reach the key.
Thank God Cuddy wasn't around to see him looking like a pitiful train wreck.
He hopped back out to the curb, found a stick, hopped back up to his front door and felt like an ape fishing for termites as he used the stick to knock the spare key down off of the top of the door frame.
He let himself back in to the apartment, grabbed the car keys, sat down on the couch and debated his chances of making it safely back out to the car again on one leg.
At this point, his chances were poor, and approaching nil the longer he stayed on the couch.
But he couldn't stand the thought of leaving his V with only five strings, so up he lurched off the couch (double checking to make sure he had the keys) and hopped back out to the car. He grabbed his cane from the back seat, made his way back to his apartment for his backpack, and back out to the car again for the trip to the music store.
He'd lost count of the number of trips he'd made back and forth between the car and the apartment, but it didn't matter now that he was finally on his way to completing his mission of replacing that broken G string.
House arrived at Taylor's music store where everybody knew his name.
As he opened the door and stepped from the sweltering heat into the cool comfort of the music store, he felt like he'd entered another world; one which he would not want to leave. He wished he'd brought the V so he could restring it there, sit on one of Taylor's couches in the store, prop his leg up and just play the afternoon away. He bought a few packs of his favorite D'Addario strings, a Dave Von Ronk CD, and a lovely Couch guitar strap, and started browsing the lovely instruments in the store. Within minutes he'd set his eyes on a beautiful double-ought Martin OM acoustic guitar. One of the really nice ones, made of recycled wood. He wasn't really a Martin guy; he was more of a Gibson fan, but this Martin really grabbed his eye and his ear.
Before long, he was playing his "Five String Blues" on the Martin, lounging on the store's couch just as if he was lounging on his own couch at home.
"You got chops, man" said the guitar salesman as he ambled over to try to make his next potential sale. "What's that called?"
"No name for it yet," muttered House. "I just made it up this morning." House neglected to mention that he "made it up" while he was sprawled out painfully on the floor having fallen over two objects.
"Anyway, sorry man, but I'm not in the market. I'm just fooling around. I'll put it back if you want." House muttered again.
"Nope, you can play it all you want. Just let me know when you're done and I'll put it back" said the salesman as he walked calmly away, knowing that a frequent flyer like House would probably wind up buying the instrument eventually.
House put the Martin back and grabbed a dented, beat up old National Resophonic from the Used Instruments section. "Five String Blues" sounded even better on the National. One thing House always admired about guitars is that often, the really old beat up ones have the best acoustics. The older they are, the more beat up they usually are. Guitars that have survived the years are usually acoustic treasures to behold. Willie Nelson's stage guitar has a giant hole in it caused by years of use without a pick guard, and it sounds even better that way. Nobody cares how it looks. House wished people were like that. Looks really don't matter, or at least they shouldn't, but sometimes they do.
As he sat there plucking the National, he spied a used Les Paul Custom hanging on the wall just a little out of his reach. Now that was his style. A really nice, beautiful instrument with a scratch down the back that looked like it could easily be buffed out, though if it was his, he wouldn't bother trying to buff it out. Leave it there; it's a character mark, he reasoned.
He couldn't keep his eyes off of the Les Paul. It was almost as if it were calling his name. "Put the National down; come and get me" it seemed to be calling to him.
Eventually, House gave in to the temptation and called the salesman to get the Les Paul down for him.
The salesman, wearing an all-knowing and very irritating grin, came back and got the Les Paul down for House. "Cha-ching!" was the thought running through the salesman's mind. House knew the guy from many previous visits to Taylor's music store, and shot him his trademark lopsided grin that said "this guitar's mine, bud. Take the price tag off now and put a Sold sign on it. Nobody's getting it but me."
Lovingly, House picked out "Five String Blues" on the Les Paul. He was already convinced that he wanted that guitar before the sales guy even got it down off the wall. Even more lovingly, he fingered the scratch on the back and patted it gently as if the scratch was causing the guitar some kind of pain; as if the two of them had something else in common besides music. "It's alright, you're mine now" he muttered softly to it, caressing it even as the salesman went to the storeroom and dug the case out from the pile of used cases.
As House saw the battered old case, worn from years of use on the road, his heart melted. He opened the case and found all sorts of old treasures; chipped real tortoiseshell picks (you can't buy these anymore, as they're illegal to sell new), a broken capo, a worn but still usable audio cable, and an old, yellowed, worn piece of paper with the player's set list handwritten on it. The songs were originally popular in the fifties. That meant this guitar was probably about sixty years old. The battered case, the small items within it, and the scratched guitar might look unattractive to most people. House imagined that if the case and its contents had feelings, they'd feel cast aside, useless, relegated to the used instrument pile; more like their new owner than they knew. All were treasures to those with the good sense to appreciate fine works of art.