Run rose run, p.4
Run, Rose, Run, page 4
“Thanks, I’m good,” he said. He’d made a stop at Bongo Java on the way, plus Maya, who was over by the stove, made coffee so strong he could practically feel it stripping the enamel from his teeth. He set his guitar case on the Florentine tiles and took an apple from the enormous fruit bowl on the kitchen island. “So I saw an amazing new singer last night,” he said.
Ruthanna gave Maya the side-eye, and Maya giggled into her fist. Ethan braced himself for the ribbing he could tell was coming.
“So, Blake,” Ruthanna said, “what was so amazing—her face or her boobs?”
“How do you know the singer was a girl?” Ethan asked, his mouth full of apple.
“Because I’m not dumb,” Ruthanna said.
“Fine,” he said. “But give me a little credit, why don’t you? It was her voice.”
“Mm-hmm,” Maya said, pouring herself a mug of her killer brew.
“Sang like an angel, did she?” Ruthanna asked.
“If you don’t mind a cliché like that,” Ethan said, “then yeah, she did.” He still felt moved by the blunt power of AnnieLee’s lyrics and the soaring ache of her voice. “She sang like an angel who’s been cast out of heaven, yearning to fly back up to where she belongs.”
Ruthanna stared at him. “That’s some highfalutin poetics for nine a.m. Also, to be perfectly honest, she sounds depressing.”
Ethan rolled his eyes, and Ruthanna laughed at him. “She was hot, though, wasn’t she?”
“That’s not the point,” he said.
“Of course it is,” Ruthanna said. “What’d that old bird Tennyson say? ‘In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.’”
“Now who’s got the poetics?” Maya asked. “Also, I think that poem ends sort of tragically.”
“Seriously, Ruthanna, I’d think you’d care,” Ethan protested. “She’s good, and she was playing at the Cat’s Paw. That’s your bar, if you recall, and in my mind, that gives you dibs.”
Ruthanna got up from her window seat and slid across the kitchen in her gold velvet slippers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about dibs for. She’s not mine because she sang in my bar, you big oaf. I’ve got no interest in wannabe country singers, anyway,” she said. “I don’t care if they sing like angels or pick like Doc Watson. I don’t care if that girl was born with a Dobro in her hand and a harmonica in her mouth.” Ruthanna was on a roll now, and her sentences became lines of a song she was making up as she went. “I don’t care if she’s pretty as a daisy or if she can belt out the high notes in ‘Crazy,’” she sang.
Maya came in with her low, rich alto. “Ruthanna’s retired and she deserves to be lazy…”
Ethan started laughing—he couldn’t help it. “Are you two about done?” he said.
They turned toward him, grinning. “Probably,” said Ruthanna. “I can’t think of anything else that rhymes with lazy.”
“Jay-Z?” Maya offered.
“Look,” Ethan said. “I’m not telling you this for my own good. I’m just here to say that I think you’d really like this girl.” He patted Ruthanna on the shoulder. “She’s a lot like you,” he said. “Beautiful, talented…and mean as tobacco spit.”
Ruthanna looked at him in surprise, and he froze. Had he crossed a line? Ruthanna had a legendary temper, and few people could get away with talking to her like that. What on earth made him think he was one of them?
“I’m sorr—” he began, and then she threw a kitchen towel at him, hitting him squarely in the chest.
“For your information, I take all of those things as a compliment,” she said.
He let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good,” he said. “Because I meant them that way.”
“I still don’t care about your singer, though,” she said. Then her face brightened and she held up a finger. “Wait—I’ve got it: Martin Scorsese!”
“I thought you said you were done,” Ethan moaned, as Ruthanna laughed all the way down to the recording room.
Chapter
10
AnnieLee woke at dawn to the sound of voices. She was frigid and sore from sleeping on the ground, but she held herself perfectly still, not even breathing as she strained to listen. How close were they?
And more importantly, were they coming closer?
She could hear a man and a woman, the latter saying something about an “EDP” she’d talked down off a bridge the day before: “…couldn’t convince him I wasn’t the ghost of his dead aunt,” she said. “Dude was whiter than a bedsheet and he’s got a Black aunt? I doubt it. But being confused about who I was had to be the least of his problems, poor thing.”
They were definitely getting closer, and AnnieLee didn’t have to know what an EDP was to know that they weren’t just a nice couple out for a morning stroll. They were cops. She could hear the swagger in the male cop’s voice as he talked about tracking down a man suspected of holding up a Circle K.
AnnieLee quickly slithered out of her sleeping bag and tried to stuff it into her pack as she ducked into the bushes to hide. She was about to get down on her hands and knees to crawl deeper into the greenery when the man said, “Hold up there.”
AnnieLee cursed under her breath as she slowly turned around, straightening the backpack on her shoulders. Maybe they’d think she was out for a sunrise walk?
“Good morning, officers,” she said, trying to keep the tremor from her voice.
In the branches above her, a crow coughed out three loud, hoarse squawks. AnnieLee glanced up at the shiny black bird, bobbing near the treetop, and then looked back at the cops, who’d failed to wish her a good morning in return.
“Did you know that crows are songbirds?” she asked. “That always seems kinda funny to me, because they have such terrible voices.” She shrugged in a way that she hoped seemed both innocent and charming. Maybe she could pass as a slightly eccentric urban birder? “A thrush, on the other hand,” she said, “sounds like some kind of magical flu—”
“You spend the night here?” the man interrupted. He stood with his legs spread wide and his thumbs tucked into his belt.
“Welllll…” AnnieLee said. Wasn’t it obvious?
“Sleeping in the park is illegal,” he said.
The woman took a step closer to her. She had a cup of steaming coffee, and it smelled so good and warm that it nearly brought tears to AnnieLee’s eyes. “There’s a shelter on Lafayette Street,” she said gently. “The Rescue Mission—are you familiar with it?”
“Um, okay, sure,” AnnieLee said, taking a corresponding step backward. She saw the other cop scanning the ground, probably looking for needles or bottles of cheap liquor.
“I don’t do drugs,” she blurted, and then flushed. “I’m not from here,” she added. But that was probably obvious, too.
“Are you okay?” the woman asked. “Do you need help?”
“Yes,” AnnieLee said. “No. I mean, I’m just fine. I’ll be moving along, I guess, if that’s okay with you.” She took another small step away from them.
The cops looked at each other—they clearly didn’t consider her a threat to herself or others—and when they turned back to her, she gave them a little wave. She’d take their silence as permission to get the hell out of there. “Thanks, and, um, have fun patrolling,” she said, and then she hurried away, holding her breath until she was safely out of sight. They didn’t call after her.
It’s your lucky day, kid, she said to herself. And then she tried very hard to believe it.
Chapter
11
AnnieLee walked south through the park for a quarter mile before she came to a long, sloping lawn. To her left was the slow-moving river, and on the far side of it, Nissan Stadium. To her right, up the hill, was a row of brick buildings, including one that said GEORGE JONES COUNTRY in big white letters. She headed up the lawn toward the city’s edge, singing to herself Jones’s “These Days (I Barely Get By),” a bleak song if there ever was one.
In a little café on Commerce Street, she spent three precious dollars on the largest coffee on offer, adding a big splash of cream and four packets of sugar. She didn’t actually like her coffee that way, but she needed all the free calories she could get.
Then she brushed her teeth in the café bathroom and tried to comb out her hair with her fingers. As she did so, she turned her face this way and that, gazing into the mirror appraisingly. Her mother used to tell her that she looked like a young Jacqueline Bisset, though AnnieLee barely knew who that actress was.
What she looked like now, she thought, was hungry.
“Well, there are worse things to be,” she reminded her reflection. “And you’ve been a few of them.”
She spent the rest of the morning wandering the streets and gazing into shop windows, feeling awkward and conspicuous with her big lumpy backpack. Though live music began at 10 a.m. all along Lower Broadway, she knew she’d never be able to talk her way onto one of those big stages. The people who played on them were seasoned professionals.
In the afternoon, she returned to the park to stash her belongings. A crow—the same one or not, she certainly couldn’t tell—was the only witness as she placed her pack in the hollow, covered it with leaves and branches, and then trudged back into town.
She’d decided to try her luck at a little spot on the corner of Church Street called the Dew Drop Inn, but when she asked the bartender if it might be possible for her to sing there, the woman didn’t even speak—she just started laughing. She laughed until a tear shone in the corner of her eye, and AnnieLee wondered if she’d been drinking more of the booze than she’d been serving.
“Every day,” the woman finally said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Every livelong day there’s a new face asking me if they can perform in my bar. Is there a farmer growing a whole field of you somewhere? Some bumper crop of wannabes?”
AnnieLee bristled. “You can just say no. You don’t have to call names.”
“Sorry,” the woman said, though she didn’t sound it. She pointed vaguely east. “You can try over at Patsy’s.”
AnnieLee moved toward the door. She didn’t know where Patsy’s was, but she certainly wasn’t going to ask.
“Just take those leaves out of your hair before you walk in,” the woman called after her.
Flushing, AnnieLee pulled a tiny twig from the park that’d gotten caught in her dark waves. “Thanks,” she said tartly, and dropped it on the sidewalk outside the Dew Drop.
After only a few wrong turns, she found Patsy’s and began to make her inquiry, but before she’d finished, the bartender interrupted and told her to put her CD on the bar.
“My what?”
He didn’t answer; he’d moved away to help an actual customer.
A lady in cat-eye glasses and bright-pink lipstick leaned over and poked AnnieLee in the forearm. “Your demo, hon,” she said.
“My what?” AnnieLee said again. She knew she wasn’t what anyone would call worldly, but she was starting to feel like there was a whole heck of a lot she didn’t know about the way things worked in Nashville.
“Most people who want to play here leave a CD they’ve made—you know, with them playing their music?” The woman pointed to a tall stack of CDs leaning on a counter behind the bar.
“Does anyone actually listen to them?” AnnieLee asked. They looked dustier than the picture frames at the Cat’s Paw.
“Who knows? But it’s like a calling card, sweetheart. You oughta get one.”
“Okay, thanks,” AnnieLee said. She’d add it to the list of things she needed, right behind a hot meal, a bed, a shower, and a guitar. “Can you recommend another spot for me to try?” she asked. “Someplace small—a bit out-of-the-way, maybe?”
The woman scribbled a few names on a bar napkin and then pushed it toward AnnieLee.
“Here you go,” she said. “You’re real pretty and you’ve got a nice figure, so you might have a little luck.”
Is that what matters around here? AnnieLee thought.
“Then again,” the woman went on, “you might not.” She pulled a long, gold-filtered cigarette from a pack and put it between her lips without lighting it. “And if it seems like all those folks are trying to stop you from getting anywhere, hon, that’s because they are. They’re the gatekeepers, whether they deserve to be or not, and they don’t want anyone but the best and brightest coming through.”
“Separating the wheat from the chaff,” AnnieLee said. The Gospel according to Matthew had been her mother’s favorite.
“Mm-hmm. If you want to make it in this town,” the woman went on, “being talented is just one little tiny part of the battle. Fearlessness is mandatory. And shamelessness sure as hell don’t hurt.”
AnnieLee nodded. “You’ve been really helpful,” she said. “I hope I get to sing for you someday.”
“Oh, I bet you will, sweetie. I see hunger in your eyes.”
“Yeah, literal and figurative,” AnnieLee said. “Thanks again.”
Outside, she closed her eyes and leaned against the sun-warmed brick building. She told herself that she wasn’t discouraged. She knew she was going to have to knock on a lot of doors, and it was only to be expected that some of them would get slammed in her face.
After another moment’s rest, she righted herself and started walking toward the next watering hole. She thought of her stepdad, lurching from dive bar to dive bar, trying to remember which place hadn’t eighty-sixed him.
Just like him, she needed a bar desperately. Not for a drink, though: for a chance.
Chapter
12
But it wasn’t desperation that took AnnieLee back to the Cat’s Paw Saloon two nights later. It was loneliness.
Not that she cared to admit it to herself.
She slid into the cool, dim bar well after sundown. Dirty ol’ Ray was nowhere to be seen. The stage was empty; Carrie Underwood sang softly on the radio. AnnieLee was relieved to see Billy polishing glasses behind the bar. She hopped onto a stool near the soda gun and waited for him to notice her.
When he did, he looked as though he was actually glad to see her. “The songbird returns,” he said.
“I thought you were going to say, ‘Look what the cat dragged in,’” AnnieLee said. She didn’t think she had any leaves in her hair tonight, but it’d been a long time since she’d seen the inside of a shower stall.
He laughed. “I don’t keep my job by being rude to guests of my establishment.”
What if the guests aren’t paying customers? she wondered but didn’t say.
He poured her a club soda without asking her if she wanted one, which she did. If only he’d toss a free hamburger her way! Between rationing her food, walking around all day, and shivering to keep warm all night, she was losing weight. Pretty soon she’d be skinnier than a guitar string.
“You get yourself an instrument yet?” Billy asked.
AnnieLee shook her head in mock gloom. “My fairy godmother quit.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Me, too. Now I have to buy a guitar instead of getting handed an enchanted gourd. Can you believe it?” AnnieLee slapped the bar for comedic emphasis. Noticing her fingernails were dirty, she quickly put her hands back under the counter. “But that takes money that I don’t have.” She looked at Billy hopefully. “Do you happen to need any housekeeping help around here or anything?”
“Sorry,” he said. “We’re fully staffed on that front.”
She considered mentioning the dusty picture frames and the slightly grimy sheen to the tile in the women’s bathroom. Certainly no one could ever accuse the Cat’s Paw cleaners of trying too hard. But then she grinned—suddenly, brilliantly. “Great. No problem. So how about you ask me to sing again, and you pay me a little bit of money this time?”
Billy stood there and stared at AnnieLee as if he couldn’t figure out where a person like her could come from. And she half wondered the same thing. She’d always been shy. But that lady with the cat-eye glasses had said that success took fearlessness and shamelessness both. Sure, she might’ve been a fading barfly, but she’d sounded as though she knew what she was talking about.
Billy pulled a pint of Miller Lite and walked it over to a table near the stage. When he came back, he said, “You can’t just keep coming in here and hoping I have a slot for you.”
She ran her fingers through her tousled hair. She knew that. But so far Billy’s was about the friendliest face she’d seen.
“Fair enough,” she said. “But since I’m here now…”
He sighed. “No one’s up there, so what the hell? You might as well be.”
“Can I use…” she began, glancing over his shoulder at the orphan guitar.
“Guess you’d better,” he said gruffly.
She was halfway across the stage before she turned around. “Thank you,” she called.
And then she sat down in the rickety chair and began to play, without any preamble and without any amplification. As the songs unspooled their beauty into the quiet, half-empty room, the pool game halted. Someone ordered a whiskey in the barest whisper. The only sound, besides the raw, aching sweetness of AnnieLee’s voice, was the whir of the old ceiling fan.
When she was done playing, AnnieLee came floating off the stage, happier than she’d been in days. The euphoria lasted all the way up until she saw Ethan Blake having a beer at the other end of the bar.
Her cheeks went hot with shame. She knew she should apologize for being rude to him, especially since he was a fellow musician. But it was impossible to show the tiniest glimmer of vulnerability. If she did, her whole brazen facade would shatter.
And so she simply pretended she hadn’t seen him. She sank onto her seat, still breathing a little heavy from her vocal exertions. Billy came over and placed two twenty-dollar bills on the scuffed wooden bar.
“Really?” she said, forgetting about Ethan instantly.
“You were dynamite, kid.”
Though she was nearly speechless with gratitude, she knew she had to keep playing the proper part. “When I’m back on my feet you won’t be able to get me with such bargain-basement prices,” she said.
