A couple of girls I’d seen at school slipped out of the salon next door, showing each other their freshly painted nails. I did my best to duck my head while keeping my chin in place on my fiddle. We weren’t friends, but I was that girl everyone vaguely knew—didn’t she have a younger sister who was about to become famous?—and nobody was friends with. I was afraid they would text everybody in their contact lists that they’d seen me. It would get back to my ex, Toby. He would bring his friends here to sneer at me. But the girls never stopped for our music or looked up at us. I might as well have been a mannequin in the window at Abercrombie.
It was two thirty on a Tuesday, a dead time at the mall, and no other customers passed us. Thinking we might have better luck if we moseyed into the next wing, we set up camp between Victoria’s Secret and Sephora and played a couple more tunes. This time a few shoppers actually paused to listen. They gave us a smattering of applause. They heard happiness in our music where I didn’t.
Then, as we moved toward the food court, Elvis leaned over and asked me what I had on under my circle skirt—if it was like a Scotsman and his kilt.
I was not going commando. I was wearing black lace panties. They’d become my habit in the last year, mostly to scare the hell out of my mother on the rare occasion when she was home to do the laundry, but partly so I’d look sexy and tough when I stumbled into a party and ended up behind the garage with a boy. It wasn’t much of a goal, but it was all I had just then. Very little got me off anymore. Being alone with a hot guy at least made me feel something.
If Elvis had been a cute boy at school in years gone by and he’d asked me a lewd question like this, I would have giggled in embarrassment. If he’d been a cute boy at school in the past year, I would have come on to him and called his bluff. But the closer Elvis got to me, the older he seemed. I could tell from the uneven texture under the layer of makeup Ms. Lottie had applied that his tan skin was weathered. His black hair was thinning on top, with not quite enough to fill out his pompadour.
My feet ached from standing in high heels, my bruised thigh throbbed, and I was in no mood to be toyed with. I told Elvis that under my circle skirt, there was a Glock. (There wasn’t. I was just a skinny girl with a punky screw-you haircut and no balls at all.)
Elvis was not dissuaded. As we chose our place with our backs to a blank wall between Baskin-Robbins and McDonald’s, he murmured, “Pull up your skirt and let me see it.”
My first thought was for Mr. Crabtree, who stood close enough to us that he should have overheard what Elvis said. He would think it was my fault that Elvis wanted to see the imaginary gun in my undies. He would report this to my granddad at the next poker game. My granddad would tell my parents, who would basically disown me by refusing to pay my tuition to Vanderbilt. That was their deal with me for the rest of the summer. If I wanted them to fork over tuition and room and board as they’d always promised, I had to stay out of trouble and avoid doing anything that would embarrass Julie.
I wasn’t supposed to draw attention to myself in any way, and that specifically included playing fiddle with a group. But I hoped I was safe from my parents’ wrath when they found out about this gig. It had been my granddad’s idea, not mine. He’d promised to take the blame if my parents got angry and swore to withhold my tuition, and to help me convince them to let me keep the job for the whole summer. I’d been pretty mopey yesterday—Memorial Day. Toby and his friends had spent the holiday at the lake while I moved my shit from my parents’ house to my granddad’s. I figured my granddad had gotten me the gig because, after one day with me, he wanted his guitar shop and his privacy back in the afternoons.
I guess he didn’t buy my parents’ reasoning behind keeping me away from gigs, and neither did I. Julie’s record company was afraid of a public relations disaster if the tabloids found out she’d been signed to the label while the older sister she’d always played with had been locked out. That wasn’t the shining success story girls wanted to read about in Seventeen. Personally, I didn’t think the press would care what Julie’s loser sister did with her afternoons. For Julie’s future fans, I would never rise to the level of importance of Julie’s boyfriends or Julie’s clothes or Julie’s hairdo.
But as Elvis sneered at me, I realized this was a situation ripe for a tabloid sensation and a major embarrassment to Julie’s baby career. If Mr. Crabtree told my granddad what was happening here, my granddad would pull the plug on me and maybe even confess to my parents about this gig. The potential story of Julie Mayfield’s older sister dressing up like a mental patient and threatening Elvis with a Glock . . . that might upset my parents enough to cut me off. They were dead serious about Julie’s success. Mine was expendable.
As I turned around to sneak a peek at Mr. Crabtree, though, I realized I’d panicked for nothing. Judging from his facial expression, he hadn’t heard a word that had passed between Elvis and me. In his tacky trousers and shirt and tie—which could have been his original clothes from the fifties for all I knew—he gazed out at the crowd, half smiling, like a golden retriever waiting for his master to throw a ball.
Reading my mind, Elvis informed me, “He’s deaf. I can say anything I want to you.”
I felt my face flush with anger at Elvis’s challenge. The food court wasn’t crowded, but the few patrons close by would overhear if I laid into him like he deserved. I squared my shoulders, glared at him, and said quietly but firmly, “No, you can’t say anything you want to me. I’m a professional musician, and I won’t put up with it.”
Elvis straightened to his full height, reminding me how much bigger than me he was. His nostrils flared as he spat, “Oh, you’re the talent now? Let me tell you something, toots. I’m the talent here. You’re in a band with Elvis. I’m not in a band with . . . I don’t even know who the f**k you’re supposed to be. Can’t help falling in love.”
I was used to boys who seemed willing enough to put their hands all over me, then told me off when I didn’t play submissive girlfriend with them like they wanted. It had happened all year. It had happened with Toby.
I was not used to a middle-aged man who asked what was under my skirt, then told me off when I didn’t play submissive girlfriend, then declared his love for me.
Soon enough, I was glad I’d stood there with my hands on my hips, bow in one hand and fiddle in the other, rather than responding to him in a way that would have embarrassed us both. He wasn’t declaring his love for me, duh. He was naming our next tune. He repeated very loudly to Mr. Crabtree, “ ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ in D.” Mr. Crabtree obediently strummed the D-major chord, setting the rhythm. Elvis joined in with his own guitar. As far as he was concerned, my opinion and my anger didn’t matter. I was dismissed.