I obliged, watching Sam for the precise timing, never once thinking about the harmony itself. I could sing harmony automatically, which was why I’d sung it above Julie while she sang melody. Record company scouts assumed she was the stronger singer and that’s why she was the center of attention, but really she was on melody because she had trouble with harmony. She lost her way. I never did. When every other facet of my life was a mess, music stayed true as math. My notes slipped into their predetermined places above Sam’s voice in the chords.
My harmony ended along with the tune. Sam and Charlotte started a new groove before I caught my breath and brought my fiddle under my chin. We played song after song like that. The crowd grew happier. The bar grew hotter. Long tendrils of Charlotte’s hair stuck to her face as she whipped it around in a frenzy of rhythm. Sam pulled his handkerchief from the pocket of his tight jeans, removed his hat, mopped his brow, and put his hat back on, like a young farmhand on the prairie.
When I’d glanced around at Ace between songs, I’d noticed his face was covered with a sheen, too, and he was taking long pulls from the bottle of water that had been handed from the bartender to Sam to me to Ace. The next thing I knew, college girls were rushing to my feet with their eyes up and their hands out, reaching past me. When I looked behind me again, Ace had taken off his chemical formula shirt and was wiping his brow with it. It must have shown the formula for pheromones, the way these chicks were acting. Charlotte seemed to feel it, too. She craned her neck to get a better look at Ace’s bare chest around her high hat cymbals.
“Throw it!” one of the ladies shrieked to Ace.
“I can’t. I’ll need it later,” Ace said, laughing heartily now, his unamplified voice sounding dead against the ceiling.
“Maybe we need to let you pass around the tip jar,” came Sam’s voice over the mike. He was grinning at Ace. The women screamed enthusiastically. Sam swept his eyes over them. I could almost see the wheels turning in his head, calculating the exact moment when the joke had played out and we needed to move on.
He turned around to signal Charlotte. For once, Charlotte didn’t see him. She stared at Ace with her lips parted. Sam reached toward her and snapped his fingers. Startled, she blinked at Sam and immediately started the song.
Only a moment later, it seemed—but when I thought about it, we’d played seven songs in the interim—Sam looked pointedly at me, tapped his watch, and stuck out his pinkie and thumb to make an old-fashioned phone receiver. I’d been checking my own phone periodically for the playlist, but I hadn’t even glanced at the time, or thought of Julie at all. For the first time in almost an hour, my guilt came rushing back.
I slipped my phone into my pocket, quickly packed my fiddle into its case against the wall, and grabbed the big glass jar in the corner. Ace balanced his guitar with one hand and helped me down from the stage with the other. The smiling college-age girls who liked Ace so much were the ones surrounding me, but I felt a little like I was being lowered into the lion habitat at the zoo.
“Ladies and gents,” Sam said into the mike, “we’re passing around the tip jar now. Please tell us with your generosity whether you like what you see.”
Asking the crowd whether they liked what they heard would have made more sense, but he was playing to the women in the audience, I thought. He knew how good he looked. I glanced up at him, intending to roll my eyes. He was eye candy, but I didn’t want him to know I was such a pushover.
When I looked over at him, though, he was watching me, his eyes traveling down the line of my dress as though he’d meant people liked what they saw in me. I grinned at the idea. I loved that he kept telling me how good I looked tonight, and that I was beautiful and perfect and exactly what he’d had in mind. My outfit might be time-warped country cosplay, my makeup too heavy, my hair a color not found in nature, but I’d never felt prettier—or sexier. With new confidence I waltzed around the room to the beat of the band wherever the crowd parted for me, holding my tip jar high and pausing when hands sought it with folded twenties. I smiled brilliantly at them whether they were leering frat boys or old men with loosening skin, and I feigned nonchalance over the bills piling up in the jar.
The song ended with a crash of Charlotte’s cymbal. “Thank you for your kindness. We’ll be right back,” Sam said before the crowd could drown him out with a “Woooooo!” I handed the tip jar up to Ace, who was in the middle of putting his shirt back on, and clomped down the ramp.
As soon as I passed the bouncer and stepped into the night air, I realized I’d gotten just as hot as the rest of the band, and I probably looked it. My sweat cooled on me as I glanced toward Broadway. If I walked that way with my phone, Julie would hear the music from the other bars, and she’d know I was out. She’d been on the road constantly for the past year and, up until she stopped taking my calls, was often backstage at a concert when we spoke, or at dinner with Mom and Dad and record company bigwigs. I could always hear her voice, but the ambient noise threatened to drown it out. If she caved and answered the phone, it would be just my luck for her or my parents to hear the music from the bar and ask me where I was. I didn’t want to tell them and forfeit my college education. I didn’t want to lie, either.
The volume turned up on the canned country music and leaked through the door of the bar. The pop-goes-country song with a throbbing beat seemed to vibrate the broken glass under my boots. I couldn’t stay here. I headed in the other direction on the sidewalk.
A girl at the corner of the building yelled into her own cell phone. Passing her, I heard her say, “ . . . can’t believe y’all want to go to that place. You’ll stand in line on Broadway for two hours before you get in. I’m telling you, this place has no line and the lead singer is hot. You should have heard him singing a hick version of Justin Timberlake. Sheila may be marrying David in a month, but on their big night, she’ll be staring at the ceiling, thinking about this guy.” The girl was silent for a moment, listening. She burst into laughter.
As I retreated down the sidewalk and her laughter faded, I wanted so badly to turn around. I’d gotten only a glimpse of her before I’d heard her talking behind me. I wondered how old she was, and therefore how old her friend likely was. That is, I wanted to know how far away they were from me.
I hadn’t pictured myself getting married anytime soon, especially when Toby was all I had to choose from for a husband: shudder. But a couple of girls I’d graduated with were getting married in the next few weeks. One was pregnant. The other had signed a contract at her church that she wouldn’t have sex until she got married, rumor had it. She needed to get married ASAP so she could finally do it with her dork boyfriend.