Charlotte started the next song before I was ready, which broke me out of my downward spiral. We played country megahit after hit, interspersed with funk classics that I thought were strange choices until I saw how the crowd loved them. Sam motioned for me to pass around the tip jar earlier in the set this time. He’d been right: while I pasted a confident smile on my face, which was so much easier wearing makeup and a dress that felt like a costume, nobody treated me disrespectfully, not even the drunks. And the bridesmaids tipped great, twenty upon twenty tumbling into the jar.
Back onstage and about ten songs in, I thought we must be nearing the end of our night. I didn’t want to stop. Sensing my sadness, maybe, or reacting to his own, Sam announced a slow song that hadn’t been on the playlist, then looked pointedly at Charlotte and Ace to make sure they’d heard him. He looked at me.
From under the shadow of his cowboy hat, his dark eyes lingered on me a little too long for this to be a signal between band-mates. He was asking me if I was having the best night of my life.
I mouthed, “Yes.”
He glanced at Charlotte, who launched the ballad. If yodeling had been an obstacle course for Sam’s voice, the ballad was his weight-lifting competition, just him and the song with his every weakness exposed. But he had a strong voice, a little husky, a voice anybody could pick out on the radio and say, “That’s a Sam Hardiman song.” He might need me to get attention for his band, but he didn’t need anybody if he ever wanted to get voice work for himself. I bent my chin to my fiddle and enjoyed the last few minutes as the set closed down. My bow stroked the strings and sent the rough vibration through my body. Sam’s voice filled my ears.
Done. “Thank you,” Sam said into the mike. “Y’all have been kind.” With that understatement, ignoring the wild “Woooooo!” that erupted, he simply handed his guitar and mike across the aisle to Ace and jumped down from the bar, holding his hat with one hand.
I was surprised by the band’s sudden bustle, but of course they’d done this many times before. Ace packed up his bass and slipped out the door—to fetch the minivan, I assumed. Charlotte and Sam took turns, one carrying an instrument case or piece of equipment or drum from the stage out the door while the other waited with the pile on the sidewalk. I joined in. There was a lot to clear away and some pressure to hurry because the next band was already unloading their own van in the street. But as I muscled a tom onto the sidewalk where Charlotte was waiting, I realized Sam was gone.
Reading my mind, she said flatly, “He disappears like this. He doesn’t care as much about us as you think.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, not wanting to get in a fight with this damaged girl, and not wanting to betray Sam by agreeing. I let her sit there on her drum stool while I went back for Sam’s guitar. Inside, the crowd milled from bathroom to bar again. Way back on the second level, Sam stood at the rail, talking to a man with a full gray beard. He could have been anybody—especially since Sam probably knew as many losers on the Nashville music scene as I did.
I’d made a few more trips, with Charlotte now watching me contentedly and making no effort to trade jobs with me, when Sam bounced outside, beaming. There was no lead-up in Sam’s world, no “Guess what?” He immediately burst out, “They asked us back!”
“Dude!” Charlotte exclaimed, raising both fists.
Sam looked at her, then at me. I think he would have hugged me or her if he’d been with either of us alone, but he sensed that something was broken out here and he was not going to step into the middle of it.
Luckily Ace drove up then, his athletic physique an ill match for his pristine mom-mobile. While Charlotte and I each picked up a drum, Sam opened the passenger door and leaned inside to shout to Ace, “They asked us back!” I couldn’t make out what words Ace used in response, but I could hear him crowing. I wished I could see his excited reaction, because it seemed about as typical of Ace as driving this van.
“When’s the next gig?” Charlotte asked as Sam deigned to walk back and help us pile the drums in the van.
“Tomorrow night,” he said. “Cool?”
“Cool,” she said.
I waited for him to ask me if it was cool, and I didn’t know what I would say. I wanted to say yes. I needed to have this night again. I ought to say no, because every night I played put my future in jeopardy. A gig this good couldn’t last forever, and then I would have thrown away college for nothing.
The new band started with a blast. “In,” Sam said, gesturing with his head to the van. We all closed ourselves inside so we could hear each other. He took a wad of cash out of his back pocket—what the bearded bar owner had given him, probably—and then dumped out the tip jar on the seat between us. I helped him flatten and count the money. He handed a stack of bills to me, one to Charlotte, one to Ace, and stuffed one back in his pocket.
I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to seem unseasoned or unprofessional, but I had never. In my life. Seen so much money.
Of course, I’d never actually gotten paid for a gig before.
I folded the bills into my fiddle case rather than my purse. If the scary man came back and I was mugged on the street, I would give up my purse and let him steal my license and credit card and identity before I let him get my fiddle.
“Bailey and I will walk back,” Sam told Ace. “See you same time tomorrow.” He and Ace bumped fists. He gave Charlotte a high five.
“Good night, Bailey,” Ace called as I rolled the door open. “Nice work.”
“Same to you.” I opened my mouth to acknowledge Charlotte, but she was staring pointedly out the window.
Deposited on the sidewalk, watching the van drive toward Broadway, Sam and I picked up our cases and headed in the same direction. “Do you mind walking?” he asked. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
“You just wanted to stay in the District a little longer,” I accused him. But I didn’t blame him. As we reached the intersection, the excitement was palpable. Happy barhoppers swayed up and down the sidewalks, and music poured from every door.
We stopped outside a bar that seemed particularly rowdy. As on the stage we’d just left, the drummer and the bass player were backed up to the window. Between songs, the bass player looked over his shoulder at us like he was just as curious about the people staring as they were about him. He locked eyes with Sam and lifted one finger off the neck of his guitar in greeting. Sam gave him a little wave.