Long Black Curl (30 page)

“What'd you think of her?”

“Who?”

“Cassidy. The waitress. You must've checked her out. Or are you into guys?”

“No, I'm straight. I mean, I don't care one way or the other what you are, but I'm straight.” He looked back at Cassidy. “Well, she's cute enough. But that voice is kind of like sandpaper. And I get the feeling she's just trolling for a husband. What do you think of her?”

“I don't,” he said. “I just wanted to see if you noticed things.”

He sat back with a frown. “You're not like the other managers I've talked to.”

“You mean the ones that turned you down?”

He smiled. “Yeah. Them.”

“Well, I am different. I do this for reasons I'm not going to explain, because you'd never understand. You know where my office is?”

“Yeah.”

“Send me a demo. Three songs. Your best one, your favorite one, and the one everyone else tells you is your best.”

“What if those are all the same song?”

“Then you don't have enough.”

“I have plenty.”

“I'll take a listen, and be in touch if I think I can do you any good.”

They shook hands. The boy sauntered off, and Jeff sipped his whiskey. He'd already classified the boy as a two-year wonder at the most; after that, the kid would be past his sell-by date. But for those two years, Jeff could make him one of the most popular figures in entertainment.

As long as his demo didn't totally suck.

He waited, but no one else approached. After half an hour, he motioned Cassidy back over and ordered his dinner.

“How come you never bring a wife or girlfriend in here?” Cassidy said when she finished writing his order.

“Maybe I'm gay.”

“You're not gay,” she said with a knowing chuckle. “I've seen how you watch me and the other girls.”

“Maybe I'm just very, very hard to live with.”

“Maybe. I'm guessing you have a broken heart, though.”

“And what makes you say that?”

“Most guys, when they stare at my ass, they look like they do when they get their steak. You look like you're remembering the best steak you ever had.”

He gazed at her with surprise. “That's a very perceptive thing to say.”

“Thank you,” she said, and went to put in his order. He finished his whiskey and watched the TV, muted but with the closed captions on, mention the latest political snafu threatening to ensnare local politicians. But his mind was a million miles away, soaring on night winds.

*   *   *

He arrived home a little before midnight, tipsy and sad and annoyed. His cat Cecil purred around his ankles as he turned on the lights, locked the door, and tapped the touch pad to bring up his laptop screen. He glanced at his e-mail, decided nothing needed his immediate attention, and dropped heavily onto the couch. Consuela had been in today, and everything was neat, tidy, and smelled like potpourri.

His cell phone buzzed. He recognized the number. “Hello?”

“Hey, baby,” Lisa said. “You still awake?”

“Still, but not for long.”

“I wanted to let you know, I saw that preacher on the subway again.”

“The Diana Ross one?”

“Yes.”

Jeff smiled. The oddities of New York never ceased to amaze him, such as this subway preacher who kept muttering, in some thick accent, “Jesus and Diana Ross.” It had become a great inside joke for him and Lisa, a phrase that never failed to reduce them both to giggles like small children. They'd spent endless hours parsing out the possible meaning, to no avail. “He's still at it, huh?”

“Yes, but I figured it out tonight. We had it all wrong. He's not saying, ‘Jesus and Diana Ross,' he's saying, ‘Jesus died on the cross.'”

Jeff barked out a surprised laugh. “No way. How did we miss that?”

“I know, right? It's so obvious.” They both laughed, and then Lisa added, “Do you want some company tonight?”

He sighed. “I'm sorry, Lisa. It's one of those nights. One of those crazy, crazy nights.”

“I'm sorry, too,” she said, missing the Eagles reference, which didn't surprise him. “Want to just talk?”

Lisa was a librarian at the local branch, who helped him track down old CDs and albums from other far-flung institutions. She thought they were for some kind of professional research. She'd never believe the truth, of course: that he sought for the lost pieces of his soul that resided in this old music, and that even though he knew it was futile, he could never stop trying. “Nah, thanks, though. I'll see you.”

“Okay,” she said, disappointed. She was a pretty woman in her thirties, with that angular Manhattan attitude that was both attractive and, to a country boy like Jeff, also off-putting. He could never quite shake the sense that she was laughing at him, even though he was a powerful music executive and she was a lowly librarian.

He stared at the black TV screen for a long time before he stretched out on the couch. Cecil crawled up onto the small of his back, and in moments, both of them were asleep. The cat dreamed of mice, which he'd never seen; Jeff dreamed of wings, which he'd never see again.

 

22

Jefferson jumped as the phone on his desk buzzed. He nearly spilled coffee on his lap, which would ruin his Earnest Sewn jeans. He knew he didn't have any appointments this early. He pushed the response button and snapped, “What?”

“Touchy,” Janet said. “Stay up late last night?”

“Just the usual.”

“Uh-huh. How many fingers of vodka am I holding up?”

“Did you actually want something?”

“There's a couple of people to see you,” Janet said. Her voice sounded odd.

“They have appointments?”

“No.”

“Then tell them to make one and come back. Jesus, I nearly poured hot coffee all over my balls.”

“I think telling me that counts as sexual harassment.”

“My balls would certainly think so.”

“I think you might want to see them, though.”

“Why?”

“Well … I think they may be relatives.”

“Of mine? I don't have any relatives.”

“Well, they have the same skin and black hair.”

Jefferson's head cleared at once, and he felt a surge of both panic and, far worse, hope. “What are their names?”

“Bronwyn and … Junior.”

He frowned. He didn't know either of them. But then again, he couldn't be sure that losing the memory of specific Tufa wasn't one effect of his exile. Many of those consequences had revealed themselves only over time, such as the subtle magic that kept people from noticing that he didn't age. It diffused through everything connected with him: pictures, videos, interviews, personal relationships. Even people who were now elderly didn't register that he looked exactly the same as he had decades ago.

He opened his desk drawer and positioned the gun he kept there. It was usually merely for show, but in this case, he was glad he kept it cleaned and loaded. He had no idea what this was about, but if two Tufa had come all the way here, after all this time, he wasn't about to be caught undefended. “Okay,” he said. “Send them in.”

The first thing that registered was Bronwyn's near-term pregnancy: her belly preceded her, and she had the pained, slightly annoyed look he'd seen on lots of heavily expectant women. For an instant, he wondered if this was all a paternity shakedown, but when he looked at her face, he realized he truly didn't know her.

The man with her was tall and handsome, with unruly black hair and a permanently suspicious glint in his eye.

“It's okay,” Jeff said to Janet. “These are people from back home.”

Janet nodded, rolled her eyes a little, and closed the door.

He stepped around the desk. “I'm Jefferson Powell.”

“Junior Damo,” the man said, and they shook hands.

“Mrs. Damo,” he said to the woman.

“Bronwyn Chess,” she corrected. “I used to be Bronwyn Hyatt.”

“I know the Hyatts,” Jeff said; then the name registered. “Bronwyn Hyatt. Deacon Hyatt's daughter. You were a war hero, weren't you?”

“I was in the army, we'll leave it at that,” she said.

“So you two aren't a couple, then?”

“No,” they said in unison.

“That's not what we're here to talk about,” Bronwyn added.

“So this isn't a social visit?”

“No.” She looked around. “Excuse me, but I have to sit down.” She lowered herself into one of the guest chairs.

“Can I get you anything?” Jeff said.

“A can opener,” she said wryly. “No, thank you, I'm fine. I'm supposed to feel like this, apparently.” She settled into the chair, then said, “We need to talk to you about Bo-Kate.”

Jeff jumped as if he'd touched the subway's third rail. It was a name that hadn't been uttered aloud in his presence for longer than he cared to remember. Of course, it sounded in his head every day, and he would often wake from dreams of being with her, calling her name in his mind if not actually aloud. But this wasn't a dream, or a memory.

“I haven't seen her or spoken to her in longer than you can imagine,” he said. “Well, okay,
you
can probably imagine it, but it's still been a long time. The last I heard, she was in Nashville. I have no idea if she's still there.”

“We know where she is,” Junior said. “She's back in Needsville.”

They all waited as this registered. Finally Jeff said, quietly and deliberately, “How is that possible?”

“We don't know,” Bronwyn said. “But she's already killed Rockhouse Hicks. She burned down Bliss Overbay's house. And she wants to kill Mandalay Harris and take over as leader of all the Tufa.”

“We need your help dealing with her,” Junior said.

Jeff just stared at them, letting this information sink in, unable to believe at first what he was hearing. He wasn't even sure which bit appalled him the most: Bo-Kate being on a murder-and-arson spree, that she'd somehow been able to return to Cloud County at all, or that the Tufa had asked for his help. At last he said, “I appreciate you letting me know what she's been up to, and I'm real sorry to hear about Rockhouse, but to put it simply … you motherfucking sonsabitches can do your own dirty laundry. You kicked me out, remember?”

“We know,” Junior said. “But we're still your people.”

He wanted to laugh at them, to throw them out of his office, but he'd negotiated with too many lawyers, agents, and promoters not to see where this was going. “All right, I'll nibble. What makes you think I can help?”

“You know her better than anybody,” Bronwyn said.

“I haven't seen her in a coon's age. A very long coon's age. How could I know her anymore?”

“Because she hasn't changed that much,” Junior said.

“In that case, your best bet to stop her is to shoot her on sight.”

“That was my suggestion,” Bronwyn said. “I was overruled.”

Jeff leaned back in his chair, using body language that conveyed his total dominance of the situation. It worked with musicians, and often with lawyers. He had no idea if it would with Tufa, but he figured it couldn't hurt. “So you need me so that no Tufas will get their hands bloody, is that it? I'm like the hired gun who comes in, does the job, and then gets run out on a rail by the hypocritical townspeople.”

“It won't be like that,” Bronwyn assured him.

“Uh-huh. What have you got to trade?”

Junior and Bronwyn exchanged a look. Bronwyn said seriously, “Amnesty.”

“Nice word. Explain exactly what it means.”

“You get to come back.”

Luckily Jeff had many, many years' experience keeping his emotions off his face, so he didn't show the volcanoes that went off inside him. “What makes you think,” he said deliberately, “that I
want
to come back?”

Bronwyn said, “Because I know a little of what you feel. I was in Iraq, and I thought I was going to die there. That terrified me. The thought of never riding the wind again, singing, or playing, of never being
home
 … those things scared me a lot more than the thought that I'd actually die.”

He laughed. “And you think that's how I feel?”

“Isn't it?”

“You want to know how I feel? I loved that woman more than either of you will likely love anyone. I did horrible things because of that love, but I never felt more alive than when I was with her. Then you banished us from Cloud County. That was okay, I could live with that. But you also banished us from each other. Yeah, you didn't know about that, did you? I don't know if it was an accident, or if ol' Rockhouse just threw it in to fuck with us that much more. But we couldn't be with each other out in the world. We couldn't find each other, contact each other, or anything. If I tried to call her, it wouldn't go through. If I sent her a letter, it disappeared. If I went somewhere I knew she'd be, we couldn't connect. Oh, we could hear about each other. I knew she was a big promoter in Nashville, I even represented some of the artists she promoted. But we could never communicate directly.”

He looked distant, and anguished. “We were both at a Beyonc
é
concert, both of us backstage, in the same goddamned room, even. But we couldn't see each other, or hear each other, or
find
each other.” He smiled coldly and shook his head. “You know what? Fuck you both. Bo-Kate is your problem, not mine. And my life is here now.”

“Selling musicians instead of being one?” Junior said.

“Now you're insulting my profession? You really don't know how to motivate people, do you?”

Bronwyn put her hand on Junior's arm. “Let's go. I'll leave my cell number with your secretary. We'll be in town until tomorrow morning. Call me if you change your mind.”