LITMIR.BIZ

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on me.”

      As long as Travis has known her, he never hears her say this many things in a row without thinking of the crazy disparity between her talking voice and her singing one—the former like a little girl in a cartoon show, people stifling a grin and nudging each other the first time they hear it; and the other, the singing, as rough and low as the last sip of whiskey in a glass. Echoes of Patsy and Kitty and Lacy J. and Maybelle and Lord knows who-all else, a woman who has loved and hurt for a thousand years and can make you feel every scar.

      “So, do you want to do it that way?” Travis asks, the lather drying on his cheeks.

      She nods with both halves of her face and then runs back toward the ladies’ room in her tight dress, opening her pantyhose as she goes. The sight stabs Travis under his right breastbone with a feeling that a faceful of cold water can only partly quench, and as he shaves he makes himself think of the Agreement.

      The one they reached two years ago, maybe three now, the night the band played a Shriners’ convention in Indianapolis and the crowd flat ate them up, standing ovations and rebel-yelling and refusing to let them go until they’d done three—no, four—encores. Then to top it off, paying them the five hundred in cold hard cash and standing them to free drinks at the bar. It was better than Christmas.

      Travis going easy on the drinks because it was his turn to drive and also because he was so high already from doing the show. So that Jenny and the drummer—Carl—both ended up drinking his share too, and by the time they were ready to head home Carl climbed in the back and immediately conked out and Jenny in the front drowsed on Travis’s shoulder down the interstate until he found WSM on the radio and it was playing Bill Monroe doing “Uncle Pen” and Jenny sang the high tenor harmony with it and he joined in on the baritone part and wondered if life ever got any better than this.

      They were both so damned giddy that afterward he could never remember for sure whose lips had found whose in the dark, but he did remember that when it dawned on them what they were doing they separated at the same instant, like getting an electric shock.

      Jenny panting to get her breath back regular and him saying to the taillights of the cars up ahead, “We can’t do this, can we?”

      She shook her head violently. “Unh-uh. It’d be . . . it’d be like insects, or something.”

      He thought on that a minute. “Like what?”

      “Like . . . incest. What did I say?”

      He got to laughing so hard he cried and couldn’t see to drive, and when he pulled off onto the shoulder to wipe his eyes her arms were suddenly around him with more strength than he thought she had. They sat holding each other that way for a long time.

      “I love you, Travis.”

      “I love you, Jen.”

      The Agreement was fairly straightforward. He wouldn’t start anything if she wouldn’t, and in that way she would go on being like one of the family to them, Brenda’s best friend and the sister he had never had, and even when he was dead certain that a guy she was going out with was a shithead Travis would not volunteer his opinion to that effect unless she asked for it.

      With a wet comb and the least touch of spray he gets his hair mostly presentable in the bathroom mirror and wishes he could so something about his face. Is it just the lighting in these places, or are there really such dark canyons under his eyes? True, between his day job and their five-night gig at The Trap this week he hasn’t been getting a lot of sleep, but damn. It’s all right to have a face like Haggard or Jones or Willie once you’ve made it. But when you’re just breaking in, it behooves you to look a little less hard-ridden than that. He heard one of the girls in the shop office talking about a new tinted cream they had out especially for that, the bags, but he hasn’t got up his nerve to go looking for it. Too late for now, anyhow. Showtime. Crack them knuckles, boy. Whistle a happy tune.

      Jenny is standing by the elevators on her high black heels, her head down like a girl waiting to be asked to dance. He presses the button for Up.

      “Do I look all right?” she asks. That little-bitty voice.

      Does she look all right. The stab under his breastbone again.

      He pokes her gently in the stomach with his index finger. “Buzzz,” he says.

      She swings her travel bag, trying to hit his butt, but he jumps away. “Ain’t you never gonna let me forget that ‘insect’ shit?”

      “You look like a million bucks,” he says, as the elevator doors bong open.

      On Seventeen, the number they’re looking for is at the far end of the long hall. Maroon carpet and gray wallcloth and soft lights recessed inside the wood trim near the floor. At the distant dead end a polished door of dark wood says WinSong on it in gold letters, and because there’s not a knocker or a buzzer they go on in.

      There’s no receptionist at the big curved desk, so they have a seat and wait for her to come back. Gold and platinum records line the dark walls, set into cases of glass to keep people from handling them, Travis supposes. When nobody has come after ten minutes and it’s five minutes past their appointed time, Jenny talks him into going back to look for somebody.

      They go back through the suite of offices tapping on doors, but nobody answers. The doors of several offices are open, but the rooms are dark and quiet. No windows.

      At the end of a hallway is a set of double doors. Travis thinks he hears voices inside, so he taps lightly with his knuckle. No response. He tries the knob and it opens.

      The four men sitting around the end of a conference table snap their heads toward the interruption with looks of contempt, which are heightened when they notice his guitar case. One of the men—boys, really, none of them looks over thirty—says “Jesus” under his breath and rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, and another one says loudly to Travis, “You need to make an appointment. Come back on a weekday.” He spaces the words a little apart, the way you’d talk to a child.

      “I did,” Travis says. “I mean, we do. Have one. With a Mr. Crews.”

      At that, one of the boys slaps himself in the top of the head and whispers “Shit.” He turns to the others and says, “I’m sorry, guys. It slipped my mind. This won’t take long, okay?” All of them are wearing bright pastel clothes, the kind you’d play golf in. The table is strewn with long computer printouts. Columns of numbers.

      The one who apologized gets up and comes to shake Travis’s hand. He has a tan you can’t get in winter without money, and a little black widow’s peak of hair. “Manfred Crews,” he says. “Y’all come on in. What you got?”

      With Jenny’s entrance, their overall interest level rises a notch or two but not much. “Well,” Travis says, taking his guitar out of the case, “I’m Travis Matthews. And this is Jennifer Hammond. Like to play you just a couple of songs I wrote, and leave you a tape to listen to later. We know you’re busy.”

      He strums a quick G-chord to check the tuning. The top string is a touch flat, the way it gets in dry weather, and he keeps flicking it with his thumbnail while he twists the peg to bring it in tune. One of the boys coughs, and another glances at his watch. Crews hasn’t set back down, but stands in the corner of the room with his arms crossed.

      “This one here’s called ‘Trusting,’” Travis says. As he’s strumming the intro, he turns toward Jenny and winks. She nods and smiles at him, her mouth the tight little line it makes when she’s nervous.

      Like a waltz, he reminds himself. Keep it like a waltz. And one, two, three, four-and-Jenny-starts . . .

      Sometimes we all say

      Things we don’t mean

      But with you it’s a full-time affair

      One, two, three, C-chord . . .

      You say that we’re lovers

      And you call this a life

      And

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