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 you’re always telling me
How much you care
One, two, F-chord, and he comes in on the harmony . . .
But I hear you talk when you’re sleeping
And I’m never the one on your mind
And on like that to the instrumental bridge, then he’s holding his breath waiting for her to come in early and start the note and slide it down and he’s kicking himself that they’ve never practiced it this way, they should have stopped and run through it a couple of times at least, but it’s too late. And then it comes, not the way he heard it in his mind when he asked her to try it but a hundred times better, her whole heart in it, hell yes, and his insides are so excited he almost forgets which place he’s supposed to come back in on harmony, which is . . .
And faithful don’t mean just trying
And trusting you
Has got to mean more
Than another way to lose
Oh-h-h, trusting you
Has got to mean more
Than another way to lo-o-o-ose . . .
Hot damn, that was it. They just about nailed it, that time. Never sounded better.
Silence from the group of boys. A couple of nods.
“Nice. Very nice,” says Crews. “So tell me. What are you selling, here?”
Travis glances at Jenny, but she looks back blankly. “Beg pardon?” he asks.
“Your song? The act? Your vocal, her vocal? What? I need you to give me a little direction here.”
“Oh. Uh, we’ve got a band . . .”
Crews looks puzzled. “A van?”
“A band. Our, uh, drummer had to work today. He couldn’t come. And, uh . . . well, we’ve got a van we’ll sell you, too, come to think of it.” He laughs at his own joke to break the ice a little. Four stone faces look back.
“Do you pick, hon?” Crews asks Jenny.
“Some. Yessir,” she nods.
“Actually, it’s more than ‘some,’” Travis butts in. “She can play bass, dobro, mandolin, banjo. Hell of a fiddle.” The reason they never push this in auditions, unless somebody asks, is that Jenny can play and sing but not both at once. Strangest damned thing. Try as she might, it just won’t work. And the best answer she can ever give as to why she can’t play while she’s singing makes her blush a little. It’s like trying to type while you’re . . . you know. No, I don’t know; what? You know. Making love.
“So you’re not pitching songs,” Crews says to Travis.
“Well . . . sure. Yeah. That too.”
“I mean, you’re not against selling one to somebody who can si— . . . uh, a singer that’s more established in the business, is what I’m saying. Sort of a known quantity.”
Travis forces a smile. “I’d sell ’em a song in a heartbeat, yessir. You bet.”
In the silence that follows, one of the golf boys drums his fingers softly on the table, and another uses the stub end of his ink pen to slide one of the green computer pages toward himself without being too noticeable about it.
“Tell you what,” Crews says brightly, “I’ll walk out with you.” He puts one arm around Travis and the other around Jenny, steering them toward the door.
It’s not until Crews has told them good-bye and gone back inside, and they’re waiting for the elevator, that Travis realizes how expertly he’s given them the old blow-off . . . Where y’all from? Really? I’ve got some good friends near there . . . so smoothly that Travis just now remembers he failed to leave a demo tape and a business card.
When they go back, the dark wooden door is locked. Travis kicks it once with the toe of his boot, then realizes this is unprofessional behavior and heads back toward the elevator.
“Trav?” Jenny says. She’s still at the office door. “Shouldn’t we . . . ?” When he looks
