Dirty Little Secret (6 page)

Mr. Hardiman’s eyes narrowed at me. Suddenly he looked more like Johnny Cash than he had yet, stern and gruff and not afraid to play concerts in maximum-security prisons.

“Um,” I backtracked, feeling a blush creep up my neck. I’d meant all afternoon to make a chord joke to Sam. My attempt had come out at the wrong time. Sheepishly I asked Mr. Hardiman, “Where does the major G go?”

He nodded smugly. “You see? You’ve gotten too big for your britches. All that talent doesn’t mean shit if you won’t shut up long enough to listen to instructions so you can play with the group.”

That stung. Everything bad that adults said about me stung, because all of it was true.

But the pain didn’t have time to settle before Sam stepped in to draw the fire. “Dad!” he called, letting his guitar hang from his neck by the strap so his hands were free to wave between us. “Over here.”

Mr. Hardiman glared at Sam, then at me, then down at his guitar, tuning his E string like I was dismissed.

Sam leaned toward me behind his father’s back. “Sorry,” he mouthed.

I tried to smile a little, to show him I appreciated him sticking up for me, but my lips couldn’t make it.

I played “Old Joe Clark” perfunctorily. The fun was gone for me now, and Sam looked as grim as I felt. Despite our lack of enthusiasm, we gathered another crowd, because we were more interesting to listen to than the Muzak that the mall piped in over the
loudspeakers. We played a few more Johnny Cash tunes, and then Mr. Hardiman said, “Last one. ‘Folsom Prison Blues.’ ”

This was another song with a breakneck pace and Cash’s signature freight-train beat. Whenever I stole a glance at Sam, his smile was creeping back, which made me try a little harder when my solo came around. He took his solo, Mr. Hardiman took his and sang the last few verses, and I thought the song would end.

As we were wrapping it up, Mr. Hardiman called over the music, “Not again. Don’t do that, son. I’m warning you.”

I watched them, puzzling through what they were talking about. I couldn’t see that Sam was doing anything unusual, and then I heard it. Under Sam’s pick, the freight-train beat on a major one chord morphed into a slightly different but equally driving rhythm. Confused, I followed along, retracing the one chord with my fiddle, until something developed. I finally recognized the song a measure before Sam started singing it: “Shake Your Body” by the Jacksons.

Mr. Hardiman’s face was beet red by now, but he played along with Sam’s funky beat. He had no choice. Professional musicians didn’t stop in the middle of a song.

I was more intrigued by Sam. I was finally hearing his voice. And it was
good
. Strong. Soulful. White boy was singing the hell out of some Michael Jackson.

I wasn’t sure what part I was supposed to be playing. For a while I just backed up the chords and doubled the bass line. Then I remembered this was a disco song with violins, so I played the soaring part from memory. That was the right answer, apparently. Sam had stopped singing, anticipating that I would know what to do in the bridge. He flashed me his biggest grin yet and melted my heart.

He picked up singing again in the next verse. His voice was deeper and fuller than Michael’s, but he wasn’t afraid to imitate
the wails that made Jackson famous. The crowd loved him, and not just the tweens this time. Shoppers stood three deep around us, gazing at him with their mouths open. Mr. Hardiman could do a mean Johnny Cash, but there was no question who was the star of this show.

The song as I remembered it was drawing to a close, assuming it didn’t morph again into something equally bizarre for a Johnny Cash tribute band like a Bach fugue or a Gregorian chant. Mr. Hardiman watched Sam, presumably for the cutoff. I did, too. As our last notes rang around the vast room and the crowd burst into applause, I finally smiled. My face and my whole body felt light for the first time in a long, dark year. I turned to Sam to tell him so.

But he was looking at his father. And his father lasered him with a glare that made the one they’d given each other when we first met look like a smiley face.

Mr. Hardiman said slowly, clearly, loud enough for the crowd to hear, “Don’t you
ever
do that again.”

Quite a few people in the audience deduced that if the band was arguing, the good times were over. They exchanged a few words with each other and moved off. But those who’d never seen the likes of a Johnny Cash impersonator get in an argument with his son at the mall sidled into the front spaces the departing crowd had vacated, eager for more.

Sam seemed to realize this was not the time or place for the discussion his father wanted to have. He glanced up at the crowd, then over at me, making my heart jump. He whispered to Mr. Hardiman, “I didn’t co-opt your song. You went with me.”

“I only went with you because
she
was going with you”—Mr. Hardiman shot me a mean look, then glared at Sam again—“and I wasn’t going to fight two of you in the middle of a performance. You know it and I know it, so cut the shit.”

Sam blushed. His eyes never left his dad’s. He was embarrassed at the scene his dad was causing, but he wasn’t going to give in.

“Quitting time,” I sang with a glance at my watch, which of course neither of them saw because they still glared at each other, even now that I’d spoken up. “Maybe we’ll have this much fun the next time we play together.” As I whirled around to get out of there, my skirt spun in a wide circle. The material whacked Mr. Hardiman on the leg of his loose suit pants. I had to elbow my way out of the persistent crowd, protecting my fiddle and bow in front of me.

3

As I hurried
out of the food court, toward the shell of a Borders, shoppers followed me with their eyes. I didn’t blame the small children or the adults. My clothes were obviously a costume because of their anachronism as well as their thick durability. They had a peculiar odor, like Ms. Lottie had sent them back in time for authenticity and they’d returned with a scent of Brylcreem and tomato aspic. Seeing me roaming the mall alone was like running into Snow White buying a pack of crackers and a fountain drink in an Orlando gas station.

I did, however, blame the teenagers who snickered behind their hands and didn’t bother to keep quiet. I had never fit in with them, not in this costume, not in my everyday one, not before I’d started wearing one. I was an anachronism no matter what I wore, an expert on a sixteenth-century instrument nobody wanted. I’d thought I could enjoy this job. Instead I’d been sexually harassed by one dead rockabilly, and I’d developed a hopeless crush on the son of another.

I wasn’t supposed to have a crush at age eighteen. Crushes were for little girls without the maturity and confidence to ask for what
they wanted, and without the strength to pursue it anyway if they were denied. Yet here I was, eleven all over again, quaking in my cowgirl boots when a fresh-faced, blond Sam smiled at me. For the rest of the summer I would be on edge every moment at the mall, hoping for another glimpse of him. If Ms. Lottie was right about the randomness of the schedule, I might never play with him again.

I could ask to be assigned to Johnny Cash permanently, unless he or his son objected to being saddled with a saucy fiddle player. But I didn’t
want
to feel this way, did I? Staring at Sam with my mouth open because he was so handsome, hanging on his every word, shivering when I brushed past him? I’d be better off following Dolly Parton around from now on. Maybe I could make it to August without seeing Sam again.

Yeah, right, that’s exactly what I wanted. I caught myself looking around the mostly empty Borders on the slim chance Sam had miraculously beaten me there.

Dolly Parton gave me a hard squeeze instead. I didn’t recognize her at first without her blond wig and boobs. I actually had a split second of panic that I was being attacked by a mall groupie with a fetish for impersonators. Then she said in my ear, “Bye, hon! Have a great weekend!” and I figured out who she was. The outsize breasts might be a put-on, but the Appalachian accent wasn’t.

I hadn’t realized I’d earned such an emotional response from her after playing in her band once. I needed to get this outfit off as soon as possible and put my usual makeup back on to warn away good-hearted middle-aged country singers. And hunky teenage guitarists dressed like Buddy Holly. Feeling closed down over the past year had been awful, but it might actually have been more awful to think that music and this boy had opened me up. In a state of something like despair, I mumbled a good-bye to Dolly and slid into Ms. Lottie’s chair.

“Uh-oh,” Ms. Lottie said, seeing my pouty expression in the mirror and sticking out her bottom lip in sympathy. “Did Sam steal your heart already? That’s got to be some kind of record, even for him.”

I didn’t want to talk about it. I explained instead, “He and his dad got into an argument in the middle of the food court.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that about those two. I’ve seen it in here.” She nodded toward the empty lounge area, then lowered her voice. “Darren is a drinker when he doesn’t have a gig. He’s hard on Sam, and Sam is hard on him. I feel sorry for both of them. You run into that again and again in this town. So talented, and they’re their own worst enemy.” Shaking her head, she pulled out a few bobby pins and lifted my hair off.

After she disassembled me, I stepped into the changing room, a cubicle with no ceiling. Way up on the wall hung a decorative poster left over from Borders. James Joyce frowned down at me, which made me feel even more naked as I pulled off my heavy costume. I glanced up at his creepy gaze behind his glasses and fought the urge to hide my bruised thigh under my circle skirt again.

Then I paused, wearing only my black lace undies, and listened to the larger room on the other side of the partition. A banjo strummed. Ms. Lottie laughed. There was no guitar music, and there were none of Sam’s quips under his breath. Yet my body thought it could feel him there.

Ms. Lottie’s commentary had made me wonder again about his argument with Mr. Hardiman, and his snide laughter when Mr. Hardiman said he was tired after working four hours. I’d thought Sam was just a handsome guy. Now that I knew he had problems at home, he was complicated and, in a twisted way, more intriguing.

Which didn’t change the fact that he was gone.

I’d almost forgotten his handkerchief in my circle skirt pocket.
I pulled it out and examined it for the first time. It wasn’t stained with my makeup after all. It didn’t have his initials embroidered on it, either. It was just a store-bought square—I marveled briefly that a shop still sold these—and any sweat on it was mine, not his. I didn’t have to cling to it like he was a rock star.

Rolling my eyes at myself, I pulled on my tight jeans, stuffed Sam’s handkerchief into my snug pocket, and ducked into a tighter T-shirt. Emerging into Ms. Lottie’s area, I scrubbed my face clean and started over with my makeup for the third time that day. While Ms. Lottie deconstructed the fake boobs of a banjo player who’d followed Dolly around that day, she kept glancing over at me, carefully maintaining a neutral expression as I applied my black mascara, liquid eyeliner, and blood-red lipstick. The ponytail wig and four hours of sweat had matted my hair. I brushed it out and fluffed my curls until they hung correctly, longer on one side and jet-black all over. Then grabbed my purse and fiddle case and bailed out of Borders.

Out on the loading dock, the summer heat hit me like a rock, and the evening sunlight blinded me. I couldn’t see, but I could hear a guitar to the left. Blinking and then opening one eye, I recognized Sam on the retaining wall. The pompadour was gone, his hair damp. Without all the gel or whatever Ms. Lottie had used to stick it together, his hair was surprisingly wavy and wild, which worked a lot better with the scruffy beginnings of his beard than the pompadour had. He’d traded the plaid button-down for a tight T-shirt, which he wore with the same skinny black jeans, rolled down now, and black sneakers. He was dressed a lot like me.

At first he didn’t seem to notice I was looking at him. He didn’t seem to concentrate on his music, either. His fingers moved automatically over the guitar strings, playing an old tune brought to the Appalachians from Scotland and written before the system
of chords in Western music had been regularized, so it was full of progressions that sounded strange to the modern ear. The chords were minor, as if the song was meant to be sad, but the lyrics were ironically upbeat. Sam wasn’t singing them, but I knew the words. He stared into space, in my vicinity but beyond me, through me, like he was thinking hard about something else. His dark brows were knitted, and he squinted a little. The hot breeze moved one dark curl across his forehead, which must have tickled, but he didn’t brush it away.

I considered standing in front of him until he acknowledged me. What did I want out of that, though? He wasn’t interested in me, and I shouldn’t be interested in him. So I just kept walking and hoped he wouldn’t notice me.

I was all the way past him, stepping from the concrete ramp to the asphalt road, when I heard him call behind me, “Bailey!”