The One-in-a-Million Boy (37 page)

“I do.”

Sylvie peered at him. “Seriously?”

“Yes,” Quinn said. “Seriously.” He turned to the boys. Was he beaming? Is that what he was doing? “I think old Mr. Stanhope's been waiting all this time for you guys to show up.”

“Great, great, they're musical geniuses,” Sylvie said. “Can we get down to business here?” Despite her diminutive size, she looked entirely capable of wrenching a door from its hinges.

“I'm listening,” Quinn said, the old-penny taste of adrenaline flooding his tongue.

The boys, too, came to attention.

“Here's the deal,” Sylvie said. “I'm about to board a circus train with these kids and I'm sick and tired of playing ringmaster all by myself.” A collective sigh from her sons and nephews; they'd heard this part already. Sylvie adjusted her bracelets and continued: “Especially when it turns out that my hard-earned counsel and advice count for exactly
zip
when it comes to the biggest decision of their career.”

“Aunt Sylvie,” said one of the Jays, “we took a good deal.”

“You shut up.” Sylvie pointed at him with a lethal-looking fingernail the exact color of fresh blood. His head shrank turtlelike into his collar. “You took a good deal after turning down a
great
one—a deal I spent weeks finessing.”

Brandon said, “Mom still thinks faith is a phase.”

Sylvie shot her son a look that could bend spoons. “Your cousin walked the lane just great and he turned out to be an atheist.”

Brandon regarded his mother with a lush and layered affection, and in her returning sigh Sylvie, too, betrayed the marshy depths of her love. They were ill matched, mother to sons; and yet here they were, jumbling toward their twining future, come hell or high water or the ten plagues.

“What exactly did they offer?” Quinn asked.

“Nothing we want,” Tyler said.

“They offered you the flippin'
moon.
”

“It's over, Mom,” Brandon said. “Time to move on.”

“You are so right, oh, my sage young sons. Oh, my wise young nephews.” She turned again to Quinn. “I have to get their contracts zipped up, a schedule worked out, a thousand little things I don't want to do alone.” She clenched his arm. “I need somebody I can count on.”

“You do,” Quinn said.

“Full-time, ridiculous hours—as you well know—but it's an opportunity I'm offering, Quinn. I know this sounds like Mom blowing smoke, but these kids are going places.”

A flood of inner light, a hyperawareness of the fresh equipment, the seamless soundproofing, the spotless gleam on the control-room window. All of it his now, in a way: the performance space with its baby grand, its sleek, armless chairs—

The chairs. Something wrong about the chairs.

“We can negotiate your salary,” Sylvie was saying. “You'll find out I'm a pussycat. For now, all I need to hear is that you're onboard.”

As Quinn realized exactly how the chairs were wrong, and what their wrongness signified, Sylvie picked up a clipboard and said, “What do you want for a title? Co-Manager? Operations Supervisor? King of the Road?”

“Wait,” he said, louder than he meant to. He sat on one of the chairs, noting its careful placement—not random at all, as he'd first thought. Four chairs side by side, one chair set apart, near the Telecaster, which was plugged into a practice amp.

“Wait for what?” Sylvie said. “This is a
promotion.
You're being kicked upstairs.”

They were preparing to run auditions. For a permanent guitar player. One with a saved soul and—far more important—a sunny, youthful visage that wouldn't fuck up the cover art. Of course they were running auditions. Of course they were.

“I'll call you Commander in Chief if you want,” Sylvie said, begging now.

But he was a player: he wanted to play. His head began to pound, and an image blazed: Dawna the Supervisor's tanned arms going spotty and pale, her hard-won muscles deflating over the years. He saw her feeding the sorter decades hence, tagging catalogs for a type of baby shoe yet to be invented. He was the guitar-player equivalent of Dawna: dogged; good at it; replaceable.

“I need you, Quinn,” Sylvie was saying. “
They
need you. You're a stabilizing influence.”

This seemed, astonishingly, to be so: there they were, four boys, waiting for his answer. Banking not on his musical skills, but his fatherly ones.

“Quinn! Hello? I'm looking for a yes.”

If Belle could only hear this: after all this time, in fulfillment of her father's barbed and oft-repeated wish, Quinn Porter had finally been offered “something in management.” Quinn briefly considered dangling Howard Stanhope's song as bait—an exchange, a barter. But he didn't want to be the man in Howard's song, the guy who rued his trespasses against the Almighty but still retained the gall to put in a request. He wanted to be the man who was that man's opposite. He wanted to be—God help him—Ted Ledbetter.

“You're our only choice, Quinn,” Sylvie said. “We agreed to keep it in the family.”

“I'm not family, Sylvie.”

“Close enough,” she said, followed by a mollifying rumble of agreement from the boys. Not boys, men: four young men rock-solid in their hearts. Gone were the teenagers whom he'd once advised to untuck their shirts. As Quinn had been darting from gig to gig in a wheezing rush, they'd kept their eyes on a prize of their own design. Four tortoises to his hare. The knowledge came to him like a voice from the burning bush: he admired them.

“It's me, isn't it?” Sylvie said. “I know I'm a bitch on wheels, I know that. You don't want to work with me.”

“Actually, Sylvie, I like you.” He liked that she got up every single morning and set herself on fire.

“The job comes with health insurance. I'll add your wife and kids.”

“I don't have a wife and kids.”

“Oh.” She blinked at him. “I thought you did.”

Quinn got up from the audition chair, vainly checking his pockets for aspirin. His first task as Resurrection Lane's commander in chief would be to hire a guitar player. For the foreseeable future—the first foreseeable future of his life, really—he'd be watching from the wings, no longer playing and instead being played for. A foreseeable future of rehearsals and recording sessions and road trips, making suggestions and schedules and plans and money but not music.

“Say yes,” Sylvie said. “Put me out of my misery.”

“Yes.”

A cheer rose up, a rushing in his ears like applause. Tyler and Brandon and the Jays high-fived as Sylvie jumped up and down and shrieked like a girl. An immoderate round of hugs, handshakes, and back-pats followed, along with a sensation of being cracked open. Quinn felt—there was no other word that came to him—loved.

An hour later, he hitched a ride back to town with the driver of a laundry truck, Howard's chummy melody looping through his head, the hummable pleasure of it cheering him unexpectedly.
Howard,
he thought,
I'll put in a good word with your lady.
He was let off at the corner of Sibley, where he loped toward Ona's dead end, intending to tell his friend that decades after the mortal end of his tortured life, Howard Stanhope had risen again to make a thing of beauty.

The melody followed him and he matched his stride to its rhythm, recognizing all at once the “glittering girl” so ill used by the repenter in Howard's song. He could see her grace, her dimples, her cherrywood hair.
Howard,
he thought,
I've got your back, buddy.

In her driveway was parked a familiar van, which released in him a baffling gush of jealousy. As he was deciphering its meaning—like a lover's pique, though it couldn't be—he noted that Ted had parked in a slapdash, un-Ledbetterly fashion; that Belle's car was there, too; and that a small knot of neighbors had gathered ominously near the porch.

He broke into a run, sprinted up the walk, and took the steps by twos, calling her name.

He found her upstairs, tucked ghostlike into her bed.

“Ona,” he said. Helpless, overcome. “Oh, God.”

“Shh,” Belle said, putting up a hand to block his way, but Ted moved aside to make a path.

“What happened?” he said. “What happened?”

“She's okay, Quinn,” Ted said. “Paramedics just left.”

“Ona, hey,” Quinn whispered, drawing nearer. Her eyes were closed, her face motionless but oddly rosy, the way people sometimes looked in their coffins.

“You'll pardon me if I keep my eyes shut,” she murmured. “I'm going to sleep.”

“No, no,” he pleaded. “You have to get your license record.” He peered into the mystery of her face. “Not to mention the long-life one. Think of Madame What's-Her-Name. Madame French Lady.”

She opened her eyes, perfectly alert. “Not the
big
sleep, you goose. I need a nap.”

“Oh,” he said, caught short by joy. “Sure. Okay, Ona. Take a nap.”

“I
was
taking a nap,” she said. “You woke me with your caterwauling.”

“Excuse me for being sorry you were dead.”

“I wasn't dead.”

“Well, I know that now.”

“Jeanne Louise Calment.”

“What?”

“Her name is Jeanne Louise Calment,” Ona said. “The French lady whom I plan to best in the game of life.”

He glanced back at Ted and Belle, who appeared to find this amusing.

“Your lady and the scoutmaster have been here for hours,” Ona said. “I've known only one other librarian well, and as a result, this level of generosity has somewhat laid me flat.”

It was then he noticed the tea cooling on her nightstand, the industriously fluffed pillow, the clean nightgown. These signs of care made him careful. He wanted to be generous—not to appear generous, but to be so.

He knelt and took her hands, which were warm and bumpy. “There's something—” He turned to Ted, made eye contact. “Can I have a moment?”

Ted ushered Belle downstairs as Quinn tightened his grip on Ona's hands. “There's something you have to know,” he said. “About Howard.”

“Howard who?”

“Howard your husband. Howard Stanhope. Songwriter Howard.”

“Howard wrote dreadful songs.”

“No, he didn't, Ona. He didn't.”

Her green eyes narrowed on him. “What on earth are you going on about?”

“I just heard one of his songs, the one you gave me. The God Squad did a kick-ass arrangement, Ona, wait'll you hear it.”

“The religious boys? They liked it?”

“Loved it,” he said. “But here's the thing, Ona. Howard wrote that song for you.” Quinn had never been more sure of anything. “I think he wrote all his songs for you, Ona, for young and lovely you.”

“Now you're talking foolish.”

“He wrote them for you, and you refused them because he didn't know how to give them to you.” How could he, living his shadow of a life, floundering in the sludge of grief and failure?

“Have you been drinking?”

“Listen to me,” he said. “You're the glittering girl with the cherrywood hair. You're the angel's breath and sunlight.”

“Oh, for heaven's sake.” She sat up crossly, her tufted hair seeming to quiver. “Quinn Porter,” she said, “I never took you for a romantic.”

“Howard Stanhope loved you,” he declared. “I thought you should know.”

“Well, all right.”

“I thought you should know, Ona.”

“Thank you.”

“People should know these things.”

“Yes, indeed. Thank you.” She patted his hand and his head calmed. “You're a good boy, Quinn.” She shrugged what passed for her shoulders; the bedclothes sighed. “I've had myself a day,” she told him. “My mother tongue paid me a visit.”

“Really? What did it say?”

“It said the name of my original village, for starters.”

“You mean in Lithuania?”

“Could be there's nothing left there but names in a graveyard.” She sat up straighter, with little apparent effort. “I went my whole life without the slightest interest in my homeland, and now I regret that I'll never see it again, this place for which I have nothing but the blinkiest memories.”

“If you went back I bet you could snag the record for oldest airplane passenger.”

“I'd probably have to fly the plane myself. Nothing new under the sun.” She shook her head. “No, where I'm going is back to see Laurentas. I was unforgivably rude to my own flesh and blood and would like to make my apology.” She paused a moment, then: “The world's oldest airplane passenger was Charlotte Hughes, by the way. Age one hundred fifteen. You can look it up.”

He laughed. “I'll take your word for it.”

She patted him again. “I miss it. I'm suddenly homesick for a place I don't recall. If a stranger walked in here right now to read
War and Peace
in Lithuanian, I believe I'd get the gist.”

He sat with her in silence.

“There's more,” she said. “But for now I'd like to get some shut-eye.” She shooed him away, and, reluctantly, he went.

The crisis—if indeed there had been one—was over. A quartet of paramedics had pronounced her fit and lucid, vital signs normal.

“What was it, then?” Quinn asked Ted, who was pouring tea out of Ona's good pot.

“Delayed reaction to the break-in, is my guess. The guy said that can happen.”

“It was magic,” Belle said. “That's what it was.” She looked up at Quinn, as serious as he'd ever known her, and informed him that their son, their strange, departed boy, had returned to Ona Vitkus her language, her memory, and her lost brother.

“I guess she had a little mix-up in her head,” Ted said.