Theo

Washtub Prophecy, our opening act for the second leg of the tour, was everything that I hated about the music industry. They cared more about the show than the music, more about the publicity than the songs, and somehow they still managed to be really good. Which is why I’d agreed to have them open—I’d only heard their album. Ven had no such excuse, since he actually knew Abel Mailer, their lead singer.

It had happened in the usual way—they were a band on our label, the genres were similar, it would be so appreciated if we’d let them open for us as a segue into their headlining tour. Of course, I’d’ve preferred if we could have anyone we wanted as an opener, but Dougal was firm that this was the way the game was played.

I’d really enjoyed having Starkers open for us on the first leg of the tour. They were incredibly talented, and their use of harp and electric fiddle gave their music a soaring, ethereal quality that I loved. Miranda Jenkins, their lead singer and harp player, was awesome, and though I hadn’t gotten to know the rest of the band as well, Mari, Aruna, and Leah had been kind and interesting whenever I’d spent time with them. It had been part of what made the first leg of the tour feel okay.

Now, with the full-on fuckery of Washtub Prophecy, every night was a grueling affair. Abel Mailer had decided that we were destined to be friends from the moment we all met up the night before the first show. At first, I’d thought it was just hero worship or something. Which made me uncomfortable, but at least wasn’t scummy. But, no. Abel would sidle up to me and talk like he thought we were in some kind of secret club and everyone else was outside, looking in. He’d rag on his own band, criticize other musicians he’d toured with, or met, or listened to.

I mostly ignored him or made excuses to leave. But after the third show, when he’d sat down beside me and started in on how Coco wasn’t the best guitarist so it was good she stood out in other ways, and how Ven and Ethan were probably fighting over who got to “get in on that,” I cut him off at the knees. He looked shocked, as if I’d betrayed some relationship we had, and then he got pissed, and I knew I’d made an enemy.

I’d steered clear of him since then, since the last thing I wanted was to go onstage distracted by that asshole. But it made everything a little bit harder to deal with, a little less comfortable.

And Washtub Prophecy was only part of the problem. Ethan and I had started talking more, since our fashion afternoon, so it was nice to spend time with him on flights, or backstage. But I missed Caleb fiercely. It was like a constant ache in my chest, a bruise that twinged whenever it was touched.

I’d never felt like that before. Not about anyone. And knowing that Caleb was out there, in Stormville, in his comfortable bed, with the smell of leaves, freshly turned soil, and, faintly, cigarette smoke wafting in through the cracked window, the sound of him singing low as he strummed his guitar, and probably a pan of that damned hash on the stove…it made me feel ridiculous.

Because why was I here, in an endless parade of cold beds with anonymously pressed white sheets and designer soaps that all seemed to smell like lemongrass, when I could be there with him? Why, when the returns felt like they diminished every night? When I knew what I wanted, and it was him, and not this.

We’d picked up our middle-of-the-night phone conversations since I’d been on tour, so at least I got to hear his voice after I got back to the blank, sterile hotel rooms.

Tonight, at the sound of his low, raspy, “Hey,” I found myself unexpectedly choked up.

“Hey.”

There was the sound of rustling, like Caleb was resettling himself.

“Where are you?” I asked. I wanted to be able to picture him exactly.

“Mmm, I’m on the porch. It was strangely warm today—hello, global warming.”

“It’s the end times,” I agreed.

“Yup,” Caleb said, sounding singularly unconcerned about it. “The sun was shining, and I brought in the beets and planted garlic.”

“You like beets?”

“Never had ’em, don’t know. They’re a beautiful color, though. That supersaturated red. So red the color bleeds out.”

I loved the way Caleb described things, sometimes stark and sometimes lyrical. I never knew which it would be.

“What’s wrong, babe?” Caleb asked, and his voice did that resonant rumbly thing that I associated with lying in bed in the dark, my head on his chest, hearing his words through the bone and muscle under my ear. I imagined I was lying there with him right now, his rough palm on my back, his warm skin against mine.

“Everything,” I whispered, closing my eyes. Then, when a beat went by in silence, “Wow, that sounded really emo, sorry. No, uh, I’m okay.”

“That little fucker still all over your ass?”

“Nah, he avoids me now that I proved to have the terrible taste not to want to be friends with him. No, I just…”

I let the sentence hang on the edge of a cliff because, as sometimes happened, I wasn’t sure what I meant until I said it, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to say it yet.

“I just miss you a lot,” I said. Which I did know I meant.

“I miss you a lot, too,” Caleb said. “After all, without you here, who am I gonna feed all these beets to?”

I smiled.

“Make Rhys eat them. He’ll eat anything.”

“He likes it, hey, Mikey!”

“Uh, what?”

“Jesus, nothing, you just reminded me how young you are. Okay, changing the subject. So,” he drawled suggestively. “You miss me, huh?”

“Whatever, shut up, you miss me, too.”

“Yeah. I do. I really do.”

“Listen, I have an idea, but I don’t know if you’ll go for it.” I’d been waiting for a good moment, and this seemed as good as any.

“Does it involve you making this a video chat and you being naked? Because I assure you, I’ll go for it.”

I felt my heart rate spike at the memory of a few nights before. On a hotel bed in a city I’d already forgotten, I’d followed Caleb’s orders to strip in front of my tablet screen and jerk myself off while he watched, telling me to slow down, speed up, squeeze harder, lighter—as if it were his own hand working me from thousands of miles away. I swallowed hard.

“Um, no, not exactly. I was thinking maybe…what would you think about flying out next week and meeting me for our show in New Orleans? We have an off day before the show, and I know you love the city—we could walk around, hang out, eat those…doughnut thingies you like.”

“Beignets,” Caleb murmured.

“Yeah. I’ll buy you all the beignets you can eat if you’ll come hang out with me.” I kept my voice light, but held my breath.

“Listen, Theo…”

That was not promising. I hadn’t comprehended, until the moment I realized he was going to say no, how desperately I wanted this to happen. Disappointment cut me to the quick, and I tried to think of anything I could say to cover up how devastated I felt.

“It’s not that I wouldn’t love to do that,” Caleb said, after a while. “I’d love to see you, see you play. And I do love the city. But I, uh…I haven’t been there since…It’s not a sober city, Theo. I’ve got a lot of memories, know a lot of people…”

Oh, hell. Right. Of course Caleb would be thinking along those lines.

“No, I get it,” I said. “I do. It’s okay, I understand. There’s only two weeks left, anyway.”

I heard the sound of a door shutting that meant Caleb had gone back inside. Then I heard him rummaging around somewhere.

“Can I call you back?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah. Sure. Or, you know, you don’t have to.” I checked the clock. “It’s late.”

I could hear Caleb’s snort and picture him rolling his eyes at me. If we’d been together, he’d have elbowed me with this particular expression of his, which I thought of as the shut-up-yes-I-still-like-you look. He shot it at me whenever he thought I was, as he put it, “convincing myself I was letting him off the hook.”

“No, I just need to call Huey real quick. I’ll call you right back, okay?”

“ ’Kay.”

I paced the room, then I flipped through all the channels. Then I checked the time again, saw that only seven minutes had passed, and went to take a shower to kill a little time. When I got out of the shower, I saw that I’d missed Caleb’s call.

“Motherfucker!”

“Hey,” he said when he answered. “Thought you might’ve given up on me and called in the backup to meet you in New Orleans.”

His voice was light, but I knew the anxiety was real. That I’d decide being with him was too much trouble.

“Never,” I said. “I just jumped in the shower. I got antsy,” I admitted.

“Okay, I’m in.”

“In? Like, in in?”

“Uh. Yes? In in.”

“Really?”

He chuckled. “No, I’m fucking with you. Yes, really. Jesus.”

Joy fizzed through me and I felt about fifty pounds lighter. I threw myself onto the bed and, in the process, managed to hang up on Caleb with my chin.

“Wow,” he said, when he answered again.

“Sorry, sorry. My chin did it, I don’t know.”

We made plans and I got on my tablet and made the reservation. Caleb didn’t even complain too much about letting me pay for the ticket. I wasn’t sure what his financial situation was these days, but I had ridiculous gobs of money I couldn’t use in three lifetimes, so it only made sense that I buy the plane ticket.

I hung up, giddy with the thought of getting to see him, hold him, kiss him. And hopeful that maybe, with part one of my plan in motion, things were looking up.

---

“Jesus Christ, you’re heavy,” Caleb said, hoisting me up by the thighs so I wouldn’t fall after I jumped on him at the New Orleans airport. He’d walked out of baggage claim with his sunglasses on and a small duffel bag slung over his shoulder, looking like a wet fucking dream, and I hadn’t been able to stop myself. I’d meant it to be a hug, but at the last minute, I’d kinda launched myself at him.

But then he squeezed me, and kissed me so fucking hard and sweet that everything but him disappeared. I came back to myself as my feet touched the ground.

“Hi,” I said, and he grinned. I could see myself in his sunglasses, could see I was grinning just as big.

I’d booked us a room at the Magnolia, a boutique hotel in the French Quarter, though the rest of the band was staying at one of the big hotels on Canal Street, but I hadn’t even checked in yet, had gone right to the airport to meet Caleb.

The air was balmy and thick, but when we walked through the doors we were in a cool, dark grotto, open to the air but shaded by trees. Lush flowers I didn’t recognize bloomed on bushes that surrounded a small decorative fall that trickled down slate and collected in a pool of flagstone you could sit on the edge of. There were a few café tables set up in the courtyard, and where the streets outside had been loud, in here it was still and quiet.

“This is beautiful,” Caleb said when I came back with the keys. I nodded, and held out my hand, because all I could think about, now that I had the keys, was getting him to the nearest bed. The stairs were narrow and steep and, yeah, I put a little swing into my ascent, knowing Caleb was right behind me.

“Keep sticking that ass in my face and you know I’m gonna do something to it,” Caleb said, his voice so low and rough that I could hardly hear him.

“Yeah?” I threw him a look over my shoulder. “I’m counting on it.”

The second I fumbled the door open, Caleb was on me, mouth hungry and hands seeking.

“God, I fucking want you,” he said, like he almost couldn’t believe it himself.

There was nothing slow or controlled about the way we came together. We went at each other like beasts, sucking, biting, scratching, thrusting, until we came all over each other and collapsed in a sweaty heap on the bed, legs entwined and fingers still clutching.

“Jesus,” I breathed. “I really needed that.”

Caleb nodded and squeezed my hand.

“Nice room,” he said, and I started giggling.

---

We had dinner at a hole-in-the-wall Creole joint that Caleb had plucked, unfailingly, out of the maze of uneven streets we walked up and down. He clearly knew the city well.

“I lived here for a year or so,” he told me as we ate. “Then spent a lot of time here over the years.”

“People loved you here,” I said, and he nodded.

“It’s certainly a music city.” The statement was neutral, a throwaway. But his voice held such wistfulness, such regret, that I reached across the table and squeezed his arm. He gave me the barest hint of a smile, then went back to eating.

“I have this idea,” I said. “I want us to play our song.”

“What, like at one of the clubs?”

“No. At the show tomorrow night.”

This was my plan. Use the city that Caleb had once called home to get him back on people’s radar.

“Your show?”

I nodded.

Caleb barked out a laugh like it was a ridiculous idea.

“This city loves you. You have a huge following here. If we took advantage of it…it would be a way of saying you’re still here. And then if you ever recorded any of those amazing damn songs you’ve written, you could put out a new album. If you wanted to.”

Caleb was looking past me, at the street, where people strolled by, arm in arm, or in tour group clumps, or running to catch up, shouting at each other and laughing. A man lit a pipe and sank down to a worn marble stoop, a woman rode by on a cruiser, a tiny dog standing on all fours in a wooden crate strapped to her handlebars, a boy in an army T-shirt paced slowly on a third-story balcony, smoking a cigarette.

Under my hand, I could feel Caleb’s forearm, corded with tension.

“I don’t know,” he said, still looking outside. “I just don’t know.”

---

The band at Wolf’s Howl had the audience dancing and cheering, stuffing bills into the passed hat. They were doing jazz standards with a kind of rockabilly twist and everything about it was working. The singer was styled like a 1940s chanteuse, with a knee-length red dress, dark lipstick, and a large flower in her perfectly arranged curls, and the rest of the band sported natty suits in varying states of wear and tear, a few with hats. They spun each song out by passing solos among them, and teasing bits of other familiar tunes.

Caleb said this was his favorite “early” club. I took that to mean he had others he liked as the night wore on, because it was already about ten when we got there.

“One-drink minimum,” the guy at the door said, and Caleb’s jaw tightened. I turned to him, but he waved me away and nodded at the guy.

He got a ginger ale from the bar and handed me a whiskey and Coke. He had told me before that it didn’t bother him too much to be around people drinking, as long as he had checks and balances—like Huey, at his place, or me, here. I’d told him, in turn, that I was totally fine not drinking, but I could tell that it just made him self-conscious and annoyed, so I accepted the drink, but I downed it quickly, then popped a mint so Caleb wouldn’t taste it on my tongue when I kissed him.

He was loving the band, drumming on his thighs and tapping his feet, head nodding in rhythm, smiling and clapping at moments he appreciated. When they finished their set, we spilled out onto Frenchmen Street with the rest of the crowd after Caleb paid his compliments to the band, and got a wave of hat tips in return.

“So, you gonna show me your favorite ‘late’ club?” I asked, still bouncing to the rhythm of the last song.

He hesitated, leaning back against the wall, eyes closed, one knee up, his foot on the wall. He looked like an album cover and I fumbled with my phone and took a picture of him.

“Or,” I said, running a hand up his chest, “we could just go back to the room.”

He smiled weakly and caught my hand in his, bringing it to his lips and kissing my palm.

“I wish I weren’t this way,” he said softly. “I wish I could do anything you wanted. Go anywhere you wanted.”

“Don’t. This is perfect. You’re perfect. I’m so happy right now.” I kissed him and he slid his hand around to cup my neck.

Someone whistled and called a rowdy “woohoo” as they walked past. Glass smashed with a tinkle a few doors down. The sounds of jazz and laughter, shouting and the honk of a car horn. The taste of Caleb’s mouth, sweet and dark. Home.

“I know where I’ll take you,” he said against my lips.

“I’ll stay with you the whole time,” I said, unsure if it would be welcome or insulting.

“Good.”

A few blocks later, Caleb pointed to the right and said, “I used to live four blocks that way.”

We walked in silence, the sounds of the city spilling out from balconies and open doors, from street corners and car stereos. It felt like time had stopped somehow, as if we’d been here forever, and also for no time at all. We passed a huge house, its balcony windows flung open to the night, and saw a couple dancing to big-band music, laughing as they twirled.

“Okay, let’s do it,” Caleb said.

“Sorry, what?”

Caleb snorted. “That was all dramatic in my head.”

“Oh, the song? Yes? For real?”

He took my hand and tucked it against his side.

“Yeah, I mean, what’s the worst that could happen. Not like I ain’t been booed off a stage before.” He shrugged, all casual bravado, but I knew there was nothing casual about his decision.

“This is it,” Caleb said a few blocks later. We’d turned right as we got to a highway overpass, and it was dark and less populated. The street was strangely quiet, houses and darkened businesses all along it, but when the door opened, the sounds of the bar spilled out. The man who let us in had a hat pulled down low over his eyes, but when the door shut behind us, a woman whistled.

“Caleb Whitman. We all thought you was dead, boy.”

“I was,” Caleb said. “Hey, Dot.”

Caleb leaned in and hugged the woman, and she kissed him on the cheek. She had luminous dark skin and short natural hair bleached platinum blond. On the tall side, she emphasized her muscular arms and toned stomach with a tight white dress that wrapped around her like bandages.

“Who’s your friend?”

“This is Theo. He’s with me.”

I couldn’t help but smile at how firmly Caleb said it.

“Hi,” I said, reaching to shake her hand. Her grip practically crushed me and I winced. She shot me a little smile.

“Hey, he needs that hand,” Caleb said, dropping his arm around my shoulder and pulling me into his side. Dot relented and Caleb gave me a firm pat on the back, but didn’t leave his arm around me.

Dot was considering Caleb and her gaze was intense enough to flay him bare.

“Music. You out?” she asked.

“I have been. But”—he shot a look at me—“I’m maybe wading back into the Mississippi. You know how it goes.”

“I do,” Dot said. Then she cast a glance at me, quick as a knife blade. “You watch yourself in there, see. She muddy. And she changing course.”

“I’m a big boy, Dot. And I can swim. But thanks.” He kissed her cheek.

“Is this metaphor gonna stretch any thinner?” I asked. “Because the river would like to get a damn drink and listen to some music.”

Caleb snorted, shaking his head, and a smile teased the corners of Dot’s mouth. She inclined her head toward the archway and followed us through.

The club was dim, and what light there was had a bluish cast. It lit up the smoke in the air like crepuscular mountain fog, and made the red-lit stage gleam like a ruby. We ordered at the bar, then stood at a high-top table that a server cleared the moment Dot made eye contact with him.

Onstage, a woman sang and played piano, the music bubbling forth like magma, her face contorted like she’d opened a vein. Her voice was silken, ethereal, the piano smooth and dark. She sang with her head tipped back, never looking at the keys or the crowd. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

“That,” Dot said, pointing with a red-tipped finger, “is Belladonna Prejean. You heard of her?”

Caleb nodded. “I’ve seen her here before. Had to have been four or five years ago. She had a trumpeter then—a white man, small. Different music, but I’d recognize that voice anywhere.”

“Mm-hmm, that’s her. She’s solo now. It’s better.” She tapped her chest over her heart, and I sensed a long story behind her straightforward words.

Belladonna Prejean played for an hour or so more, one song bleeding into the next, sometimes without the audience noticing. Perhaps without her noticing, herself. It was like she cast a spell over the whole club, without ever opening her eyes. When she stopped playing, it was abrupt—as if she’d simply run out of notes. She stood shakily and bobbed a half-bow-half-curtsy to the audience. Then one of the servers walked on with a glass of water, handed it to her, and led her offstage.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said.

“Yup,” murmured Caleb.

“Mm-hmm,” Dot said.

And I could still taste her music on my tongue.