Roman Townsend did what he always did before a show. He knelt down and hoped to God that he didn’t fuck this up. He had a lot of experience with it. The chances that he suddenly played a wrong note, after fifteen years touring, was slim. But it kept him up nights. It was a thought that never left his mind. The closer he was to a show, the worse it was. The closer he was to the end of a tour, the worse it was.
And now, he was close. One more show, and he’d be done. Getting close to the finish line meant that things were going to get easier. It’s just like a race. Sometimes, you see the finish line, and it means that you can coast. You’re there, there’s no problem. You’ve already dealt with everything that could possibly come up.
People who think that way, people who feel that way, pretty reliably find out that there is, indeed, more that can come up. You get lax, even for a minute, and it’s going to end you. But you can’t get too tight, either.
So he did what he’d been doing the past six months whenever he felt himself getting nervous. He pulled out the lute.
It was the stupidest purchase he’d ever made. At least, the stupidest one he’d ever made sober. There was no world in which he needed to play it. Ever. Even as a distraction, there were a thousand other instruments that he could be playing.
Of course, he already knew how to express himself with a piano. The list of instruments he could play, if he wanted to, was as long as his arm. The mandolin, the ukulele—which he could play the way most people played it or finger-style like the natives, the banjo, the bass guitar, standing and electric…
It hadn’t really occurred to him that he didn’t know what else to do until he’d seen a lute with his own eyes and realized that for the first time in a while he wasn’t a hundred percent certain that he could play it without a problem. So he’d bought it, in spite of the price, which was downright astronomical for what he considered a toy.
He plunked down in his chair and played it, and the music that came out was as good as anyone could expect. A year, as it turns out, isn’t all that long. Not on your seventieth stringed instrument. Not when it’s played more or less like a guitar, and you’ve been playing a guitar since you could walk. Before you could read.
He set it down again twenty minutes later, when a man in a black tee shirt who looked like he spent most of his time in the gym came through the door.
“Mr. Townsend?”
“Are we on?”
The man nodded, and Roman followed him. The show, as they say, must go on.
He left his trailer the next morning. He hated being in Detroit. He hated it, because he wanted to be here. Far, far too much. She was just some woman, he told himself. He barely caught her name before she’d dropped to her knees. The conversation afterward was good, sure. But there were a thousand women out there who could have a good conversation.
He stepped into the library and started walking around. He adjusted his dark glasses, which had slipped a little way down his nose. Where would she go? It had been almost a decade since he’d seen her last. Forever. She was a different person now. Probably married. Probably, she didn’t even listen to his music any more.
Mary certainly hadn’t been to any of his concerts since that night. It was hard to be certain, of course. In the moment, there weren’t that many ways to comb through the whole crowd looking for a specific woman. There were thousands of women out there in those crowds, and most of them would answer to whatever the hell he wanted to call them, if they thought it would get them into his good graces.
But he wanted her. So he wandered. He ticked off in his head, the last five tours that he’d been on. All of them blew off at the end with a stop in Detroit. Tommy hated it. Detroit was a nowhere town, by comparison. Why end all the shows there?
Of course, Roman didn’t answer him. Roman played the music, Tommy booked the venues. The manager would be smarter to keep his opinions to himself, or he’d find out precisely how replaceable he really was.
Roman scowled at the very thought. He didn’t ask that much. He kept up this hectic schedule, recorded an album a year while touring most of the rest of the year. He had so much money that he didn’t know what to spend it all on, a mansion that he’d seen exactly twice, and a car he couldn’t drive because it was back at the mansion he never went to.
All he wanted, the only thing he asked for, was to be allowed to go to Detroit to try to run into some girl by random chance, and Tommy was a little bitch about that?
“Whatcha angry about, mister?”
Roman turned. The kid was small, barely past his waist. He looked over, and there was a little children’s section. A slide that went up to his thigh, maybe three and a half feet. Adequate for a kid, at least. It had a siding made out of plywood, or something like plywood, that had been painted to look like a long-neck dinosaur.
“I’m not angry, buddy. Just thinking about stuff.”
“Oh,” said the kid. He smiled. Roman smiled back, in spite of himself. He was angry. But he wasn’t going to lay his problems on a seven year old kid.
“Hey, where’s your parents? You shouldn’t talk to strangers.”
“My mommy’s right over there,” he said. He pointed. There was a circle of chairs, and a woman setting them up. “She said I can talk to people at the library.”
“Could be dangerous, though. If she’s not keeping an eye on you.”
He smiled. “Naw.”
Roman couldn’t begin to explain why, but he liked the kid. And at the same time, he was right. No amount of naw was going to make him less than absolutely certain of that.
“Scuse me, ma’am.”
The woman straightened and turned, and Roman Townsend blinked and had to do a double-take. It was Mary. His Mary.
“Is there a problem?”
Roman was speechless. So he just smiled.