Beers offered and accepted, we set up camp around a table near the stage. We had friends pulling up chairs and people stopping by as wefeasted on attention and then burgers. Ned was back on duty but he messed up most of our orders, and my burger was dry. Alex was going to have to talk with him.
Finally, Trey ruffled Rooster’s hair and peeled off home and Alex announced last call. The last of the regs shuffled out. Alex locked the door behind them and went to help the guys close the kitchen.
“All right,” Lourey said. “Spill.”
“A manager,” I said. “A talent manager was here. He’s interested in us.”
“What?” Rooster stood up and then sat back down, the skirt of her dress flaring out like a parachute. “And you waited to tell us untilafterthe show?”
“If she’d told us before, I would have puked,” Shanny said.
“Instead, you rose to the occasion,” I said.
“Well, what does it mean?” Rooster said.
What did it mean? It meanteverything. “It means—”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Lourey said flatly. “If all we’re playing is Patsy Cline hits. Wanda Jackson songs. ‘My Darling Clementine’ and ‘Home on the Range.’ You can’t get a recording deal covering ‘Jolene.’”
“You leave Dolly out of this,” I said.
“We don’t even do covers of newer stuff,” Suzy said. “Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Brittney Spencer…”
“Molly Tuttle,” Shanny said. She was always pushing toward bluegrass. The fiddle.
“Sierra Ferrell,” Rooster said.
“Doll Devine doesn’t give alickabout new,” Lourey interrupted in an exaggerated version of my twang before they were just naming all their favorites. She dropped the accent to continue. “It’s all heartbreak and three cigarettes in an ashtray with you, Patsy or nothing. What aboutcontemporarylife?”
“You done with your dissertation?” I asked. “Classic country translates to contemporary life. Love, heartbreak, loneliness, all it takes is three chords and thetruth—”
Lourey groaned. “When didyoulast encounter the truth?”
Shanny winced. “Harsh.”
Lourey leaned over the table at me. “That manager isn’t looking for a Patsy Cline cover band. I’ve been saying we need to write our own stuff all along. And if we’d done it, we could have been ready.”
“We could get ready,” Suzy said. “But… it would mean more rehearsal time.”
An uncomfortable silence fell upon the group.
“I can’t get any more child care,” Shanny said. “Anyway, I don’t think I know how to write a song.”
“Lourey apparently does,” I said. “So no problem there.”
“You don’t have to be hostile,” Lourey said.
“We’ll just get our Lisa Frank unicorn notebooks out from middle school and mine them for bad poetry, I guess?” I was definitely being a jerk now. They didn’t even know how much of a jerk. A coward.
“I’ve never written poetry,” Shanny said, “that you’ll ever know about.”
“We could try, though,” Rooster said. “Right?”
She was a fine one to talk, attached at the hip to Trey. Conjoinedtwins. We loved him, but he cut into our time with her. I had noticed Rooster and Shanny were starting to back each other up more, protecting their time. We were already blocked in by Shanny’s family demands, by Suzy’s job, a real career none of us fully understood. And even Lourey had been talking about a trip she wanted to take.
For a moment I felt the cracks beneath us threaten. It wouldn’t last forever.
“We could try,” I said without conviction.
