“Reallygood, Hutch,” she stressed.“I…well, I was just a kid, and it’s a long story, but I had occasion to be around a lot of musicians.”
Yeah, through her fucked-up, piece-of-shit bio dad, Frank Groove.
“And again, I was a kid,” she kept on.“But when I say a lot, I meana lot, and you just soak that kind of thing in.You’re one of the best I’ve heard.”
That surprised him.
And it felt good.
“You don’t want to do anything with your music?”she asked.
But this didn’t surprise him.
Push harder.
Have ambition.
Hustle for more.
“I play guitar because it relaxes me.I write songs because that’s just who I am.None of them are on paper?—”
“What?”she gasped.
“They’re all in my head.”
“All those songs are just in your head?”
He wasn’t sure if he was feeling uncomfortable or getting pissed.
“Yeah.”
“Allof them?”
“Well…yeah.Bruce Springsteen doesn’t read from sheet music during a concert, Mabel,” he pointed out.“And he has a fuck of a lot larger library than I do.”
“True,” she murmured.
“He writes it down because he has a band.He writes it down because he records.I don’t, and never have played with a band.And I have no interest in recording.It’s mine.It’s part of me.Songs wind their way into my head and stay there.I play them and sing them simply because I like doing it.I don’t want to be rich.And I really don’t want to be famous.So I play for Lug, because he’s a bud and it lures people to his bar.And I play for me.And that’s it.”
A slow grin spread across her face before she said, “That’s ridiculously cool.”
Hutch’s heart stopped.
She sipped then leaned forward to put her beer on a coaster on her coffee table, sat back and said, “I mean, your songs are so beautiful, your first inclination is, ‘everyone has to hear these.’But they actually don’t.They’re yours.They’re your story.They’re obviously personal.”
They were that.
And he hadn’t sung his new one that night, the one about her.
“There are probably countless masterpiece poems that died with their poet,” she went on.“Words we’ll never read.Feelings we’ll never have the opportunity to be voyeur to.And if that’s the artist’s choice, that’s how it should be.”
“Yeah,” he grunted, because he had to push the word out due to the fact he couldn’t process how deeply she justgot it.
“All right,” she stated in a way that was prelude to an announcement, punctuating this by hopping a bit on her ass and turning more fully to face him.“I’m in this.And you’re in this.”
He had no idea what she was talking about.
“And I think we both know where we are in this,” she continued.
