And she slipped the handcuff key from her pocket and laid it down in front of Wyatt Congdon.
In the silence of the Misty Cat, the little metallic clink echoed as if she were betting her last dime.
He stared down at the key.
Then up at her, thoughtfully.
His eyes were gray. A gold fleck, like a pirate doubloon, floated in the iris of one of them.
“You wrote that song?”
“Yes, sir.”
She saw evidence of a real thaw in the way his face subtly softened and lit.
“Sing another.” He made it sound like a suggestion. His voice had gone gentle, almost abstracted. Something thrummed in it. If he’d been a mere mortal, she might have called it glee.
“Yes, sir.”
She turned around. And she put just a hint more swing in her hips on her way back to the stage. Let them enjoy that view again.
Justin Chen leaned across to Congdon and whispered, “Your flight is... and should I... do you want me to...” He gestured to the handcuff key.
“I’ll flap my own arms and fly there on my own if I have to,” Congdon said peacefully. “And this isn’t the first time I’ve been handcuffed.”
Alarming the young ones in this business never got old.
He leaned back. “Kinda like it, in fact.”
He hadn’t felt this happy possibly ever.
But it felt like that every time he discovered someone magnificent.
Glory dragged her pick down over the strings and obeyed.
She sang another.
“Sing another,” Wyatt Congdon said softly, when she was done.
She did.
“Sing another,” he said after that.
Five times he’d said this.
Like a child entranced by a magician’s trick, he wanted to see her do it again and again.
And finally he stopped. And she remained motionless.
All was silence once more.
“MissGreenleaf...”
Her breathing arrested then. Time was suddenly an echoing chasm.
The next words of out of his mouth could very well be the bridge between her old life and the rest of her life.
“...I think you have something very, very special.”
