She didn’t know how anyone got that brave.
Maybe he was making his first foray into attempting a peaceful future that didn’t include any Greenleafs, what with Bethany Walker and all.
Eli deserved peace.
Did he deserve it at the cost ofhers?
She was going to run over her allotted time by about a minute, but she was going to sweetly torture this audience with one last song tonight, one of her own, and she’d tenderized them so thoroughly that she knew it would sink into their bones.
She tuned her low E down to D. And then she thumbed out a soft heartbeat on that string. She kept it going for a bit. Lulling them.
“This one is new,” she said into the mic. “And it’s mine. It’s called ‘Permanently Blue.’”
Remember when you said
Every star overhead
Reminded you of me
Because their light was always shining
Even when we couldn’t see
Now your summer sweetness
Tastes like ashes in my mouth
Every now and then the truth will out
I could stand with my arms out
And never quite reach you
Color my skies
Permanently blue
It was a softly shimmering dirge, interesting and pretty and a little unnerving. The verse was about innocence, then betrayal and loss; the chorus rose in weary, futile yearning. Very nearly a muffled wail.
It was, of course, about Eli.
Writing that song, structuring it, was one way she’d kept sane between the time he’d kissed her and after, when he’d hauled one of the people she—and he—loved best in the world off in handcuffs.
A really effing great song, if she did say so herself.
And while she sang it, the audience gave her the tribute of their stillness—no reflexive cell phone checking, no throat clearing, no fidgeting. They were in it with her. In thrall.
Marvin Wade, who had taken a few too many of the wrong drugs—or the right ones, depending upon how one viewed it—in the seventies drifted out of his chair and began gently twirling around the floor like an unleashed balloon caught in a draft. She didn’t tell him to stop this time. Because Marvin was kind of lost in the forest, going around and around and around and around, and it kind of seemed right.
That familiar rise and fall
The rhythm of each day
Cauterized and frozen
Gently held at bay
Now your summer sweetness
