Chapter 10: The Demo

Marlo's POV

Lantern Records has a green door on Seventeenth Avenue.

At night the whole building was dark except for one office on the third floor.

August let me in himself.

He had a cassette deck on his desk and a stack of cardboard boxes against the wall.

He didn't make small talk.

"Sit," he said. "Please."

I sat in the leather chair across from his desk with my coat still on.

"How long have you had this tape?" I asked.

"Since six o'clock."

"What's on it?"

"It's better if I just play it."

He pressed a button.

The hiss came first, and then a guitar, and then a young man's voice cleared its throat.

I knew the voice before I understood the words.

It was Beau at twenty-nine, thinner and a little sharp at the top.

"Okay, Tilly girl," he said. "This is the one I told you about."

I put my hand flat on the arm of the chair.

"I wrote it on your porch, so you're not allowed to laugh," Beau said.

Someone laughed anyway. A girl, bright and breathless. It was my cousin.

"The second verse is for you," Beau said on the tape. "Don't tell anybody. It's yours."

Then he sang.

It was the first verse of "Porch Light," in a lower key, without the bridge. I could have drawn every chord from memory.

He sang the second verse softer, and each word of it was for her.

I listened to all of it.

When it ended, the hiss came back, and I watched the reels turn through the hiss, and August let them.

The office was very quiet except for the reels.

"The cassette is labeled," he said. "Porch Light, for T. The sleeve is dated seven years ago."

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