Chapter 5: Lucky Strike

Item two on the napkin said: Sing in front of people, badly, on purpose.

"You can't be serious," Jonas said.

They stood in the doorway of the Lucky Strike at nine o'clock on Saturday night, in a haze of beer smell and neon.

Onstage, a woman in a sequined jacket murdered a song about heartbreak.

"I'm completely serious. It's on the list."

"You'll be tired."

"Rule four," Cooper said.

"I didn't say it was bad for your heart."

"You were about to say it was bad for my heart."

"I was about to say you can't carry a tune," Jonas said.

"That's the entire point of item two, Brannen."

Rudy had come too, grumbling, in a clean flannel shirt.

He took the booth by the jukebox, ordered a pitcher, and watched Jonas the way he had all week.

Cooper put his name on the sign-up sheet in block capitals.

He sang an old country song that his mother used to hum while she cooked.

He sang it flat, and he forgot the second verse and made up words.

The whole bar sang the chorus back at him anyway.

It felt wonderful.

His voice cracked on the high note, and a man at the bar hollered.

When he looked down from the stage he saw Jonas standing at the foot of it with his arms folded.

There was a look on his face that Cooper hadn't seen there before.

Open, and helpless, and glad.

"Terrible," Jonas said, when he came down.

"Thank you."

"I mean it. That was the worst thing I've ever heard," Jonas said.

"I know."

"Do it again."

Cooper laughed, and Jonas laughed, and his big hand slid into the small of Cooper's back.

That was when Cooper felt it.

A flat, cold look across the room from two men by the pool table.

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