Chapter 24: Row One

On the first Saturday of December, the Rusty Spoke put a piano on its little stage.

Dot had found it in a church basement in Gallatin and paid three men with beer to carry it in.

The pool table tilted left as always, and the jukebox stayed dark.

Every chair was taken by seven o'clock, and the rest of the crowd stood along the brick wall.

I stood in the wings, which meant behind the ice machine, with my hands in my armpits.

"You look like you're about to throw up," Dot said.

"I'm fine."

"You mixed a stadium tour, Marlo. You mixed eight thousand people a night."

"I wasn't on a stage."

"You'll be on a bench in front of a piano. Nobody gets hurt on a bench."

She handed me a shot of the bourbon nobody was allowed to touch, and I drank it.

Then I looked out through the gap beside the ice machine.

In the front row, on a folding chair on the aisle, sat August.

He wore the charcoal shirt with no tie, and he held a card in his hand.

The card said M. Quist, in the same type as the one I had pocketed at the signing.

He had printed a new one, and I hadn't known.

He turned his head, saw me looking, and gave me one slow nod.

"Go," Dot said, and shoved me gently into the light.

The room went quiet while I walked across the stage.

I sat on the piano bench and put my hands on the keys.

They felt as steady as they ever had on a fader.

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