Chapter 4: Monday, Nine

"Review by who?" I asked.

"The academic board," the dean said. "It meets after graduation."

"After graduation."

"I'm aware of how that sounds."

He lowered his voice.

"Mr. Rayburn sits on that board, Miss Cowan. He built the recital hall you'd be playing in. He funds your scholarship."

"So he gets to decide who wrote my grandmother's porch."

I took the envelope and left him standing there.

Monday I was on the porch of Hartsell Music at eight fifty-two.

It was an old white house on Music Row with a sagging porch swing and a brass plate by the door.

Wynona opened it herself before I knocked.

"You're early," she said. "I hate that slightly less than late. Come in."

The front room was a writers' room now.

Two couches, a coffee maker the size of a car battery, gold records hung crooked on the wallpaper.

An upright piano stood under the window.

"Don't play the G above middle C," Wynona said. "It's broken. It's been broken since 1971. Three number ones were written around it."

"Why not fix it?"

"Because the songs got better when people had to work around it."

Two people were already on the couches.

A woman in a Titans cap with a coffee cup that said WORLD'S OKAYEST MOTHER.

A heavy man chewing a pencil.

Between them they'd had more number ones than Breckin had ever had haircuts.

"Two hours," Wynona said. "One song. Then you come out and play it for me."

"What's the song about?"

"Ask them."

She shut the door.

The woman in the Titans cap looked at me.

"Saw the video," she said.

"Which one?"

"Both. The crying boy and the dining hall." She sipped her coffee. "Blue moons. That was cold."

"It was true."

"Same thing in this town." She tossed a coaster at me. "Give us a title, honey."

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