Chapter 5: The Logs

Wynona took the CD out of the player and left the room.

She shut the door behind her very gently, which was worse than slamming it.

"Six weeks," I said.

"Yes."

"Six weeks, Hudson. You watched me walk around that building holding his hand."

"Yes."

"You played my tape for your grandmother. You got her to the showcase."

"Yes."

"But you couldn't walk up to me and say, 'Hey, your boyfriend's selling your song with his name on it'?"

"I told myself it wasn't my business," he said.

"Whose business was it?"

"Yours," he said. "That's what I got wrong."

He didn't look at the floor or the window or anywhere but me.

"I thought if I said it, you'd hate the guy who said it," he said.

"So I found a way to help that didn't cost me anything. That was cowardly."

"Yes," I said. "It was."

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't give me six weeks back."

"No," he said. "But I can give you something else."

That night he let me into Studio B at eleven, when the building was empty and the hallway lights hummed.

The studio was a basement room with egg-crate foam on the walls and a console.

He sat down at the computer, opened a folder, and turned the screen toward me.

Every session since August was listed in rows.

He scrolled to February.

February 11. 1:47 a.m. to 3:12 a.m. Engineer: H. Hartsell. Artist: K. Cowan. Title: Paper Lanterns (work tape). Nine takes.

"Note on take six," he said, and pointed.

ARTIST CUSSED AT CAPO.

I laughed, and then I was crying a little, and I wiped it with my sleeve before he could pretend not to see.

"You wrote that down?"

"I write everything down."

He pressed play.

My own voice came out of the big speakers, twenty-one and exhausted and certain.

The lanterns, the screen door, the penny jar.

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