Chapter 6: Day Off

Jude didn't call Deirdre back.

He turned his phone off and dropped it in the dressing room trash can.

Then he took it out again, because it was a very nice phone.

"Day off tomorrow," he said. "Nashville. Let me take you somewhere."

"Where?"

"Somewhere with no photographers and no label."

The somewhere turned out to be a bowling alley.

It was a real one, old and tacky, on the edge of town, with purple carpet and a neon sign missing half its letters.

The owner had closed it for the afternoon.

He was seventy, he wore a Hollow Pines shirt from two tours ago, and he shook Jude's hand with both of his.

"Take as long as you want," he said. "I'll be in the back, not listening."

Jude handed me a pair of red and blue shoes.

"I've never bowled in my life," I said.

"Neither have I."

"That's a lie."

"It's a small lie. I bowled once in Knoxville when I was twelve." He grinned. "I was terrible."

I was worse.

My first ball went into the gutter so fast it seemed offended.

My second ball went into the other gutter.

Jude fell onto the plastic bench laughing so hard he had to wipe his eyes.

"Stop it," I said.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You looked so serious."

"I'm trying to win."

"There's no score. Nobody's counting."

"I'm counting."

I picked up my third ball, and I stepped up to the line with all my weight, and I let it go.

It rolled slow and straight and knocked down every pin but one.

I turned around with both fists in the air.

Jude was staring at me with his mouth open and his whole heart in his face.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said. "You just did the thing you do."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you take up all the room. In the best way. The whole lane is yours."

I stopped smiling.

"I've never been good at that," I said.

"I know."

He took my hand and led me to the bench, and he sat beside me and pulled a folded paper out of his jacket.

"I wrote this on the bus," he said. "It's not on the record. It isn't done."

"You're going to sing it?"

"If you want."

"I want."

He didn't have a guitar.

He sang it low, with his hands on his knees and his eyes on the lane, in a bowling alley that smelled like old shoes.