Red Hot Blues Read online

  At the end of our first song, we got a standing ovation. We did another. People clapped, cheered. Some actually even danced!

  They roared. Ace’s ear-length hair became wet and matted. He was smiling. The darkness I’d seen in his eyes earlier was gone. It was all joy now. Lightness. He played the crowd, took over the mike and said, “Y’all wanna hear another one?”

  Y’all. He was Southern. Not from Nashville, but Southern.

  Of course they wanted to hear another one, but he’d played them, gotten them excited.

  “Because I only got one song in my repertoire, and now I did two. Y’all sure you wanna hear a third?”

  The girls in the house screamed. And that pissed me off grandly. There was a skinny redhead in the gallery, sexy, everything I’m not, bouncing her tits and holding her drink up, damn near spilling it over herself with her buoyant enthusiasm. “Oh, damn, you’re so hot!” she howled.

  I came down to reality. It was just me here, the fat girl. So what the hell was all that dreaming I was doing before with shirts off and tongues on breasts and—

  Dreaming. That’s all it was.

  Ace kept playing the crowd, the girls in the gallery kept cheering him on. Then he hit a riff, started jamming it, the drums boomed and thumped behind me so hard that I could feel it deep in my chest, as if the drums were beating my heart for me. And I yowled my soul into that microphone.

  Ace and I burned the house down.

  In the end, the house roared, more people walked in. Dollar bills were thrown down from the gallery onto the stage. Open Jam acts never get tips, but we were getting tips.

  Ace started taking his guitar off and people banged on the tables, screaming, “ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE!”

  I knew when it was my cue to leave. I clapped for Ace, because that’s jam etiquette. And I started walking off stage. They wanted him, they wanted a solo from him, and they were right to ask for it. Because here in front of me was the next King of Rock n Roll. And I was glad I got to sing with him.

  His fingers had smoked on the guitar when he’d played it.

  But as I was walking off stage, I felt a hard grip on the softness of my arm, just above my elbow.

  Ace had grabbed me. People whistled. Cold air rushed down from the AC. It’s always too cold in the Blues Bar. I turned around to face Ace. There was anguish in his eyes. A look which said, Don’t go, babe. It’s you and me.

  You know, a life is defined by moments, and those moments are usually very small, almost indiscernible. I believe those moments happen in some higher realm—a mental link between two people, or a singer and a crowd, or a speaker and the crowd—when you hear something, feel something, know something that hasn’t been outwardly expressed or communicated. This was one of those moments: Ace’s head cocked, a pained and hurting look in his eyes—what is that look? what is it?—his hand on my arm, gripping me.

  Don’t go, babe. It’s you and me.

  I nodded, jam etiquette, faced the crowd. They cheered. Crowd etiquette.

  My girl Layna caught this exchange. She was over on the left, in the back, just ahead of the bar, hidden a little in the dark but I could see her smirk because of the neon lights behind her. I could see that she’d seen something here as well.

  We did another song, not as good as the one we’d just done. It’s never as good as the surprise song. The third had been the surprise song, where it all came together. But it was good. The drummer did an awesome set. On the keyboards, Joey Smythe—he was smoking—played that gospel-style blues up and down the keys in a crazy combination.

  People roared and clapped. I accepted. I bowed. I clapped in Ace’s direction—jam etiquette—he clapped in mine. I turned to get off the stage. Some people surrounded me, surrounded him, started congratulating him, me, the drummer, Joey the keyboardist. Then three more people were around me, a girl, that same redhead from earlier, an older man, someone with a drink. The drink spilled on me. More people, shaking. “Well done!”, “You were awesome!” “Thank you, thank you.” “Is it the first time you played together?” A hand, a handshake. “Well done. Awesome. Awesome!”

  And then, when they were all gone, I looked around.

  And Ace was gone.

  -14-

  I wasn’t so much sad as I was disappointed. I sat down with my Honey Jack and swirled it in the melting ice, staying for the last few acts. My mind drifted, because that’s what my mind does, and it drifted to stupid things: His arm—what tattoo was that?—the dimples on his cheeks, his black-black hair, like mine. They drifted to us walking up Gay Street, on the edge of the Cumberland River, looking down at it.

  It drifted to us talking about music, guitars, playing tunes, me singing in a barn, him strumming. I know, pathetic. But that’s what it did. I wasn’t thinking these things on purpose, they just appeared. I couldn’t concentrate on the music. My mind was just going wild, going to all sorts of places. I’ve always been a creative type, and my imagination is hard to put on a leash.

  Layna caught me smiling, and in pure Layna style, she shoved herself next to me on the seat, and said, “Darlin, what you still doin here! He ran outside and you let him go!” Layna’s born and raised in Tennessee. She speaks like a Southern Belle, and looks like a Hooters waitress.

  I slapped her leg. She was wearing high shorts, exposing her sexy self. Bitch. “Stop it!” I said.

  She made her eyes go like saucers and then flared out her nostrils. Then she came close to my ear (because she knows me too well to embarrass me in front of the crowd) and said, “He was totally into you.”

  I giggled once, knee-jerk reaction. I rolled my eyes and looked away from her. These things I can deal with, you know: Thinking about the guy who “was totally into me” and always talking about him as such. This is how I live my life. Dreams. What Ace and I had was now perfect, consummate, and could never be improved upon: It was the perfect meeting, the perfect encounter, and if it had gone further, it would be tainted. If Brett had, say, moved out of state or joined the military and gone on tour for a gazillion years just before he’d told me to go jump in a lake, that would have been an untainted memory. And our time together would have been perfect.

  It was the moment after that ruined the perfection.

  So having my best friend tell me this random dude was totally into me, was cool. I could have it. And I liked it. I’d go to bed thinking about it. And wake up with a smile.

  The perfect encounter.

  We met, we sang, we left. Perfect.

  That is, until I bumped into him outside.

  -15-

  I’d needed some air, so I stepped outside for a while. He was there. Looking cool, looking bad, looking smooth. Looking so fucking gorgeous that I had another very female reaction to it, a physical one, a hormonal one. Uh-huh. You know what I’m talkin about.

  He was leaning against a wall, underneath a New Orleans French Quarter Style apartment with a wrought iron veranda; his metallic red Gibson on the ground, cowboy hat on his head. (I hadn’t seen that hat anywhere near him earlier...) He was looking at the entrance to the blues bar, where I’d just come out of. In other words, he was looking straight at me. I don’t know if it was the sudden brightness—because this street is bright with a huge parking lot on the left and then the lights of all the Karaoke Bars and strip joints on the right—but he looked suddenly larger, taller, more muscular. Overwhelming.

  Either that, or I just felt smaller. And pudgier.

  “Hey,” I said. What else is there to say?

  He had a foot up against the wall, cowboy boots. He was...smirking?...at me. A cigarette dangled from his lips, unlit. He took his hat off, laid it on a plastic garbage can that said “Dolly Carton” on it.

  “I was hoping you’d come out soon,” he said.

  My heart shuddered.

  “Oh?”

  He grinned, evilly, confidently, so goddamn alluringly that my heart thrummed. This guy was good. Oh yeah, he was good. And he knew what he was doing.

>   He would use me. This much I knew. Because boys only use girls like me. Only problem is...it was working.

  I stumbled to a chair on my right. Well, it felt like I stumbled, because my legs were losing strength, and it felt like my heels were going to snap.

  I caught him, very deliberately, looking at my stocky legs, down to those red pumps I was wearing, lingering there, then, slowly, eyeing me up the legs again, lingering you-know-where for a second; looking up, up, up, staying a moment on my breasts, then stopping at my lips. He licked his own, and, finally, endlessly, his glimmering eyes settled on mine.

  He smiled.

  God, I feel like I’ve just been fucked with his eyes.

  And...boy did it feel good.

  I was speechless, shivering a little. It wasn’t cold. It was actually quite hot, early June, no rain for a week. I had sweat forming in a light sheen all over my skin. But I was trembling. My eyes flicked to him, then to the street, then to him again.

  I was a mess. A total mess. His eye-sex had disoriented me. It had both turned me on and scared me. I wanted to know what his game was, and I also didn’t want to know.

  Yeah, I was screwed.

  “You said you sing here often?” he asked. Making conversation.

  His voice, so deep, so confident. It would sound great if he also sang. Or if he talked to me close in my ear while hovering above me...

  “I...uhm...yeah, a few times a week sometimes.” I crossed my hefty leg over the other. That female reaction I told you about earlier was in full rage right now. I was going to need a change of underwear.

  Silence.

  Well, silence between us, because on my right there were people hugging and singing and laughing. There was a dude sitting on a stool outside the only English Pub in Nashville (which also offers Karaoke) telling people “you can smoke inside! And there’s no cover fee!”

  But between me and Ace—nothing.

  I looked back at him. “Where you from?” I ventured, trying to break the silence.

  He took a Zippo from his pocket, lit his cigarette. Looking away, he said, “I’m from a little of everywhere.”

  We were still a street apart. Granted, it’s a small street, but it’s a street nonetheless.

  “You just passing through?”

  He shrugged, looked down at his feet. “Sure.”

  Silence again.

  “You smoke?” he asked, holding the lit cigarette a little away from him, towards me.

  “Not anymore.”

  “You shouldn’t. Your voice is...” He breathed in deeply, widened his eyes... “Wow! Just...wow!” He shook his head, grinned a little.

  I’ve heard that before, and it never gets old, and it never stops making me feel all warm and fuzzy. And I can also tell when it’s genuine. I’m not good at telling when guys are being genuine about my body (I generally assume they’re always lying when it’s a compliment), but about my voice? I can tell.

  Ace was being genuine.

  Ace was truly floored by the way I’d sung. That’s cool. It doesn’t go to my head. Not really.

  “Thank you. Your guitar playing is...something else as well.”

  He looked down at his metallic Gibson, a sexy brand of guitar that emulates all that’s best in a woman: Curves.

  He shrugged. Looked away again. Said nothing.

  Uncomfortable moment.

  “If I came by here next Tuesday,” he said, “would you sing with me again?” He looked straight at me.

  A tsunami came tumbling over me with bricks and debris swimming all around me, but I managed to answer—a pat answer, a quick answer, an answer that didn’t really sink in until much later that night: “Sure.”

  Then silence again. Not even a wind in my ears. Just dead, muffled silence. Even Mr. English Karaoke was quiet for a moment.

  Ace smiled, his deep dimples showing up, his dark brown eyes gleaming brilliantly. Then he picked up his guitar, strapped it on his shoulder, strummed a C chord once. And said, “Cool.”

  I noticed his southern twang more strongly. As if it came in and out. Maybe from years of travel? Or from him trying to hide the accent? South Carolina? But it wasn’t fully southern. Maybe he really was from a little of everywhere.

  He nodded slightly, pushed himself off the wall, and said, “Well, see you in a week, then.”

  And then he walked off.

  Just like that.

  Leaving me hanging.

  Leaving his cowboy hat behind on the plastic garbage can.

  I thought of calling out and reminding him about the hat, but I didn’t. I couldn’t speak. I just watched him go. Watched his swagger, his tight ass under those tight jeans, his broad back, his black hair flitting in the wind.

  I uncrossed my legs, wondered where my stomach had gone because it wasn’t inside my body anymore; shuffled my feet.

  Waited.

  Waited.

  Waited...

  And then I heard it.

  The Harley.

  Loud and hard and strong and powerful.

  Oh my god.

  It came roaring around the corner with a hungry, voracious, loud and angry rumble. I turned to see Ace on it, guitar strapped to his back, riding the chopper down the street.

  Of course he’d drive a Harley.

  Of course he would.

  ~ ACE ~

  -16-

  The storm, the hurricane, the thunder and lightning in my head for a man I hate, a man I can’t think of because it burns my skin and hurts my heart, disappeared when I heard her voice.

  Completely disappeared.

  I need to hear that again. Peace. I need peace. I need peace in my mind. She brought that to me—a moment of it. But a moment is more than I’ve had in over a decade.

  A decade of running.

  A decade of fighting.

  A decade. Of hating.

  Before, as a kid, I ran away in my mind, through my music, in those adventure books I used to read. Now, I run for real, road after road after road. Looking for peace in a head filled with erupting volcanoes.

  And finding none.

  Except tonight.

  Tonight.

  It was there, peace—a moment; a precious, priceless, all-engulfing moment.

  A man could hunt that moment like water in an arid, dying desert.

  A man could hunt that moment like food for a starving body.

  A man could hunt that moment like the seductive woman he desires, after years in jail, in prison, barricaded, alone, with no one. Except himself.

  A man, finding it once, would hunt that moment if every army in the world stood in his way and barred him from it. Forever. Endlessly.

  Peace. A moment.

  I need to see her again.

  -17-

  Before I heard her sing? Well...that was purely hormonal. No gallant reason there. That was simple, pure, unadulterated sex appeal on her part.

  And I, being the typical male that I am, fell into character. And I spoke to her, we shook hands and I introduced myself.

  But after I’d heard her sing...

  Something changed. My plans with her changed. I realized I couldn’t just take her. Because I might want to see her again. And if I took her, she’d hate me.

  Because I always run.

  Always.

  She’s not my usual kind of girl. Was I turned on by her? Absolutely. Turned on in a whole new way.

  She’s a little larger than the girls I’ve been with before. But she’s sexy. Damn sexy. A little too sexy for her own good. Only problem is, she seemed a little under-confident. Getting into her pants would end up being a problem. I’m all for sex when sex is to be had, but I’m not into shattering a girl’s opinion of herself.

  Does she know how hot she is? Does she have a clue how sexy her cleavage is?

  Those eyes. Damn, those eyes pierced holes in me. Bullets through the tin armor of my soul. Light blue, sexy eyes. Contrasted by that black-as-night hair, the way she had it done, just the right make-up.
And those breasts...

  I’ve mentioned those already. I know. I’m mentioning them again.

  And then that dude walked in the bar, a bottle of Dos Perros dangling from his dirty fingers, cowboy hat, his eyes so glazed I was sure they were about to roll back into his head. He stumbled. And I saw him smirk when he saw her. He hung back by the ATM machine, the one by the entrance of the Blues Bar that charges you three bucks to use it, and he just watched her, leered at her, smiled. And it was a dirty smile. It was the kind of smile I wanted to wipe off. Quickly.

  Why was I suddenly so over-protective?

  Because she’s hot. Red hot. And I was jealous. If Ginger had any idea how shapely she is she’d have men dangling from her little fingers at every turn. But it’s never about the way you look, it’s about the way you feel. Something happened to her. I’m sure of that. I only realized this, again, when I saw her up on stage. When we connected—that moment when nothing was said but everything was said. I saw it in her eyes, the way they couldn’t hold my gaze on stage, the way they ran away from me when I talked to her outside.

  I know the crowd, the types of guys that go for a girl who’s insecure and then get her into bed with a few smooth words. And then dump her. I hung with that crowd. And when I got sick of what they were doing, we had it on.

  Sure, I’ve smooth-talked it with the best of ’em. But never to a girl who didn’t know what she was getting into. I’ve smooth talked it with girls who knew damn well it was a one night thing and that’s it. Dudes who push up on babes that have confidence issues just for a one night stand are scum.

  Bobby was scum. Jed was scum. Lewis was scum. They were all scum.

  Cowboy Hat Dude at the ATM machine reminded me of these boys. My “friends” once upon a time.

  So I introduced myself to her, and I snuggled up next to her. Just to make Cowboy Hat Man know I was interested in her, and that he should back off.

  And then her perfume hit me...

  Damn. Why do girls have to do that shit? I don’t know what scent it was, only that it made me want to sit next to her for a lot longer than I’d planned.