Frank scanned the cordoned tables of bands. A couple groups had cowboy hats, and one band wore sharkskin suits. Sonny had topped everyone’s beer, and Frank said, “Thank you, dear, but you’re not working tonight. I’ll pour.”
“It’s fine,” Sonny said. “It’s not a problem.” She slid into the chair at the end of the table and touched Kathleen’s arm. “I’m sorry for that remark earlier,” Sonny said. “I didn’t mean it. I’m so fucking touchy. I don’t want to fight with you or your friends.” Kathleen didn’t move, so Sonny slid closer so no one else could hear her. “Every week I’ve been in town, every week for two years, somebody in the bar will start it. You’ve got more friends than anybody I’ve ever known, that’s for sure. You’re an angel, I guess, and they do not like me, even though they don’t know me. They have said things near me and to me, and I haven’t said anything back. But Kathleen, I just want to say one thing to you. I didn’t do anything to you. I know it must be hard to see me with Frank, but I didn’t wreck your marriage, did I? Everybody says that, but we got together November two years ago, I swear. Not a day earlier. No joke. He told me that he’d been out of the house all summer. Is that wrong?” She had whispered all this urgently, and as she stopped speaking and lifted her chin, tears glossed her eyes.
Kathleen looked past Sonny for a minute: Larry, Mason, Marci, Frank. Larry had unfolded the playlist: six songs they knew. They all had a finger on the sheet as if it were a map. They had to choose two. Kathleen smiled weakly at the younger woman and then stood up and pulled her. “Let’s get a drink,” she said, and the two of them disappeared into the smoky room.
Craig came back to the table and plunked the nine ball into the ashtray. “We’re hitting clean up,” he said. “We’ll know what we’re up against.” He sat down and squeezed Marci’s shoulders. “We’re going to need some support from our fans.” He looked her over. “My, but you look fine,” he said. “Am I right, Mason?”
“You both look good. Marci here,” Mason said, toasting her with his glass of beer, “was class . . .”
“Historian,” she filled in.
“I’ve seen the yearbook,” Larry said. “What did you record?”
Marci gave him a look as the first band, a group called Mountain Standard, rattled into John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High.” It took them a full minute to put it all to the beat, but they did and finished the song going away. After the whooping and applause faded, Craig said, “If that’s what we’re up against, we’re taking a trophy home for Jimmy. These guys are soft.” As if on his cue, the band now tried “Take It Easy,” making it sound as if they were reading the lyrics for the first time, and making the whole a vague exercise. At the end Mountain Standard bowed and bowed until there was no one clapping. They were still waving at their friends when the second band, Wind Chill Factor, six guys in black T-shirts, walked onto the stage.
Wind Chill Factor was all bass, heavy bass, so much so their songs were unidentifiable, a beat and a thrum that simply shook the room, every table and every glass. Larry felt it in his cracked rib and listened through the gridlock vibration and thought he heard “Layla,” but it would have had to be at double time. The six band members stood like mourners at the noisiest funeral of all time, feet planted, raking their instruments, the drum player hunched mostly out of sight. When their second song came in for a landing, the air was immediately filled with white static. Everyone’s ears were ringing. A moment later the applause came as a kind of relief, and it was touched up with laughter. As the artists in Wind Chill Factor filed off the stage, nodding their heads in recognition of their significant contribution to the world of rock ’n’ roll, Mason told his table, “Count your fillings.”
Larry was writing the name of each band on a card in his shirt pocket so he could give the report to Jimmy Brand, as promised. He also had told Wendy he’d give her the news.