A lamp glowed from her living room window. Muffler raced up to her, mewing his displeasure at her absence.
“Hello, pretty boy.” She picked him up and carried him to the kitchen, loving the warmth of him in her arms, his reverberating purr. “Let’s get you some treats.” She dropped a few catnip tidbits. She ran herself a glass of water and stared out her kitchen window at her garden. Lights were on in all the houses around her. Her blood was still buzzing from the concert, as if she’d just drunk a pot of coffee.
Her phone rang. She picked it up before it had rung twice. “Hey, Nash.”
“Hey, yourself, Adele.”
Darcy laughed. “More like Lady Gaga,” she joked.
“That concert was nice. You were spectacular.”
His compliment took her breath away. “Hardly. And I was so nervous you could probably hear my knees knocking together.”
“You didn’t look nervous. You looked beautiful.”
Darcy carried her water into the living room and curled up on the sofa. “Thank you. What did you think of the chorus?”
“They were fine, I guess. I can’t really judge. Most of the concerts I’ve been to in my life have involved electric guitars and amplifiers and crowds jumping up and down and waving their phones in the air.”
“You’re not going to get much of that on the island. Except maybe for the Boys and Girls Club summer gala.”
“That’s okay. I prefer listening to music alone. Or with you.”
Gosh, Darcy thought, this conversation just gets better and better.
“Did you ever sing? Play an instrument?” she asked.
“Ha. My mother made me take piano lessons when I was a kid. I hated it. Edsel, now, he played the drums. He was a natural drummer. In junior high he put together a band. You never saw such scrawny, zit-faced, jug-eared guys, but they sounded pretty good. They did a concert in May on the high school football field. I was cramming for finals, so I didn’t go. I’ve seen the video. They were awful. Still, I wish like hell I’d gone. Wish I’d shown up for him.”
Darcy asked carefully, not wanting to spook Nash now that he was opening up to her, “Was Edsel scrawny and zit faced?”
She’d said the right thing. Nash laughed.
“Nah, he was cool. He was one of those guys who just was effortlessly cool. Girls all swooned over him. Guys all wanted to be his best friend. He had this attitude like he couldn’t be bothered to take anything seriously. Damn, he used to make my parents angry. They’d bitch him out over something he’d done, and he’d sit there very straight—yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma’am—and you could tell from his eyes he was secretly laughing his ass off. Yeah, he was a handsome kid. Brilliant, too. Annoying as hell. When he lived with me in Boston, he pretty much trashed the place, left dirty laundry everywhere, dirty dishes, cigarettes stubbed out in coffee cups—oh, yeah, and used condoms on the floor near the sofa where he was sleeping. That was an especially charming touch.”
“He wasn’t in a band when he lived with you?”
“No. He’d gotten bored with that. Bored with school, bored with our quaint little town in the Berkshires. That’s why he came to live with me in Boston. I don’t know when he started using. I met some of the girls he brought home and they didn’t look druggie. They were nice girls….” Nash took a deep breath. “God, Darcy, I’m sorry. I wanted to talk about your concert. I didn’t intend to drag you down like this.”
“You didn’t drag me down, Nash. I like hearing about your brother. I like knowing about your life.”
“Well, okay, but it’s private stuff. I don’t know what got me going on Edsel.”
“I won’t mention him to anyone, Nash. Hey, I wanted to ask you, did you notice any one in the chorus who seemed um, a bit off tune?”
“Not off tune, but that woman, what’s her name, Ursula Parsons? She always sang the words about a millisecond before the rest of the chorus, like it was a contest and she was freakin’ determined to win.”
Darcy laughed. “Oh, fabulous, Nash, you’ve pegged it exactly.”
They talked more about the chorus, spinning off in tangents to trade gossip about some of the women or their families. They talked for over an hour. Darcy slid down on the sofa. Muffler jumped up beside her hip and fell asleep. Darcy came down from her concert high and began to feel sleepy. She had to work to keep her eyes open. But she didn’t want this conversation to end. When they finally said goodbye, she found herself smiling, even as she brushed her teeth, even as she curled up in bed.