Chapter 41

When Lucy liberated her afternoon, she left everything except her cell phone tucked into its forgotten home in her camera bag in the stroller's nether regions.

Jay thought about her relentlessly.

Perched on the inside of a dressing room wall, he let his head fall back, closing his eyes, drowning out sounds of his manager making plans and giving commands.

His first set started in 90 seconds.

Lucy, with tears in her eyes, speed walked through the madness of the Midway, lost in her thoughts, hearing sirens and hammer blows and watching scary teenage cowboy goths carry giant monkeys over their shoulders like comrades.

Jay braced himself for a freefall.

"60 seconds," his manager directed, smashing a well-worn and highly embellished cowboy hat down upon Jay's bowed head.

Lifting his head, Jay's eyes were almost gray.

He was blue.

"You know he's never come before," his manager said. "I don't know why you'd be so upset now."

He put his arm on Jay's.

"Buck up, cowboy," he said, patting him hard. "You're on."

Jay exited a door, climbed some steps, heard cheering like the muted roar of cherry bombs in his ears, and raised an arm and a flashy smile to greet three hundred screaming fans. His legs carried him to center stage, his heart lagging behind, downtrodden.

He took his seat, and began to play.

First song in the set was a guitar heavy boot scooter, and he took solace in the fact that the outer pep distracted from his deep deep slow sadness.

He played to the crowd, ransoming his soul for a happy twenty-seven minutes.

And then.

Then he broke down.

After the final song, Jay glanced sideways at his manager, the bandmates staring hard at the back of his cowboy head.

"And now," he said into the microphone, "I'd like to play you guys a new song."

The crowd's cheer were bigger than the manager's surprised eyes: a feat, because they bugged almost to Tennessee.

"It's a little different than what I've done before," Jay continued, turning to face the crowd with a more genuine grin than he'd mustered in a while. "I hope you like it."

Jay closed his eyes, held his guitar like a lover, and began to croon, unaccompanied, about a girl on a bus in California.

Lucy, finally free from Midway madness, strolled aimlessly down International Boulevard, carried along by the early chords of a song.

The song was coming from some sort of platform. Oh, she thought, it's the Chevy Main Stage. I must be close to the turkey legs.

She remembered why as a photographer she never shot weddings. It was because she spent the entire time staring at the bride, wondering what made her so much more lovable than she.

And then there was a song in the background of her crazy mind, calling.

She began to listen.

Wait a minute, this was real.

She looked up.

There was Jay, on a stage, with a guitar, singing about a girl he saw on a bus in California.

Singing about how he loved her.

She stopped walking.