Lucy's pause, reflected in an entire audience, meandered over to Jay's manager, who'd been on his cell phone again.
With fire eyes cooled by a completely numb tongue, Manager took off his glasses, staring at Jay's profile.
Jay's band stood stalwart, too, open-mouthed and exceedingly confused.
From out of Jay's mouth came a melody not even remotely country. If music genres were politics, this brand new tune was decidedly partisan, and moreover was antithetically non-country and western.
His words dripped, agave nectar flow, sweet acoustic guitar strings plinking almost like a harp.
The crowd ceased everything: breathing, laughing, cheering, screaming, smiling, swooning. They stood like cocknied zombies, half buzzed on fried beer and fully confused at the un-boot-scootable-tune somehow being broadcast to their ears on Texas air space.
Lucy was the only one who eventually cracked a smile. It crept into her ears first, and then her heart. One side of her mouth began to flick itself slowly nearer to her nose, trying to fly.
Near the end of the song, Jay spotted her, a beacon of pink light at the end of a tunnel of dull dirt-colored darkness. Backlit by sun and front light by a beaming half smile, Jay fell even more in love with her. His lovesick, forlorn intonation suddenly flipped upwards to fulfillment.
Smiling through the last phrase and delightfully striking the final notes, Jay left his guitar on stage and bolted, straight forward, across the barrier, flinging his cowboy hat into the crushed and quiet crowd, directly toward Lucy's glowing light.
Suddenly a shadow passed in front of her, a small crowd of intoxicated and rather large Texans. Jay sidestepped to duck around them, eager to hold her in his arms.
But when he emerged from its edge, she was gone.
She was very gone.
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