“You were making fun of me, jerk.”
“I was just playing with you.” His eyes dropped to my mouth. I shook from a chill.
“You’re still cold.” He took off his jacket and draped it over my legs. I watched him, completely mesmerized, as he opened the black case from the compartment between us, pulled out the pen, and stabbed the skin on his stomach with a needle full of insulin. No blood that time. We were back on the road in seconds.
“Chef Mark is making us dinner but the restaurant will be closed. It closes early on Wednesdays for karaoke night.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Not at all. We take our karaoke very seriously at R. J. Lawson.”
“I am the karaoke queen.”
He laughed. “Well, I am known far and wide in these parts as the white Otis Redding.”
“Oh, we are so doing a duet. Which song should we do?”
We were silent for a few moments, and then in unison both of us shouted, “Tramp!”
We practically skipped through the parking lot and into the restaurant, which was already full of people directing their attention to a small stage set up in the corner. Judging by the turnout, karaoke was a very popular activity with the locals. I started feeling nervous about my performance until a very drunk group of women, who looked to be in their fifties, sang a horrible rendition of “Vacation” by the Go-Go’s.
We sat at the kitchen bar where a waitress immediately brought out the plates Chef Mark had prepared for us. I had seafood stew in a light tomato sauce with French bread on the side. It smelled divine. Jamie had some kind of white fish. When he saw it, he smiled. “Oh good, we can share,” he said, boyishly. He grabbed a bottle of chardonnay from the kitchen. It was from a different winery, and I quirked an eyebrow at him. “We like to know what our competition is up to.”
“Really?” I had to shout over the painful sounds coming from the speakers.
“No, we serve a few other wines here.” He laughed. “Some of our neighborhood friends.”
“I see,” I said, smiling. The winery really was becoming a magical and friendly place in my mind.
He walked over and said something to the guy manning the karaoke equipment.
When he came back, he leaned down toward my ear. “It’s so on.” I laughed and dove into my dinner. I drank three full glasses of wine while Jamie sipped his tiny portion.
“Are you trying to get me drunk so you can show me up?”
“Yes, that’s my strategy.”
“But we’re doing a duet. I could make you look really bad and tarnish your precious reputation.”
He smirked. “I’m thinking of it more as a duel than a duet.”
I leaned in toward him and deadpanned, “Bring it.”
A moment later, the karaoke guy announced, “Captain Fantastic and Super Girl, you’re up!”
Jamie grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the stage. “That’s us,” he shouted. I laughed and then my stomach dropped through the floor when I realized I was about to sing to a room full of strangers. Karaoke guy handed Jamie and me our mics, and then we stepped up onto the small rectangular stage. Jamie never looked over at me. He put his head down like he was about to deliver Hamlet’s monologue to a room full of thespians. He clearly took his karaoke seriously. I had to play along, so I quickly choreographed a few steps in my mind.
When the music came on, I got the pleasure of singing the first line. “Tramp!” I coated it with a thick Southern accent and then jetted my arm out, pointing at Jamie as I spoke the word.
Still with his head down, his right shoulder began bouncing to the beat as we exchanged the famous back-and-forth between Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. When it was time to sing, Jamie lifted his head, spun around, and slid across the floor, dropping to his knees in front of me as he delivered the line “I know, I’m a lovererererer.” He held his empty fist out and pounded his chest as he sang before winking at me and then hopping to his feet. He sang up to the ceiling dramatically during the second verse, which garnered him a lot of cheering from the audience, mostly from the women, but it was when he went out into the crowd to sing the last verse that he truly lived up to his reputation. He hovered around the ladies who had sung “Vacation,” and I watched as they fanned themselves and laughed like schoolgirls.
When we were through, he grabbed my hand and held it all the way to the door while yelling back “Thank you!” to the crowd. We both bowed and then he said, “We’ll be back next Wednesday for the encore.” Everyone cheered loudly.
Once outside, he turned to me, “You were awesome.” His eyes were gleaming.
“You’re already promising I’ll be back next week? Pretty confident of you, isn’t it? I doubt I’ll still be here next Wednesday. I’m on a serious budget with the paper.” The idea of going back to reality in Chicago made my stomach hurt.