James wasn’t there. And the phone calls came to an abrupt stop about thirty minutes later.
I didn’t know whether to be sad or relieved that this thing with James ended before I thought it would. Our months together already seemed to be racing away, like the sweet memory of my grandmother. And I felt a certain sense of nostalgia as I chose a black evening gown for that night’s show.
I got lucky. We had a Billie Holiday set scheduled. And the best gift that a torch singer can give her audience is a Billie Holiday set when she actually feels like singing the blues.
. . .
It wasn’t a standing O night, but a few people were in tears by the time I was through.
As I came down the narrow hallway, I saw that the door to my dressing room was open, though I knew I had closed it before I went onstage. I always closed doors. It was a leftover instinct from when I slept on a couch and didn’t have a door I could close. I was more than grateful for them now.
I slowed, just as Nicky fell in beside me with his clipboard folded into the crook of his arm. “How you going to switch out ‘Sunny Side of the Street,’ the one upbeat song in tonight’s set, with ‘Gloomy Sunday’? That just don’t make any goddamn sense. How many times I got to tell you: Sad don’t sell drinks.”
My eyes stayed on my open dressing room door. “Did you let somebody into my dressing room?”
Nicky held up two large fingers. “Two things: I scheduled an extra rehearsal for you and the band tomorrow. Obviously, ya’ll need to go over all them upbeat songs that sell drinks again.”
We were getting closer to the open door. “Fine. But again, is there somebody in my dressing room?”
He scratched that off of his list. “Second thing, your boy showed up about halfway through your set, so I let him into your dressing room.”
I didn’t even bother to get annoyed. Of course Nicky had let James into my dressing room as a punishment for not sticking to the set list. What else would Nicky do?
I could see James through the door now. He was so tall and glorious that he made my dressing room look dimmer than I had thought it was before he entered it. He also made it seem shabbier, even though he was still only wearing jeans and a polo.
I didn’t run this time. That only delayed the confrontation when it came to James, since he was obviously a big fan of hunting me down. But I did keep my eyes lowered as I walked into the dressing room. And though I was going for breezy, I sounded plenty sheepish when I said, “Hi, James.”
He looked over my shoulder at Nicky. “Can we talk alone?”
Nicky shrugged. “Sure, but if you going to yell, take it upstairs. We ain’t running no soap opera here backstage.”
“Are we going to yell?” I asked James. “It’s up to you.”
“Davie—” James’s teeth set, and he stopped himself from finishing that sentence. “Let’s go upstairs.”
. . .
As soon as I closed my apartment door behind us, his eyes ran over me in such an angry, desperate way that I could tell he was trying hard to remember me.
“Veronica told you about me, right?”
His dark brown eyes ran over me again. “Yeah, she told me that you went to Glass High, and that you, her, and Tammy didn’t get along.” He continued to stare hard at me. “I don’t remember you.”
And there it was. The ultimate proof that my singular high school moment meant nothing to him.
“You don’t remember me running away at your party? You weren’t in on it?”
“No, I never would have let them do something like that to anybody if I had known about it. That’s probably why they didn’t tell me.”
I hadn’t thought he knew, but actually hearing him say it filled me with relief.