I knew I was making yet another deal with yet another devil. I didn’t know what her angle was, but for the next ninety days it didn’t really matter.
I could provide well for my son. And that was all that mattered to me.
Chapter Twelve
My mother had a little more trouble than I did, or even that Gay did, that I had decided to return to Southern Nights to perform. It led to one of our rare, knock-down, drag-out fights that upset Cody so much he wailed his displeasure until I took him into my arms and escaped to our bedroom. I calmed him as I sang, one of those original songs I wouldn’t be able to perform for a while.
That was okay. Cody was my favorite audience anyway.
When I finally emerged from the room after he had fallen asleep, Mama was much calmer. She had poured me an even rarer glass of wine as I joined her at the table. “Gaynell wants something. Tell me you know that.”
“I tried to give her everything. She turned it down.”
“Why?” Mama persisted.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“I’ve got a few ideas.” I looked up at her. “Cody,” she said with a pointed glare.
I shook my head. “There’s no way she’s going to get Cody.”
“You don’t know that. She could sue for custody, claiming you can’t provide for your kid, and then where will you be?”
“No judge is going to take Cody from me and just hand him over to the family who abandoned us both when I was pregnant. At best they’ll get visitation, but they’ll have to untie the purse strings for that. I honestly don’t see that happening, otherwise she’d have handed me a check to get rid of me, rather than set up some elaborate ruse. She’s a businesswoman first and foremost, Mama. She’s not going to risk Southern Nights for revenge.”
“You’ve thought these things through, I see.”
My voice was soft as I continued. “And even if they wanted to come back into his life, isn’t that what Cody deserves? No kid should have to grow up without a father.”
That was my cross to bear. I didn’t want that for my son.
She eyed me carefully. “Are you trying to get Tony Paul back into your life, Lacy?”
“No,” I answered definitively. “I don’t give two shits about Tony Paul. But Cody deserves to know that part of his family, Mama.” I thought about the paperwork that was still in my purse. “Maybe that’s all she really wants out of the deal.”
“Oh, Lacy. How can you still be so naïve after all this time?”
“Call me hopelessly optimistic,” I offered with a shrug. She continued to glare at me so finally I said, “It’s the best shot we have at anything better, Mama. We’re out of choices, just like you said.”
She always hated when I used her words against her. She said nothing further about it the rest of the week.
I arrived at Southern Nights that first Thursday in May, ready to start my new career as a solo artist. Gay was waiting for me with a garment bag and a folder full of sheet music. “So this is where it begins?” I asked. “You sprinkle your fairy dust and I become the puppet on your string?”
“Not quite as restrictive as that, I assure you,” she said. “You pick the songs…,”
“Of the songs you already picked,” I interrupted.
“You pick the outfit…,”
“Of the outfits you’ve already pre-selected,” I corrected again.
She took a deep, steadying breath. “I’m willing to meet you halfway, Lacy. Are you willing to do the same?”
We had a brief stare-down before I took both the notebook and the garment bag and headed to the familiar dressing room. The minute I closed the door behind me, all the memories came flooding back. I tried to shrug them away as I dumped my armload onto the sofa. The door opened and shut. I turned to face Jacinda standing against the frame, holding out a bottle of water.
“Mama told me you came back,” she said as she looked me up and down. “I guess I didn’t believe her until now.”
“Hello, Jacinda.”
Her eyebrow arched. “That’s all you have to say?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“You could start with an apology.”
“An apology? For what?”
“Using us to get onto the stage. Using Tony Paul to get to our money. Lying to us from the start, just like Doyle Quinlan.”
I snickered to myself. “That’s the story you were told?”
“I saw it all happen,” she corrected.
I faced her. “Then you weren’t paying attention.”
“So tell me,” she began as she sauntered to the sofa to leaf through the book. “What’s your game now? Still hoping Tony Paul will come home and you’ll move into his old room to raise your child like some happy little family?”
I shook my head. “I know that’s not going to happen.”
Her voice sharpened. “So why are you here?”
I wanted to say a lot of things, none of them good. I wanted to fight for my honor, for my son’s honor, but it was useless. She had chosen her camp, establishing herself firmly as #TeamTonyPaul. “To sing,” I finally answered.
That answer seemed to pain her most of all. “Break a leg,” she sneered in parting, slamming the door behind her.
True to her word, Gaynell gave me the freedom to pick my outfit and my songs. I showed her my set and she simply nodded her approval. We began rehearsals right after I signed another contract binding me to Southern Nights, and Gay, for another year.
It was odd to hear my voice reverberate through the empty nightclub. It felt out of place, as did I. The crew regarded me suspiciously. I suspected that had everything to do with Jacinda. I could see her glaring at me from behind the bar. Despite the happy photos on the website, Jacinda looked about as out of place cleaning glasses behind the bar as I did as I sang the songs of other artists.
But these were the compromises we had to make these days. If we had still been friends, I might have asked her how she felt about that. In the end, I didn’t need to. Her mood told me everything. She was bitterly unhappy, though I couldn’t presume to know why. She had everything in the world anyone could ever want, yet she looked as destitute as I often felt. She didn’t fit into her family, it was painfully obvious.
But I didn’t have any real time to dwell on it or empathize. I had a job to do and songs to learn. That first performance was shaky, despite six hours of rehearsal. I arrived even earlier the next day. Despite how prepared I thought I was, I watched my brand new audience mill around the bar, barely paying me any attention at all as I sang my heart out.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I sang the words but my heart wasn’t in it. After years of singing my own songs, I was over covering songs to placate people who weren’t willing to take a chance on new music. I began to resent them, especially the men who stood close enough to the stage to openly gawk at me as I performed.
It rendered me stiff and uncomfortable in my own skin.
By Sunday, Gay called me up to her office. “Rocky start,” she declared as she handed me my first check. “Maybe next week you’ll be open to a few suggestions?”
“You’re the boss,” I quipped. I left her office before I said anything I might regret.
Though I dreaded what she might make me do, her suggestions were mild. She decided we’d work with my edgier image instead of against it. “Be pissed off if you must,” she said as she watched me perform. “Just feel something.”
I ended up taking her advice almost incidentally. One of the drunks near the stage jeered at me, “Show me your tits!” I kicked over the nightstand, which got the attention of the entire club.
After that they turned away from the bar and inched closer to the stage. I knew I was nothing like they’d seen before. Gay honed this new image by putting me in studded leather and revealing clothing that showcased my “tough” tattoos. I was alternative, but also feminine. It was an image that worked, much to my annoyance. The last thing I wanted was to be par
aded around like some heavy metal paper doll.
But as long as I colored between the lines and didn’t raise a fuss about the limited options I had to wear, Gay let me have a little bit of freedom to control just how much of what I put on display for the crowd.
For the next two weeks I perfected this image until I had a pretty decent crowd come Friday and Saturday nights. It was to the point that several of my “fans” would crowd the side door, waiting for me to exit. They wanted to buy me drinks, which I assumed was some kind of deposit on the piece of ass they thought they could score.
It only pissed me off even more. I poured it all into the performances, since that was my own viable outlet. It was worth it if I could perform my own music one day, and, if it all worked out, I’d have an established fan base to listen to it.
I just had to get through all the rowdy weekends first. How rowdy they got depended largely on the headlining acts. That third week in May, a band from Dallas filled the club with a bunch of drunk good ol’ boys. They raised the decibel in the club a few notches higher than normal.
And, just like so many times before, a couple of the pushier guys in the band tried some of their best moves backstage. When I shrugged them off, they made their little comments about me or my act. I was used to it by then. A lot of the musicians I had encountered considered rock music a boy’s club. They made it clear they thought it was “cute” that I got the tattoos, wore the leather and sang the songs with just as much oomph as they did. In the end, because I didn’t roll with the boys, I was shaded in as a poser, worse than any kind of cock tease they’d run into at closing time.
These were the guys who always had half-naked dancing girls in tow, pulling carefully selected groupies on stage that they’d scoped out during shows. These lucky girls were chosen solely on how much these fuckers thought they could get away with if they got them alone. The challenge wasn’t getting into their pants, it was stretching their consent as far as possible once they did. That meant the younger and drunker the groupie, the better.
It didn’t surprise me that their male fans were every bit as misogynist. They were hollering at me from the moment I got onstage. “Take it off!” “Sing in my microphone, baby!” “I like the way you move, baby girl!”
I grew angrier by the second. It was a relief to go back stage, where I wiggled past the male musicians getting ready to take the stage. The lead singer of the band was easily in his late thirties, though he dressed like a twenty-something douche bag. He wore big, ostentatious jewelry, a muscle shirt that showed off his prized biceps and stylized tattoos. He kept his jeans loose, despite the obnoxious belt buckle cinching them at his waist. He completed the look with a knit cap over his buzz cut and sunglasses in the dead of night.
“Hey baby, you looked really good out there. You should come to Dallas. We could really make something happen for you.”
“I’ll pass,” I snapped as I yanked my arm away and made a beeline for the dressing room.
None of this was new to me, of course. I’d heard all the lines and dodged all the advances for years. But it was a little disconcerting that the number of these guys was growing even larger and less manageable week after week. It was yet another unwanted complication. Somehow I thought the more successful I got, these idiots would finally take me seriously. But week after week I still felt like a slab of meat onstage for their perusal. My tolerance for all of it quickly bottomed out by week three.
Now that I had earned my money, all I wanted was to get back home to my normal life. If someone made a move, I knew I’d end up fired for slugging the motherfucker right in the throat.
Again.
I changed into my street clothes, which thankfully covered every spare inch of flesh. I flipped the hoodie over my head, grabbed my stuff and headed for the side door.
The minute the doors opened, pandemonium ensued. The crowd crushed in on me almost immediately. I was splashed with overfilled mugs of beer as twice as many guys as the week before rushed me. I was instantly claustrophobic as my avenue of escape closed off. The drunks were loud as they knocked into me, their hands grabbing at me wherever they landed. I was just about to throw a punch when a flurry in denim and a white Western shirt tore through the fray.
“Let her go!” the man drawled in an accent that was way more country than city. The drunks didn’t take too kindly to the intrusion. A ruckus quickly ensued, so I used the distraction to slip through the cracks and head out for the door.
I didn’t breathe easy until the doors of the club closed behind me. I darted across the massive parking lot toward my car in the corner. I could still feel those guys grabbing at me like they had any right to do so, like I was some piece of meat that they had bought and paid for by paying a cover charge. They didn’t care how I sounded. They just wanted a collection of parts in all the right proportions that didn’t make their ears bleed as I sang.
I slammed into my car and turned the engine, only to be met with a series of unproductive clicks. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I muttered under my breath. I tried it again. I prayed. I cursed. I took the key out and put it back in. Finally I popped the hood and circled the front of the car to stare down into an engine I had zero idea how to fix. This piece of shit had cost me a considerable chunk of change so far. I had replaced almost all the tires, the transmission and, since starting work at Southern Nights, the battery. And now the fucker still wouldn’t start? With my luck, that meant the alternator was kaput and I was stranded in the middle of a stupid parking lot.
I got back into the car to call my mother, but her phone went immediately to voice mail. I checked the time. It was almost eleven. Cody was already in bed by now, so that meant Mama was in bed by now. She gave up waiting for me when I started working at Southern Nights.
I think she was afraid I’d meet another musician and never make it home, and that was information she just couldn’t bear to know.
I sighed as I put the cell phone back on the seat. I watched people go into and out of the club, some swaying, drunk and loud, as they leaned on each other. Girls were huddled together, giggling loud or, in some cases, puking beside some of the cars. Couples were kissing, their hands all over each other as they rushed to their cars for some private action. It made me think of Tony Paul and his groupies. Bile rose in my throat.
I didn’t even want to think about how many guys were getting blown that night, much less thinking about me when they did it. I shuddered as I glanced around the dark lot, feeling more vulnerable than ever. The thought briefly occurred to me that I could ask Gaynell to hire a car to take me home, but my pride couldn’t stand it. Our truce had been tentative at best. I didn’t want to be any more in her debt than I already was.
With a sigh I pulled myself out of the car and walked back around to the front. “You stupid piece of shit!” I hollered as I kicked it. It felt so good I did it again. “You son of a bitch!” Another kick, a primal scream. “Cocksucker!”
I kicked the new tires. I kicked the grill. I hollered so loud it would surely scare away any drunk who thought they could take advantage of the poor, stranded, vulnerable girl.
“Having trouble?”
I whirled around to the deep voice with the lazy drawl. It was the country boy from the club, sitting, predictably, in the cab of his truck, his cowboy hat dipped low over one of his bright amber eyes. I rolled my eyes. “I’m fine,” I spat, hoping he’d take the hint and leave.
He promptly threw his truck into park and got out. “You may be fine but your car is on its last leg.” He glanced down at my engine. He turned back to me. “Let me give you a ride.”
I scoffed as I looked him over. What a tired fucking line. And I was in no mood. “Yeah, no thanks.”
He glanced back at the engine. “Fine, then how about a jump?”
I was quickly losing my patience with this guy. “How about get lost?” I snapped. “Go play Boy Scout somewhere else.”
His eyes never wavered. “I’m just trying to help.”
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I put my hand on my hip as I glared at him. “I don’t need your help.”
He held up a hand. “Look, I know it’s been a rough night…,”
I was about ready to kick him in his grill. “Do you understand English? Get lost!”
His face immediately hardened. “Fine! Stay here all night. See if I care.” He turned toward the truck, and I turned back to the car. Maybe now that he was leaving I could figure out what to do next.
Before I could collect my thoughts, he walked back to where I stood, advancing way closer than I’d willingly let anyone in a long, long while. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“I’m helping you,” he said as he grabbed me around the waist with those large hands and lifted me up effortlessly and set me aside. “Too bad you’re too damned stubborn to see that.”
“Fuck you!” I spat as he set me on my feet. The nerve of this condescending asshole, manhandling me and insulting me!
He ignored my fit as he bent over the engine and fiddled with assorted doohickeys and thingamabobs. He brushed me aside so he could climb back into my car and try the key to no avail. He got back out and rounded the front of the car again to test this connection or that. He finally walked over to his truck and grabbed his toolbox, then returned to the car. He fiddled and tweaked a minute or two more before he got back into the car. It revved immediately. My mouth dropped open as I turned to face him.
“Connection was loose,” he said as he put away his tools. “Shouldn’t give you any more trouble.”
I watched as he put the toolbox back in the bed of the truck. He said nothing further to me as he climbed back into the cab and shut the door, revving his own engine. He wasn’t trying to pick me up at all. He really had been trying to help.
Maybe he really was a boy scout. It only made me feel like more of a shit.
I inched my way toward his window. “Thank you.”
He searched my eyes. “You’re welcome.”
I was immediately chagrined by his act of kindness. “I’d offer you money,” I started, but I trailed off as I looked into those unusual eyes that were too dark to be green and too light to be brown.
Southern Rocker Chick Page 18
