One

Such a short way up, such a long way down.

The thought always struck Nathan Warren at some point during his Tuesday chores: while he was lining up the microphones in neat, straight rows, adjusting the dials of the sound system, or sweeping the remains of last night’s fun from the old stage.

For almost fifteen years he had hosted the Tuesday open mikes at Dooley’s, a small pub just outside Cambridge’s Porter Square. Anyone could come down, sign up, and play a couple of songs on a real stage, in front of real microphones. On Wednesdays, Nathan hosted a jam session there, mostly bluegrass, some Celtic. Again, anyone could come down and play along to assorted jigs, reels, waltzes, and the occasional weepy folk ballad.

Dooley’s was a dark-lit, frayed neighborhood bar that was to Nathan the perfect landing place for the long, downward slide of his musical career. Water finds its own level. So did he.

Once––and it never felt as long ago as it really was––he was soaring to stardom so fast it took his breath away. A short way up. And now, here he was, scraping someone’s old gum off the small stage: a career open-miker, as close to a professional amateur as it is possible to be.

On this early August Tuesday, the thought struck him while he inspected the mikes, snapping his fingers in front of them to make sure they were all on. He noticed a broken guitar pick beneath his feet and kneeled to pick it up. A tidy stage is a happy stage. He was, if nothing else, still a pro.

He almost lost his balance as he tried to scoop up the pick and had to push a hand and knee down on the stage. There he froze, half standing, half kneeling, and felt the thought come. Such a short way up, such a long way down, long, slow, and stupid.

He waited for the emotional pain that always followed. He closed his eyes and waited; long ago, he’d learned that it passed more quickly if he tried not to think. It once burned through him, almost paralyzing in its intensity. Now it came only as a dull ache, washing coldly over him. Such a short way up and then this, years and years and years of this.

Nathan Warren was once the boy wonder of the Boston folk scene, the guy everybody said was going to be a star. He had it all: the looks, the voice, the chops, the songs, and the swagger. It was almost as if “future star” was his nickname; he even saw it on posters advertising his concerts.

To everyone in the scene, including Nathan, it seemed like his career was charmed and national success a foregone conclusion. The first time he played New York City, it was at Carnegie Hall. Sure, it was a fluke, a revue of mostly obscure songwriters financed by a naive guy who was trying to become the next great folk impresario. But Nathan was the one singled out by the New York papers. And like everyone else back then, they dubbed him a star in the making.

After a tiny Massachusetts record company released Nathan’s debut album, he was signed to a major label amid much media hoopla. The story of how the label executive sought him out at a neighborhood coffeehouse while visiting a daughter at college became part of Boston music lore. The local papers all wrote about the album before it came out. It was even whispered about in Billboard. This kid is going places.

But his star-making album was never released because of a staff shake-up at the major label. The executive who signed Nathan was fired for reasons that had nothing to do with Nathan or his album. But no one who remained at the label wanted to help somebody else’s discovery become a star. If it became a hit, who could take the credit? And if it was a hit, questions would be asked. What happened to the guy who signed our big new star? Why isn’t he at the label anymore? In short, the album’s potential became a reason to not release it. Now, more than twenty years later, it still sat in the label’s archives, on some dark, silent shelf.

That was what made Nathan the craziest through all the long nights he spent wondering why. It was the idea of his music rotting in a warehouse, never to be heard by anyone, along with the aching and certain knowledge that it was the best of him: the best work he had ever done, could ever do, would ever do. It was as if that body of songs was a person, a loved one that he somehow betrayed and left to die, alone and unwanted. That image, of a dark shelf in a moldering warehouse, gnawed at him deep down inside, until the raw places became reddened, then hardened, and then numb.

The failure of that album sent Nathan into an epic tailspin, years of drinking and depression that he was only now beginning to climb out of. Or had he just made peace with it, deciding that failure and numbness were not the worst fates, as long as he could still call himself a musician?

Now, every week at Dooley’s, he watched others with the same stupidly certain dreams he once had, as they convinced themselves they were one song, one guitar lick, one big break away from it all coming true. He always tried to be kind, helpful, but also to never build false hope. Because he knew, more than any of them, how much harder the fall is when the hope seems real.

It took Nathan less than an hour to get everything set up for the open mike, but he always got to Dooley’s at least four hours early. Back in his drinking days, he said he wanted to get his game face on, by which he meant having a few pops with Jackie, the bartender, and the handful of hard-core regulars who slouched sleepily at the bar.

Nathan quit drinking several years ago but he still liked to be there early, to answer phone calls and personally greet the first open-mikers. The ones who came early were often the most nervous; it sometimes helped to say something encouraging, tell the first-timers how things worked, tell the frightened ones to just have fun.

Nathan told himself that was why he showed up early. But the truth was that the only time he felt even remotely alive these days was when he was at his work, whether that was playing guitar or peeling a wad of yesterday’s gum off the stage.

The Dooley’s gig was the closest thing to steady work Nathan ever had. He also taught guitar, which he enjoyed but took as another sign of his failure––those who can’t do, teach, right?––and he still played sporadically at small coffeehouses in the Boston suburbs. Usually, he was hired by someone who knew him way back when, and seemed less interested in hearing his music than in remembering the good old days. Still, a gig’s a gig.

Nathan stepped down from the Dooley’s stage and walked over to the mixing board, which sat on a small table beside the stage. He looked at the levels, then turned everything off and listened to the quiet. He liked the old pub this time of day, before the after-work crowd came in with their hurried, blowing-off-steam chatter.

To Nathan, there was something wonderfully lived-in about Dooley’s. It was a one-room bar, a long rectangle painted in dark greens and browns, with a worn wooden bar lining most of one wall, small tables in the middle, and a long row of bench seating and tables around the back and side walls. The stage was in the far front corner, jutting out to face both the bar and tables. Across the high brown ceiling exposed construction beams and heating ducts were decked with strings of tiny holiday lights, red and green and white. They’d been hung up there some long-ago December, looked good and never came down. No one could remember when that happened.

There were lots of things like that around Dooley’s, mementos of forgotten moments, the lost history of departed patrons. Behind the bar, there was a clutter of knickknacks attached to stories nobody could remember anymore: a large plaster moose with an antler chipped off, a ship in a bottle, autographed softballs from summer-league teams, a half-deflated football, faded snapshots, postcards wishing the staff could be here.

It’s the stuff gourmands of old saloons call “character,” as in “Don’t take that down, it gives the place character.” Drunk or sober, Nathan was one of those gourmands.

He gazed out the window beside the front door, at the glaring summer sunlight. The open mike was such a waste of time in August, when it seemed like most of Boston was on vacation. Driving to the gig, you would have thought it was Christmas Eve, with none of the jostling, nervous traffic he usually had to navigate. Where does everybody go this time of year? They can’t all be on Cape Cod, for god’s sake; this is a city of four million people.

He climbed back onto the stage for the finishing touch, winding the mike cords carefully around the stands. It made the stage look more professional and kept anxious open-mikers from tripping over them. Turning around to survey his work and deciding all was ready, he stepped down from the stage and walked over to the bar.

Nathan sat on a stool by the bend of the bar, leaned his head heavily on his hand, sighed, and again gazed out the window. It’s like a ghost town. This is supposed to be rush hour. You can’t even stage a decent traffic jam this time of year. What am I doing here? He smiled and shook his head, thinking, good lord, what kind of Bostonian sits around missing the traffic? He sighed again, louder than he intended.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Jackie said as she walked up the bar. “Keep your shirt on.”

“Sorry, Jackie,” Nathan said. “I wasn’t sighing at you. Just a general maintenance sort of sigh.”

She laughed. “Yeah, a lotta that going around these days.”

Jackie was the anchor at Dooley’s. It was as if she came with the place. She was already working there when Murph bought the bar, and that was over thirty years ago. She had long, thick white hair, tied back in a ponytail in defiant disregard of anything approaching modern fashion. It suited her weathered face, with its startlingly bright blue eyes. She usually wore some form of work shirt over a white T-shirt tucked into faded blue jeans with rolled-up cuffs.

No one but Murph seemed to know her last name. Whenever anyone asked, her stock answer was “Just call me Jackie––that was good enough for my first two husbands.” Nathan had been there almost fifteen years and still didn’t know her full name.

He thought she just enjoyed having a secret that the regulars could tease her about. Jackie was very savvy about the culture of saloons and knew that a few ongoing secrets made people feel more like they were part of the place. Insiders.

“Go ahead, ask her what her last name is,” a regular would tell a newcomer. So the newcomer would ask, get the “first two husbands” line, and giggle knowingly. It made both patrons feel more at home, like they knew something special about the place.

To Jackie, bartending was not a service job; it was a trade. She observed the ancient etiquette of the tavern and lamented how few people knew such things today. She always rapped her knuckles on the bar when she picked up a tip and scowled at patrons who hollered for service. A raised glass was all right, as was a raised finger. A simple wave of the hand was her preference. But shouting for her attention, especially after the music began, was either ignored or scolded. “I’m not your friggin’ dog, honey,” she’d say. “Just wait your turn.”

Jackie was the only person outside of TV cop shows who Nathan had ever heard actually use the word friggin’. Swearing was a vital part of her punctuation, but she had long ago reconciled that with her respect for the bar as a public place. Words like friggin’ and Jeez Louise became her profanity placebos. If she needed to actually swear, she would lean over the bar, right into the ear of whomever she was talking to. People were always flattered the first time she did that, another sign they’d become a regular.

Now, on this sleepy August Tuesday, Jackie poured Nathan his usual: a large mug of root beer, no ice. Since he’d given up alcohol, it was his drink of choice. He didn’t miss drinking; lord knows, he’d done enough of it. But it felt awkward to hang around a bar without something dark and sudsy in his hand.

Jackie shoved the mug over to him. He was still sitting, head in hand, staring out the window. “You look as bad as I feel, ace,” she said.

Nathan sat up straight and smiled. “Really?” He said. “Dash of the old soldier’s disease? Touch of the plague?”

“Just the usual.” She smiled sheepishly. “Aunt Jackie had too much medicine last night. Gotta head like a blowfish.”

“Ah. Been to that movie,” Nathan said, sipping his root beer. Another of the many odd little things about Dooley’s. Root beer on tap. Who uses root beer as a mixer?

“What’s got you all mopey?” Jackie asked.

“The usual with me, too. Wondering why the hell we do this. So tell me, oh wise one, why do we do this?”

Jackie tapped her hand on the bar and squinted her eyes, as though hard in thought. “Ooh, ooh, gimme a minute,” she said. “On the tip of my tongue.”

She popped her eyes wide and raised a finger. “Got it. Money?”

Nathan laughed. “Oh yeah, that. I keep forgetting. But seriously, why does Murph keep this open mike going in August? I mean, it’s a ghost town around here. He can’t be making any money.”

“Yeah, but you know Murph. It’s all about the regulars. He likes to keep everything the same.”

“Makes sense, I guess. Even if he loses a little money now and then, people know what to expect when they drop by.”

“It’s more than that with Murph,” Jackie said, topping off Nathan’s root beer. “He’s old school, he’s neighborhood. Got it growing up in Southie. It’s not just for the customers; he likes to see the same faces around here all the time. Even sour old faces like yours. Like a little family. You think he keeps you around for your looks?”

“I don’t know why he keeps me around, Jackie, I really don’t.”

“Aw, don’t start with me with that crap. Not this early. Save the pity for last call, will you? I can handle it better when I got a few pops in me. He likes you, Nathan. And he happens to think you’re a heckuva musician. And so do I. So don’t argue with me; I will peel your friggin’ face right off.”

“Yup, that’s me,” he said. “A natural-born open-miker.”

“Jeez Louise, don’t start with that stuff! I mean it. I got my own troubles. Woke up feeling like the whole Russian army camped in my mouth overnight. Marched around in their stocking feet. Yeww, I think they’re still in there.”

She stuck out her tongue and said, “Hup, hup, hup.” With her tongue out, it sounded more like “huth, huth, huth.”

Nathan laughed, took another long swallow of his root beer, and stood up. “Well, hair of the dog for you, m’dear. I’m going for my afternoon stroll.”

“Take care, darlin,’” she said, picking up his mug and wiping the bar with her towel.

Nathan walked into the late-afternoon sunlight and was immediately hit by a chill wind that belonged more to October than August. It had been like this since the weekend.

Strange summer. A week ago it was so hot you could smell the tar on the streets. Last night it was so cool Nathan pulled his old patchwork comforter out of the closet. He could have simply shut the windows, of course, but the comforter was nice. In August, it felt like an indulgence. A comforter. God, he was getting old, wasn’t he?

He smiled, stuffed his hands into the pockets of his black denim jacket, and looked up at the sky. A single huge cloud filled the horizon above the squat storefront buildings across the street. It was white around the edges, but the rest was an ominous slate gray. Above it, the sky was turning that quiet azure it becomes as day turns to twilight. Too early for twilight, though; that cloud is doing it. Might rain. Maybe not. These late-summer clouds often just tease. All blow, no bite.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a young couple who’d stopped about ten feet away, then turned to stare at him, whispering to each other. Who was that? Was he somebody?

Nathan was used to this; he’d been getting those stares for years. Even before he was, briefly, a somebody, he would see people starting at him in supermarkets and on street corners. Something about the way he looked, and the easily confident way he carried himself, made people think he might be well known or important. Some actor in town for the American Repertory Theater? Maybe he’s in a band, an eccentric software mogul, or some noted author guest-lecturing at Harvard.

Nathan had that kind of look. His hair was mahogany brown, nearly black, lightly speckled with gray. But it was still thick and wavy, worn just long enough to spill over his ears and collar. His eyes were often what drew people first, even from a distance. Like his hair, they were almost black, and despite the tired, sad lines around them, they remained piercingly bright and boyish. They were eyes that seemed to take in everything and to be thinking, always thinking. So when those bright black buttons fell on people, they were at once flattered and a little intimidated. His gaze made people think they were getting his full attention, whether or not they were.

But there was something else in his face, a sense that beneath all the intensity and self-involvement that comes with being an artist, and beneath the long years of cynicism and self-doubt, he genuinely liked people, enjoyed getting to know them and hearing their stories.

He was middle aged now, but his body, like his eyes, remained oddly boyish: slim-waisted, narrow-shouldered, and angular, making him look leaner than he was. In his youth, it was the kind of physique that made older women want to feed him. Now it conspired with those piercing eyes to make him look years younger than he was. Funny about that, because it had been just the opposite when he was in his twenties. Back then, he was always taken for an older and more worldly man, a lucky trait for a kid trying to look like a hard-traveling folksinger. Just good genes, he told himself, the one good thing his crazy parents left him.

If it’s possible for a voice to match someone’s eyes, Nathan’s did. He had always sensed that people simply liked the sound of it, whether he was singing or talking. He could speak softly and command attention when others had to shout. In fact, he’d learned that the softer he spoke, the more people leaned in to hear.

It was not a beautiful or trained-sounding voice, but a warm baritone with a caramel resonance that made everything he said sound kind and credible. It felt like fine old suede and now that it had picked up a little gravel, it was even more honest and intelligent. It was a nice-guy voice, with a thick stillness beneath it and a beguiling halt to the cadence, suggesting the workings of the poet within. People were often flattered to simply hear that voice say their name; it implied a confidentiality that was often unintended. And people were inclined to believe whatever that voice said.

There was another quality, both indefinable and defining, that made people stare at him, whether he was on a stage or standing idly on a sidewalk. Everything Nathan did seemed to have some silent music to it. It wasn’t simply that he was graceful and easy in his movements, it was as if every motion was set to a rhythm that only he could hear. It made him very attractive to watch, though no one ever quite knew why.

He looked down from the teasing cloud, across the street at an old café where people gathered around outdoor tables and conversations often broke out between complete strangers. So rare these days. A lavishly tattooed teen couple in black leather talked intently with a tweedy professorial type, a large black man dressed entirely in denim, and two elegant old men wearing berets. Old men in berets always struck Nathan as the sign of a genuine bohemia. God, he loved Cambridge.

Porter Square was one square north of Harvard Square and had always been something like the country cousin among Cambridge’s several squares, ever since its origins as railhead for the cattle yards that once speckled the area. The square was named for one Zachariah B. Porter, who owned a nineteenth-century hotel there. Some historians said that was how the porterhouse steak got its name, though New York City and a small town called Flowery Branch, Georgia, also had stories claiming they were the birthplace of the porterhouse. Nathan enjoyed little mysteries like that, especially when they had no answers. They were like the old folk songs he loved so much; no one knew who wrote them or why. The mystery was part of the allure.

Boston was a big city, but Nathan might as well have been living in a tiny town like Flowery Branch. His life existed within about a square mile these days, from his home outside Harvard Square to Dooley’s, up a few blocks to the music store where he taught guitar, and back home again. It seemed like the older he got, the smaller his life became. It wasn’t supposed to go that way, was it?

Nathan strolled up Mass. Ave., Cambridge’s main artery, and into Porter Square, enjoying the waning afternoon, thinking about nothing in particular. He’d been alone such a long time, years and years. That didn’t bother him as much as how comfortable with it he’d become. Aloneness was an addictive thing. He was disappointed but not surprised that he’d never had his own family. His career had been such a roller coaster, with steep downslides and few climbs, or even level stretches, in which settling down could be considered. And since the long fall from his short stardom, it was all descent. All those dark, lost years.

But perhaps the seeds were sown before that, in a childhood he seemed to remember entirely in black and white. Watching his parents, there had been little to recommend the idylls of family life. He was still not certain if they had even liked each other, much less been in love. As a child, he saw their life together as a joyless burden to them both.

Perhaps it started there. He’d spent so much time alone as a child that he came to enjoy his own company, his vivid and intellectually adventurous interior life. He never felt lonely when he was alone, only when he was around people he didn’t know. That may have been why he first started drinking, to make himself want to be around the eager strangers the touring life threw at him night after night. As his star rose, that eagerness grew more intense, and so did his drinking. He thought now that failure had made him a drunk; it actually began at the peak of his success.

Music always felt like home to Nathan, almost like a family. He fell in love with folk music before he knew what it was, before he discovered the mystical thread that connected his dad’s old blues albums to his kiddie records of cowboy songs, sea chanteys, and “Ye Merry Olde Ballads of Colonial Days.” He felt real people moving inside the old songs, like veins beneath the skin, and he wanted to know them. He always dug to the roots of whatever music he heard, trying to scrape to the bone, the source, what the Irish call the pure drop.

And music is always heard alone, no matter how many people are around you. Whether sitting in a crowded concert hall or in front of his dad’s record player, listening to some long-dead blues guitarist, music traveled into Nathan’s most private places. And he traveled with it.

Later, as he grew accustomed to his aloneness, he learned to take great pleasure in living by his own lights. He’d set out to live a radical life, an outsider’s life. At least he succeeded at that.

He found himself well past the square, almost halfway to Harvard. He looked at his watch and turned back toward Dooley’s, wondering who would show up. He liked to game-plan the open mike, just like he would a concert. He was, if nothing else, still a pro.

With a few exceptions, the current crop was a pretty motley bunch of squirrels, as Jackie liked to call them. Years ago, Nathan had referred to a particularly bad open mike as “a squirrelly lot,” which Jackie found unaccountably hilarious. From then on, she referred to all open-mikers as squirrels. Inside jokes like that pleased her immensely, whether or not anyone else understood them.

It was always easy for Nathan to distinguish the would-be songwriters from the would-be stars. That never changed. Some came in week after week, working on their craft, trying to write better songs. Others were certain this was a game of attitude, of getting the right look, the right hairdo, hat, pose, or vocal affect.

The leader of the poseurs these days was a strutting peacock called Ryder. His name was actually Seth Ryder, from the affluent western suburb of Wellesley, but “Seth” didn’t have that hard-traveling, folk-hero ring, so he went by his last name. He always held court at a long table near the stage, surrounded by a surly pack of fellow wannabes who flitted around him, sure that they were courtiers to the Next Big Thing in Boston’s long line of Next Big Things.

There were also a few perennial squirrels who had no ambitions at all, but simply enjoyed the craic, as the Irish call the convivial vibe of shared music. To Nathan, there was a humble beauty to the way they played, however badly. It was so free of pretense and ambition.

Then there was Kit Palmer, the only regular who showed any real promise. Nathan thought she had both the physical attractiveness and distinctive sound that it took to have a career. But she also had a severe case of stage fright, so bad that it often made it impossible for her to complete her sets. Nathan’s old instincts told him there was genuine potential there if she could overcome those shattering nerves. But that was a big if.

The first time she sang at Dooley’s was a disaster. She’d come in for a few weeks without a guitar, huddling in the back corner, listening and writing in a journal. Nathan suspected she was summoning the nerve to sign up, so when she finally brought her guitar, he made a point to welcome her and try to put her at ease. Tell her to just have fun. It didn’t work.

Her first song got off to a promising start but soon dissolved into a mess of missed chords and lyrics that trailed off into silence. Regaining her footing for a few measures, she would suddenly puff out a breath instead of the lyric, then seem to forget the melody. Staring helplessly at the audience, playing muted chords and shrugging in defeat, she would wait for the verse to begin again and try to hop back on. For a few lines she’d be okay, then the process would repeat, always beginning with a puffed breath and a missed word, followed by a missed beat and a painful silence.

Her skin was an almost ivory white, even more striking against her black hair and dark brown eyes. So when the stage fright hit, there was no hiding it. Splashes of bright red appeared on her cheeks and forehead, visible to everyone in the audience. She would shrug helplessly and stand there, blushing and huffing those awful breaths, waiting for the verse to come around again. Nathan often saw those moments coming before she did and suffered right along with her. If only he could do something to help.

Nathan wandered back into Dooley’s around six-thirty, a deep quiet filling him after his evening stroll. He paused at the door, letting his eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. Dooley’s was that rare bar that still smelled like a bar, even after Cambridge banned smoking in public places. Nathan guessed that the odor of tobacco was so deep in the wood that even without new smoke, it retained the musty scent, mingled with the musk of hardwood floors, spilled suds, and the slight but unmistakable pungency of what can only be described as regular patrons. Nathan loved it. Character.

He checked with Jackie but there’d been no calls. Another dead night. Murph, the owner, was holding court in his regular spot, a small table in the far back corner. As usual, he had a large checkbook, ledgers, and piles of business papers in front of him. His eyes darted back and forth between the bar and the Red Sox game on a TV mounted on the wall.

Before the music started, Murph would pay bills, look over receipts, watch TV, and chat with customers. As soon as the music began, however, he would turn off the TV. Music time was music time.

Murph was thickset, thought not at all fat, with a physique that suggested he’d once been an athlete, or at least a tough guy. The hair was nearly gone on top of his head, making his ruddy face look even larger than it was, and drawing attention to a fleshy mouth seemed to be smiling even when it wasn’t.

He waved Nathan over with a shout of “Hey, been looking for you.” Nathan smiled and nodded. He liked Murph. As Jackie said, he was old-school. He saw the bar as a business, of course, but even more as a little neighborhoods unto itself. “It stahts with the reg’lahs,” he’d say in his thick South Boston brogue.

For nearly twenty-five years, he’d featured the same weekend act, an old rockabilly singer who had a minor hit decades ago. Over time, the old singer’s cornpone show became a cherished local institution. College students were told they simply had not done Cambridge until they’d seen that geezer twang his big pink guitar.

Keeping the old singer around was good business, but only because Murph stuck with him through some lean times. Murph believed loyalty was good business––how old-school was that?

So when he hired Nathan to start a Tuesday open mike, he didn’t drop the idea when the first blush of popularity waned. Instead, he doubled down, asking Nathan to come up with something for Wednesdays. And he’d been rewarded: almost immediately, the Wednesday jam became popular, which helped to build up the Tuesday audience.

Murph was also a fan of Nathan’s music, though he was never able to convince him of that. He constantly pestered Nathan to sing more, which Nathan took as simple kindness. They’d actually had some hot arguments about it, with Murph insisting he was speaking as a businessman and Nathan ridiculing the idea that having him sing more would make the cash registers ka-ching. Over time, it developed into a fond and manly ritual they both enjoyed. But Murph could never make Nathan play more than two or three songs.

“How ya doin’, pal?” Murph hollered, grinning as Nathan got to the table.

Nathan smiled, still foggy from his quiet walk. He could fall so deeply into himself these days. Or had he always been that way?

“Hey, you know what?” Murph said.

“No, Murph, I have no idea what. I never have any idea what.”

Murph laughed like that was the funniest thing he’d heard all day. “You kill me, pal. Well, I’ll tell you what. I been humming one of your songs all day. That one about being tongue-tied?”

Nathan nodded. “Not mine. It’s an old Chris Smither song. ‘Footloose.’”

“That’s the one. Smither song, huh? Well, like I said, I been humming it all day, so would you sing it tonight?”

“I don’t know, Murph. I haven’t played it for a long time. Not sure I could remember it.”

“Getting old, are you? Having trouble with the old memory?”

“No, I don’t think…I mean, yeah, but––”

“Me, too,” Murph said, nodding his head slowly. “I been having trouble remembering stuff lately. Like right now I can’t remember, do I pay you for this open mike?” He grinned at Nathan, tapping his pen on the checkbook.

“Well now, Murph, you make a persuasive point there,” Nathan said, rubbing his chin. “I think I could probably remember the song, now that you put it that way.”

They laughed and slapped a high-five. Ah, male bonding. Rut, rut, hug, hug.

“Seriously, I’d love to hear it,” Murph said, “if you think you can.”

“How can I say no to the man who writes the checks?”

Murph chuckled and glanced up at the Red Sox game. “And people say you got no head for business.”

They watched the game together until Nathan saw the first open-mikers arrive. He brought them the big chalkboard he always hung over the stage, and let them sign their names to it. It was a kick for them to see their names up there, even if it was just in chalk and they’d written it themselves. In fact, a few years ago, Nathan bought a chalkboard with a frame that looked like a theater marquee, to enhance the effect.

Kit Palmer walked in around seven, shyly smiling at Nathan as he handed her the sign-up board. She seemed nervous, signing her name and commenting on the chilly weather, but scurrying to her usual spot in the back before he could reply. Nathan decided that if she didn’t fall apart tonight, he would have a chat with her, try to make her feel a little more at home. Maybe that would help.

Promptly at eight, Nathan walked to the mikes at center stage. He began, as usual, by chatting a little about his day. To him, folk music was a personal art, and the between-song talk was as important as the songs.

He had a disarming way of teasing himself, usually about being too dense to get the point. For example, he would say he was confused by the philosopher Henry David Thoreau’s most famous words of wisdom: “Simply, simplify.”

“So how come he said it twice?” He’d say, shaking his head uncertainly.

He also liked to mock his aging folk-star status. “I’m actually a very famous folksinger but nobody knows it,” he’d say, as if it made perfect sense. It never got the big laugh at Dooley’s that it did with older crowds in the suburbs, though.

Nathan assumed that was because the younger crowd at Dooley’s didn’t know about his brief flirtation with fame, but he was wrong. It didn’t strike them as funny because they enjoyed the idea of someone being secretly famous. And that’s exactly how most of them saw Nathan Warren.

He was the only musician they knew who’d even gotten close to the starry heights most of them dreamed of reaching. His hard fall from those heights, which they all knew about, only made him more of a mythic figure, like the star-crossed lovers in the sad old ballads he sang.

To many of them, folk music was the anti-pop, a perennial outcast from the commercial music industry, so it stood to reason that it would have anti-stars. For Nathan to have fallen so far was proof to them that he’d never sold out, never offered his music to the highest bidder. He’d never let a big label dress him and coif him and tell him what to sing. Anyone like that was bound to wind up at a battered old joint like Dooley’s, singing for his supper.

So the Dooley’s crowd saw that joke more as a worldly boast than self-mockery. The smiles and nods he read as sympathy were in fact awe, sprinkled with the usual open-miker’s portion of envy.

Nathan closed his set with Murph’s request, the Chris Smither song he’d learned almost 20 years ago. He hadn’t been completely honest with Murph about why he didn’t want to do it. Nathan found it a little painful to sing; it hit too close to home, with its wincing portrait of a life stuck in neutral.

I’ve lost my shoes but I don’t feel like walking.

If you find them and they fit, they’re yours for free.

Nathan accompanied the song with a wistful, circular chord pattern, sliding fluidly to higher notes on the guitar neck when the chorus came around.

Tongue-tied and turned around

Footloose with your feet stuck in the ground.

“Footloose” had been a standard for Nathan during the worst of his depression and drinking, but he’d never seen how closely it mirrored his own sad little life. Back then, he just thought it was a great song and that audiences liked his intricate guitar work.

I know my name, now I know it ain’t no secret.

If you know it, I will claim I’m not to blame.

I’d be mad to seek it.

Seemed to grow some wings and sail away.

He sang almost in a whisper, looking at the neck of his guitar or glancing around the small crowd. A few years ago, when he began to find the song uncomfortable, he did not stop singing it. Instead, he decided he would only do it on request. Like so many things in his life, things that were much more important than which songs he sang at an open mike, he let the world decide for him. He liked to think of that as some kind of mature contentment, but it was really more of a surrender, wasn’t it? He could always find a reason to not do something; that had become his forte.

The sinking sun and rising sun are most amazing

When the difference doesn’t matter much to you.

Just blazing cloud horizons

Going in and out from red to mainly blue.

This confusion ain’t for nothing.

It’s what you get for something

That you could have done but never seem to do.

Wasn’t that the track of his own great retreat from life’s daunting promises to its small, reliable comforts? Despite himself, Nathan winced and looked away from the crowd as he finished the song with a series of light, wet slides down the strings. It almost sounded like the guitar was trying to stop sobbing, sighing to regain its breath before resolving into an elegiac strum of the root chord. Nathan let it ring out, like fading bells in the night air, and the crowd remained silent until all the sound had vanished.

He looked down at the stage, shaking his head slowly back and forth, blessedly aware of only the fading music, the sensual feeling of it slowly leaving his bones as the final notes echoed through the old wood of his guitar.

The applause started quietly, almost timidly, then strengthened in volume. Nathan lifted his head suddenly, as if startled by the sound, and broke into a warm, open-mouthed smile. He nodded his head a few times, thanked the crowd, then waved the applause down and introduced the first open miker.

He did not notice that when the song began, Kit Palmer looked up from the journal she was always writing in and leaned forward in her seat, listening to the song with a hand over her mouth. At the end, she leaned back, exhaled hard, and applauded loudly. Then she turned her head back down into her journal and began to write furiously

The open mike was slow, only a dozen had signed up to play. When the college students were in town, there could be twenty-five or more. And it was pretty bland; only a few stood out from the strained sound of clumsy beginners who all try the same tricks, find the same cool-sounding chords, and make the same mistakes.

Ryder certainly stood out; the question was whether that was a good thing. Lately he seemed to be wrestling with the great and troubling career issue of hats. Last week he’d worn a huge Stetson cowboy hat but did nothing to break it in. Its wide straight brim, along with his large Roman nose, stringy brown hair, and thin frame, made him look curiously birdlike, which was probably not the look he was going for.

This week Ryder was sporting what appeared to be either a wool derby or a stocking cap with a brim. Nathan guessed he saw it as a negotiation between the hat and the more affable cap, but its floppy shape and tiny visor left him looking like a cross between an Andean peasant and a Victorian tea merchant. Again, probably not the look he was after.

The quest for the perfect hat must have taken up Ryder’s time, because he sang the same two maudlin songs he’d done the week before. Still, Ryder’s obedient squirrel pack applauded fiercely as he strutted off the stage, hips swaggering, certain he’d knocked ’em dead.

Ryder was followed by Randall Cahill, a middle-aged MIT professor who liked to be introduced as Ramblin’ Randy. He was one of the most loyal regulars, and Nathan fondly thought of him as the Charlie Brown of the open mike. That was partly because of his round face, but also because of the sublime pleasure he took in singing for people.

At MIT, he was something of a legend, a professor of something so complex that Nathan couldn’t understand it, despite several patient attempts by Randy to explain. All Nathan knew was that it had something to do with germs and computers. And that Dr. Cahill had led MIT research teams that won major science awards.

So Ramblin’ Randy was no fool. He was also no musician. But he took such exuberant joy in performing that he seemed to not comprehend, or at least not care, that he often sounded foolish. In his youth, he’d probably toyed with being a folksinger but realized he had no talent for music. He compensated for that with an almost manic enthusiasm. Nathan liked him a lot.

Randy knew scores of old American folk songs, but for some reason he’d latch on to the same two and do them week after week. Then he would come in with a fresh pair and repeat them for several weeks.

Nathan once asked him why he did that, since he knew so many songs. “Gotta get ’em down,” Randy said, with such an earnest nod that Nathan could only reply, “Of course, of course. Gotta get ’em down.”

For weeks, Randy had been fixated on a boisterous sea chantey and “Remember the Alamo,” which sounded traditional but was actually written in the 1950s by a Texas folksinger named Jane Bowers.

Randy worked hard to make the chestnut seem topical. Every week, after solemnly pushing his old straw cowboy hat back on his head, he reminded people that many Hispanics had died “alongside Crockett and Bowie in that doomed fort in 1836.”

And with that, he was off, his right arm moving in wide arcs, pounding the chords in loud, tick-tock beats. Above that, he hollered:

Heyyyyyy-ooooop, Santy-Annaaaaaa

They’re killing your soldiers below-ow-ow

So the rest of Texaaaaaasssss will know-ow-ow

And remember the Ala-mooooo.”

That last word came out sounding distinctly bovine, “Ala-moo,” which made it difficult for even Nathan to listen with a straight face. The first time Randy sang it, however, people began to moo along, so he now gleefully exaggerated the mooing even more. Randy was happy whenever––and however––the crowd responded to him.

The cockier squirrels, like Ryder, loved to overreact to Randy, their cheers dripping with sarcasm and condescension, made all the louder by the secret fear that they were not, in the end, so different from him. Nathan didn’t know if Randy picked up on the sarcasm. He was a very smart man; maybe he just didn’t care. Why should he?

The highlight of the evening, for Nathan at least, was Kit Palmer’s set. She seemed to be trying to focus her stage fright fears around her breathing, taking long, careful breaths as she introduced songs and during instrumental passages. It helped a little; the red patches made only brief appearances. But she was still in terror of the fright returning. And so, of course, it would.

Nathan wished he could tell her something that would help, but it was like a kid learning to ride a bicycle. You can’t tell them how to balance, you just keep pushing them along and then––voilà!––they’re riding and wondering how they ever had trouble with it before. It’s nothing you can explain, nothing you can teach. All you can do is be there.

With her nerves somewhat under control, Nathan could focus more on her songs. There was real potential there, a flowing sense of melody and a knack for vivid details that invited listeners inside her songs: a lover stealing the covers, a face reflected in a moonlit window.

Her lyrics could sag into obscurity, though. She often spoiled the mood with distractingly artful images, like a lover’s farewell that was like a “cinéma-vérité sonnet.” It made her sound smart––she knew about cinéma-vérité and sonnets––but what did it mean? Screw you in French?

Between songs, if she could manage to talk at all, she was shyly endearing. Singing or talking, she had a way about her that people trusted. You believed what she said because you thought she believed it. She spoke to audiences at eye level, not looking up from a cloying, insecure place or lording down from a feigned star posture.

And she was pretty, very pretty. The folk biz was still show biz, after all, and that mattered. Even better, she had a distinct prettiness, the kind that made her seem at once mysterious and knowable. She had the makings of classically beautiful features: an oval face with almost impossibly white skin, a few light freckles, and very dark brown eyes. Her hair was jet black, cut a bit above shoulder length, with just enough wave to always look a little tousled.

Yet something was just irregular enough to set her apart, and alluringly so. Her mouth was a little wider than you would expect for her narrow face, making her seem both sensual and waifish. Her eyes were not unusually large, but her black lashes were, drawing attention to her dark pupils. She was not tall, but her lithe, angular frame made her seem both taller and more delicate than she was.

Her voice was soft but resonant, a shade deeper than you would expect, rippling with intelligence and friendliness. And she knew how to use that voice. There was not a trace of affect to her vocals; she sang sustained vowels exactly the way she spoke them, rare for a beginner. In everything she did, from hitting beautiful vocal sustains to crumbling like an old cookie from stage fright, she always appeared to be utterly herself. Nathan knew enough about stardom to know how important that was, especially in the cozy, up-close world of folk music. People did not just like Kit Palmer; they wanted to like her.

Nathan’s favorite part of the open mike came after everyone who signed up to play had gotten their chance. Years ago, he’d dubbed it the witching hour, for reasons he could no longer remember, and the name stuck. After the final open-miker left the stage, usually around eleven, Nathan announced that the official open mike was over but the stage would remain open to anyone who wanted to share a song, story, or poem. Then Jackie would ring her tip bell, a small bronze replica of an old ship’s bell. The clang, clang officially launched the witching hour. Jackie never rang the tip bell while musicians were onstage. Music time was music time, though she claimed she simply never had the opportunity on folk nights, since as she put it, “You folkies are the worst tippers I’ve seen since I catered a Republican fund-raiser in Hyannisport.”

People chatted throughout the evening, but tried to be attentive during the official open mike. When the witching hour bell rang, however, all pretense of that was gone. The talking lamp was lit. Heads snapped toward the door whenever it opened, because the witching hour was when local folk stars were most likely to drop by, try out a new song, or just pay their respects to Nathan. He had given most of them early opportunities to perform, and words of encouragement or advice they recalled now as golden moments in their careers.

Of course, Nathan acknowledged none of that; to his mind, he had seen no one rise from his open mike who did not succeed entirely by their own talent and will. That negated any debt, or even gratitude, someone might feel toward him. He often brushed aside such comments so aggressively that people worried they had offended him.

Nathan enjoyed the witching hour because the only thing he loved as much as playing music was talking about it. Not biz talk, career talk; he was quickly bored by that. But he relished conversations about the art of music, the discipline and tradition. It was one of the things that had first drawn him to folk music: the people who played it felt deeply about it, thought hard about it and cared so much.

The witching hour was also when Ferguson usually rolled in. His byline read Ryan Ferguson, but everyone just called him Ferguson; it suited him. He had been the folk critic for one of the local newspapers for nearly two decades and Nathan’s friend even longer.

He rarely missed a Tuesday or Wednesday at Dooley’s but he came for the talk, not the music. After a day spent poring over new CDs, interviewing musicians, and writing about music, the last thing he wanted to hear was a parade of open-mikers stumbling through their songs because they saw him in the audience and wondered if their big break had finally come.

If he came in early––and he did like to keep up on the local talent––he slipped in the back door and sat quietly at Murph’s table. When Jackie rang the witching hour bell, he would saunter to the bar as if he’d just come in, and sit down on the stool Nathan always saved for him.

Ferguson was a small thick man with dark gray hair and a light gray beard he cut with the seasons, but not the way you’d expect. He kept it long in summer and short in winter. “The first time some kid points to me and says, ‘Look, Mommy, it’s Santa,’ I grab the scissors,” he’d say.

He often came in with something he wanted to say, something that had been buzzing in his brain that day. Nathan and Jackie could tell when that was the case; he was antsy, fingers tapping on the bar, eyes darting around the room. At other times, there was a stillness to him that Nathan enjoyed being around. It was the kind of stillness that came from having done hard work, work worth doing, and knowing that you did it well.

Tonight, Ferguson was antsy, and Nathan watched to see how he would steer the conversation toward whatever it was he wanted to say. As Ferguson gulped his first rum, his eyes darted around the room, then fell on Ryder.

“Good lord,” he said, slapping his glass down on the bar. “What is that thing on Ryder’s head? It looks like a fungus.”

Nathan laughed. “I have no idea. He’s been fidgeting with it all night; I don’t think he can get the angle right. Jaunty? Slouched? Casually askew? The toils of the modern-day troubadour.”

“Same goose-fart songs, I suppose.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Ferguson finished his first rum and motioned to Jackie, who was already pouring him a second. He always drank his first two rounds quickly––Mt. Gay Rum and a beer––then nursed his drinks for the rest of the evening. Around the time Nathan quit drinking, Ferguson made his own peace with the physical realities that every pleasure drinker must deal with, or die from. He loved the first convivial buzz of alcohol, and it calmed his mind after a hard day of writing. He decided to allow himself that and nothing more. Since then, Nathan had almost never seen him drunk.

“A few weeks ago,” Nathan said, “I told Ryder he shouldn’t worry about all that image stuff, that it would take care of itself.”

“What did he say?” Ferguson said, lifting his beer bottle.

“Nothing. I think he just tried to figure out if it was a compliment.”

“Jesus. Well, like George Bernard Shaw said, ‘Youth is wasted on the young.’”

Nathan smiled. “He also said the only thing we learn from experience is that we never learn anything from experience.”

Ferguson laughed. It always made Nathan feel smart when he could make Ferguson laugh.

Ferguson heaved a long sigh, a sign that the rum was kicking in. “Perhaps if I spoke to the lad,” he said. Nathan eyed Jackie: here we go. She grinned.

Ferguson waved to Ryder, motioning him to come over, which he nearly tripped over himself doing. An interview, perhaps? Something in depth, my formative years on the mean streets of Wellesley?

“Hi, Ryder,” Ferguson said. “I thought about you and some of the other open mikers today, while I was reviewing a CD by a new Texas songwriter. It got me thinking about things I’ve noticed about you and some other open mikers. We’re just talking here; this isn’t for publication or anything.”

“Okay,” Ryder said. He winked in recognition of Nathan without actually looking at him. This kid’s annoying even when he’s being polite.

Ferguson cleared his throat and spread his hands along the bar. As he began to speak, he closed his eyes, measuring every word. “Well, what I wrote about this guy’s music was that it sometimes felt like he was writing songs about other songs. Kind of a cookie-cutter approach: here’s my wistful highway song; here’s my lost-my-lover song; here’s my got-a-new-lover song. I wondered if the guy had anything he wanted to say or if he was doing what he thought people expected a songwriter to do.”

He smiled at Ryder. “I hear a little of that in your music, too,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great way to learn. I’m not criticizing here.”

Ryder cocked his head, grinning nervously.

Ferguson cleared his throat dramatically and drank a healthy swig of rum. There’s the windup; here’s the pitch.

“Well, this is what that Texas songwriter got me thinking,” he said. “I wasn’t able to get it into the review, but I thought you might find it useful, Ryder. If you’ll indulge me.”

Ryder nodded, swallowing hard.

Ferguson again closed his eyes and spoke in a measured cadence. “As near as I can tell, the difference between art and craft is that art is always trying to tell the truth. Any old chair is not art but a Shaker chair is. Why? Because a Shaker chair tells us something about the people who built it, who they were, what they believed, how they lived their lives.”

Ferguson opened his eyes, smiled at Ryder, and said, “That Texas guy made me wonder if there was anything he really wanted to say about himself. Anything true, anything real. Anything that made him so sad or happy or pissed-off that he wanted to shout it out loud to see if anybody else felt the same way.”

He gently poked Ryder’s chest with his finger. “Doesn’t anything piss you off like that, so much that you want to howl it for the whole world to hear?”

“Like what?” Ryder squeaked. He was in way over his head.

“Like what?” Ferguson bellowed, then reined himself in. Jackie cleared her throat to keep from laughing. Nathan smiled at her.

“Like what?” Ferguson repeated, his voice gentle and reflective. There really was a touch of the actor in him. “That’s a good question, actually. Like what? Well, look around you. What’s wrong with things today? It seems to me that talented young artists like you gather at places like this, singing for no money because you want something more than you can get from pop music. Something that feels real, that’s about you, not what some Madison Avenue marketing company thinks you are. Right?”

Ryder nodded excitedly. He thinks I’m talented?

Ferguson continued. “You want something real, but all you get from pop culture these days––from music, movies, TV, whatever––is cynicism, aloofness, the cultivated snicker. It’s as if seeing through the shit means you’re not part of the shit. But you are. Unless you point your finger at it and say, ‘Look, it’s shit,’ then you’re just swimming in it with everybody else.”

Ferguson took a long sip of his beer. Ryder stared at him but said nothing.

“But it’s not life that’s wrong,” Ferguson said quietly, staring into his beer. “What’s wrong is what we’re being told life is. As if nothing that’s not for sale is worth our attention. And that’s just not true.”

He patted Ryder on the shoulder and smiled. “Anyway, what I wrote about that Texas songwriter was that he should find his fine young rage, howl at the moon a little, and take some chances. And so should you, Ryder. Find your rage and aim it at the people who think they’ve got you figured out. The people who want you to believe that life is just a big goddamn shopping mall where you go to work during the day, making other people rich, then return at night to spend what you’ve earned, making the same people even richer. Doesn’t that piss you off?”

Ryder nodded. “Yeah, yeah,” he said, almost shouting.

“Good. A little food for thought, that’s all, some things I wanted to get off my chest. You’re a good kid, Ryder, just keep writing. I guess all I’m saying is, don’t be afraid to dig a little deeper. You might like what you find down there.”

Ryder nodded, shook Ferguson’s hand, and sauntered back to his adoring squirrels.

Nathan smiled. “I do enjoy your sermons, Brother Ferguson,” he said.

“Well, we must do what we can to keep the little ones amused. Think I was too hard on him?”

“Maybe, but he’ll get over it. There are depths to that boy’s vanity that he has not begun to plumb. Look at him over there. He’s probably telling his pals you think he’s a talented young artist.”

“You think that’s all he heard? Really?”

“I don’t know, man. I never know with him.”

Twirling his beer bottle in his hand, Ferguson said, “Getting old is frustrating, but not for the reasons you think it will be. You get these opportunities to whisper a warning to your vanished youth as it swishes past: beware of vanity, it lies; beware of ambition, it’s never enough. But youth struts by, oblivious, arrogant, and perfect, straight into the mine fields.”

Nathan took a thoughtful sip of his root beer. “You suppose people warned us, way back when?” he said. “And we were that stupid?”

Ferguson glared at him. “Were we that stupid?” he barked. “Is that the question?”

“Ah. Point taken. Sorry I asked.”

“Were we that stupid,” Ferguson repeated, chuckling and shaking his head. He waved his empty beer bottle at Jackie, and she reached into the cooler behind the bar.

Ferguson asked if any of the open-mikers had impressed Nathan. He motioned toward Kit Palmer, alone on the bench against the far wall, her journal open in front of her, peering at her iPhone.

“She’s certainly pretty enough,” Ferguson said. “She’s the one with the stage fright?”

Nathan nodded. “Yeah. She did okay tonight. I’m pretty sure she’ll get over it; the trick is convincing her.”

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

“Exactly. That’s exactly it. Actually, I was planning to go over and talk with her tonight, see if I can calm her down a little.” They looked at her, sitting alone, head down, in her own world.

“I really think she’s got some potential,” Nathan said, “if she can get past those nerves.”

Ferguson spread his hands on the bar and straightened his back. “So she rates a royal visit, eh?” he said, grinning. “Very impressive.”

“Oh, drink your drink,” Nathan said, getting off his bar stool.

Ferguson was referring to the way some open-mikers believed there was a pecking order to how Nathan treated them, and that a visit from him moved them up a step on some imaginary career ladder. Such nonsense. He obviously had no ability to advance anyone’s career or he’d advance his own, right?

Still, if they wanted to believe it, he’d play along; and Kit Palmer could use some royal treatment. Ryder and his crew had been particularly patronizing to her tonight. Ryder actually patted her on the back as she left the stage, saying, “You’ll get ’em next time, honey,” in a voice dripping with superiority. Nathan was not going to sit with her in order to worry Ryder, but the fact that it would certainly pleased him.

He walked past Randy, who was sitting with a few older squirrels at a large table in the middle of the room. “I love the way you play that Smither song,” he told Nathan. “I tried to figure out those little guitar patterns once, but they’re trickier than they look.”

Nathan was always a bit startled when Randy wasn’t doing his Ramblin’ Randy schtick. His voice was so erudite and, well, professorial. He must fit right in at MIT.

“Come in early next week and I’ll show you,” Nathan said. “It’s pretty simple once you know how.”

“Like most things in life, eh?” Randy said.

Nathan smiled and walked back to Kit Palmer. She had her journal open but was tapping something on her cell phone.

“Hi,” he said. “Mind if I sit down?” She put down the phone and slid over on the bench, but not far, so he had to sit closer to her than he would have.

He glanced at her open journal. She must have listened hard to “Footloose,” because she’d written, “Footloose with your feet stuck on the ground,” with the alliterative F’s underlined. She’d also written the line, “If you find it just amuse it. Every time I try to use it,” circling the inner-rhyme of “amuse” and “use.” In big letters, she’d written “blazing cloud horizon going in and out from red to mainly blue,” with four exclamation points beside it. Nathan smiled. She’s right, that’s a killer line.

She must have been eavesdropping on Ferguson’s talk with Ryder, too, because she’d also written “diff. art + craft: telling the truth,” and “find your fine young rage.” At least someone got the point.

He glanced at the facing page, where she’d critiqued her set. In big letters, she wrote “TOO MUCH TALK.” He pointed to it as she closed the journal. “Sorry to poke my nose in there,” he said. “But I don’t think you talked too much.”

“You don’t?”

“Any talk can seem like too much at an open mike, looking out at all those people who want you to finish so they can get their turn. But it’s important to work on what you say between songs. In a folk club, people want to think they’re getting to know you, and I get that from what you say between songs. It feels real.”

He cleared his throat and shook his head. Lecturing again. Harrumph. God, he was as bad as Ferguson. Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “So if you ask me––not that you did but if you did––stick with it. It works for you.”

“Thanks,” she said, seeming both pleased and nervous. She really was pretty. Nathan asked how she got into folk music.

She told him she’d grown up in Connecticut, with very liberal parents who used to play a lot of old folk records. She’d liked the music but not how much they played it and how young they always acted when they did. She said she used to tease them by calling it fogey music, as in, “Aw, Mom, don’t play those fogey songs again.”

She looked suddenly at Nathan, her eyes startled and wide. “No offense,” she said with a nervous puff of breath. He’d noticed that before when she talked between songs; it seemed to be some kind of nervous tic, a milder version of those heavy breaths that announced her stage fright. It was as if the puffs popped out involuntarily, almost like silent hiccups.

“No offense taken,” Nathan said, smiling at her.

“I mean, I don’t think that way about your music at all.”

“None taken.”

“I think you’re a great singer. And songwriter.”

“None taken.”

She puffed another little breath and stared at the table. “I’m always telling people I wish you’d sing more,” she muttered.

“None taken, Kit. So how did you get into folk music? Playing it, I mean.”

“Well, you’re going to think this is, like, really stupid,” she said, “but my mom wanted me to take classical violin and I hated it. All the emphasis on technique and virtuosity.” She said that last word like it was a skin rash.

“So my mom said, ‘Why don’t you try fiddling? It’s more social, and you can hold your bow any way you want.’”

“Cool,” he said.

“What?” Kit said sharply, as if what he’d said was a non sequitur.

“I think that’s cool,” he said, laughing a little. “I mean, good for your mom. It’s important for kids to have fun with music. So what did you play, Irish, bluegrass?”

“Scottish mostly. I did a few contests, you know, when I was eight or nine.” She bobbed her head on each syllable of the word contests, to be sure he saw how dumb she thought it was. “I hated the competition but I liked the social part, getting together to play tunes. And I loved those melodies. But I gave it up when I got older. Not hip enough for high school, I guess. I was pretty stupid back then.”

She said she’d gone to college in Boston, considering a career in theater or writing, then got interested in poetry. She tapped her journal.

“That’s when I started carrying around one of these,” she said. “But I thought, like, who reads poetry? Just a bunch of other poets. It all seems kind of ingrown, you know? Like classical music.”

“I know what you mean,” Nathan said. “Pete Seeger said we’ve become a nation of experts, poets writing for poets, novelists writing for novelists, songwriters writing for songwriters. We go to the food expert for dinner, the car expert to fix our cars, and the wood expert to cut our wood for us. We don’t do things for ourselves like we used to and we don’t do things together. We just take turns being experts for each other.”

She thought about that a minute. Clearing her throat, she said, “Well, any-way, after I graduated, I tried all kinds of things. I even thought about acting, but I figured it might be a drawback that I can’t stand on a stage for five minutes without making people want to call the paramedics.” She laughed a little.

She straightened her back and slapped her hands on the table. “Then, at twenty-five, I had what I call my ‘precocious midlife crisis.’ I decided I had to stop being such a dabbler, pick something and just go for it. I thought maybe I didn’t stick with those other things because I wanted to do something with music. I got a guitar in college, wrote some songs, so I started checking out the open mikes. I thought, well, this way I can do my poetry, use my theater stuff a little, and be a musician. All in one neat little package.”

She looked up at him, as if to see if she’d answered correctly, then shrugged and spread her hands. “So, here I am.”

“Hmm,” Nathan said, nodding and smiling. “That’s not far off from how I decided to be a folksinger. Plus, I love those old songs, the traditional ones.”

“I can tell when you sing them,” she said softly, with a smile he’d never seen before, warm, tender, almost maternal. He thought about making a crack about fogey songs, but didn’t. He didn’t want to do anything to make her uncomfortable. He was enjoying this.

“So you’re a fiddler,” he said. “How come you never bring your fiddle down here?”

“I don’t know. I still have it, play a little for myself once in a while. I guess I didn’t think it had anything to do with this music.” She waved a hand around the room. “I mean, all you see is guitars.”

“Yeah, but it’s all folk music, just different flavors. You should come down here on Wednesday and join the jam. Very different scene, very social. You wouldn’t even have to get on stage; people sit at the tables and play along. There’s no pressure and lots of fiddles.”

He gave her a surprised look, as if he’d just thought of something. “Actually, that’d be a great thing for you to do,” he said. “Get back to the fun of social music, so you’re not always thinking about the spotlight and worrying about getting nervous. You were better tonight, by the way.”

“Thanks,” she said. “But I’m still thinking about it all the time, nervous I’ll get nervous.” She shook her head, staring down at the table. “It’s so frustrating, Nathan. But like you said, I’ll probably just get over it. Sometime.” She puffed another breath, but hotter, deliberate. She was mad at herself.

They were quiet for a moment. He realized he had enjoyed hearing her say his name, and that he liked her. She was very smart, but in a humble, personal way, watching the world around her, processing what she saw. There was a lot going on with her. And something else, he thought. A good person, just a good egg.

“But the jam is bluegrass, isn’t it?” She said suddenly. “I never played that.”

“Well, it’s called a folk jam, but it’s mostly bluegrass. Same basic tunes, though: jigs, reels, hornpipes, waltzes. Most of those old Southern tunes started out in Ireland or Scotland. A lot of Celtic players come down, actually. I think you’ll pick it up pretty quickly. Different groove, but the notes will be friendly.”

“Friendly notes. I like that.”

“So we’ll see you tomorrow?”

“You bet. Dust off the old fiddle.”

She nodded her head slowly. “I really do like your music,” she said quietly, smiling that warm smile again.

“See you tomorrow then,” he said. She waved her fingers as he walked away.

A little after closing time, Nathan stood on the stage, taking the microphones off their stands but leaving the cords carefully hanging on the mike holders. Tuesdays were nice; he didn’t have to take down everything since he used the same basic setup for the jam. He had to put up more mikes, though; the stage would be crammed with jammers.

He enjoyed the bar after hours, the intent quiet. Jackie was restocking the shelves and making notes for the day bartender. Murph was in the back, counting the cash and getting his nightly deposit ready. Like the afternoon, this was a time for the workers, and Nathan liked to think of himself that way.

He thought about his set and remembered something had been wrong with the guitar on the chorus of “Footloose.” One of those slides up the neck had knocked it out of time. He sat cross-legged on the stage, holding the guitar in his lap, playing the chorus and mouthing the words silently.

That’s it, that transitional chord. He slid it too fast. He played it again. But he liked it that way; the wetness gave the whole chorus a nice motion. Maybe if he lengthened the pause before the slide. He tried that and it worked. Like the tumblers of a lock falling into place, the chorus clicked back into time. Ah. Nice feeling.

He played it a few more times, then carefully put the guitar into its case. He remained cross-legged on the stage, resting his forearms on his knees, remembering Kit’s set. Some real promise there, beneath the stage fright. He wondered if she had what it took for a real career. She was obviously ambitious; she wouldn’t be putting herself through all this if she wasn’t. But talent and ambition aren’t the whole package; they’re just the starting blocks. He’d learned that much from Joyce.

Nathan was married once, for barely a year, but it was a marriage he was never quite able to escape. Her name when they met was Joyce Houghton, but she was still using her married name when she moved to Los Angeles, right after their divorce, signed a major label deal, and became the big star everyone in Boston had thought Nathan would be.

Ever since, her “brief tumultuous marriage” to “a minor cult star in Boston” was a standard part of Joyce Warren’s biography, popping up whenever she was profiled in a newspaper or celebrity magazine. The “minor cult star” didn’t bother Nathan––it was true, wasn’t it?––as much as the “brief tumultuous marriage.” Brief, yes, but tumultuous? Hell, they barely spoke after the first three months. He had no hard feelings about how it ended and neither did she, as far as he could tell. She’d even suggested he come to L.A. after her second album came out, because she thought she could get him a record deal. But he was still waiting for his big record to come out.

He thought the main reason they got married was that everybody expected it. They were the two bright stars on the Boston scene––it was kismet. He’d been passionately attracted to her, lord knows, but he didn’t think he’d ever loved her. He wasn’t even sure he liked her, though he enjoyed her quick intelligence and almost cheerful cynicism about the music business.

Which was not to say that Joyce Warren was not the genuine cloth. She was a terrific songwriter who used her earthy beauty to create an exotic sexual persona, but never at the expense of her music. In fact, she could have been a bigger star if she’d played by the pop-star rules more than she did. She was still regarded as a renegade within the industry, renowned for her stubbornness and independence. And it had cost her; the music business was not a renegade-friendly place these days.

When Nathan finally quit drinking, he searched his memories of Joyce to try to figure out what had gone wrong with his career. He saw more clearly how different they had been. He realized, a bit sadly, that there really was such a thing as star quality, and that talent was only part of the mysterious compound that created it. It was a hybrid fuel of talent, attractiveness, ambition, discipline, and a relentless singularity of purpose. It was as if becoming a star, and then remaining one, was all Joyce Warren was.

When they were together, she was constantly on the phone, writing letters, meeting one dead-end agent after another. Nathan stayed home, playing his guitar, writing songs, serenely certain that his purer path would be rewarded in the end. It was not.

He had been the bigger local star when they married, and, yes, perhaps she used that to help her career. But Joyce had been an undeniable talent and she always used her stardom well: shining her light on other songwriters, reminding people that she did not emerge from a split-pea shell, as she liked to put it, but from a long tradition of folk songwriters. She was always touring on behalf of good causes, from fighting AIDS in Africa to land-mine removal to endangered birds in the Yucatán, and the lobbies outside her concerts were littered with displays from grassroots nonprofit groups. And yes, perhaps she used those things to help sustain her career. More power to her.

Nathan had recently read that she was leaving her label of nearly twenty years. She said she was tired of being its “token integrity artist,” to be trotted out whenever the label was accused of not being committed to good music.

It was classic Joyce: true, but neglecting to mention how much her sales had declined, or that she’d been in an artistic slump for years, trying to wriggle her aging sensibilities into the tight fit of today’s youth-obsessed pop market. She’d essentially been writing the same songs over and over, filled with a romantic angst that seemed increasingly puerile as she grew older. They became even more laughable when she actually became a grandmother, thanks to a son from her equally brief second marriage.

Nathan glanced over at Jackie to make sure she wasn’t ready to lock up. Still busy, giving the bar a good rubbing. She looked at him and winked. No hurry.

Did Kit have that kind of, well, whatever it was that Joyce had? Could she, under all those jitters? It didn’t just happen to her on stage; Nathan recalled those nervous puffs of breath when they talked. He leaned back on his hands, dangled his feet over the stage, and smiled, remembering what Kit did the first time she played at Dooley’s.

Her set had been a disaster. She must have wanted to run out the door that night and never come back. Instead, she had walked up to Nathan, awkwardly thrust out her hand, and said, “Hi, I’m Kit Palmer.”

“I know,” he’d said, smiling and shaking her hand. “We’ve met, remember? When you signed up to play.”

She nodded and the red patches appeared again. “Of course,” she said softly. “But I mean, like, we never actually…well, anyway…I’m sure you saw what happened up there. Quite the train wreck, huh?”

“Oh, it wasn’t that bad. A lot of people get nervous their first time. The stage can be a scary place. But I liked your songs.”

“Thanks,” she said. The red was suddenly gone from her face and her dark eyes stared directly into his. The compliment didn’t seem to surprise her. Some real confidence there. Good.

She was obviously trying to impress him that there was more going on with her than she showed on stage, which was another good sign. A certain self-regard, even cockiness, was part of this job.

“I thought maybe you could give me some advice about how to keep from falling apart up there,” she said, her voice stronger.

“Well, I’m flattered that you’d ask,” he said, smiling when she rolled her eyes shyly. “I know it sounds funny to say so soon after––what did you call it?––your train wreck, but I’d say don’t worry about it.”

Her eyebrows arched, and she looked at him quizzically.

“It’s mostly adrenaline,” he continued. “Stage fright is usually more of a physical thing than a confidence thing. Adrenaline is a powerful drug. You’ve probably heard stories about farm women who lift tractors off their husbands after accidents. That’s adrenaline; it’s strong stuff. So my advice is to keep getting up there, on every stage you can. One day you’ll learn how to ride it instead of it riding you. And then you’ll see that adrenaline is our friend. A nice buzz, actually. Cocaine is basically synthetic adrenaline, you know; that’s why so many entertainers and athletes like it. They get to be adrenaline junkies.”

He realized he was spouting and reined himself in. “So try not to worry about it, Kit,” he said softly, leaning his face into hers. “Hard as that is right now, don’t worry. You’ll get past this, I promise.”

They small-talked for a moment, then Kit bundled up her guitar, wrote for a few minutes in her journal, and left by the back door.

That had impressed Nathan and he didn’t care how calculating she’d been. If she was merely trying to show him there was more going on with her than she showed on stage, that was smart. And if she thought she could benefit from her disaster by asking for advice, so much the better. There was some strength, some real confidence, lurking below the shyness.

She came back every week, always waving but never approaching him again. Each Tuesday, however, she seemed a little friendlier, as if following some private ritual. The wave would be accompanied by a mouthed hello, then a big smile and a “Hello, Nathan.” It had now gotten to the point where they would chat a little while she signed up, though she often hurried to her spot in the back before he could reply to her small comments about the weather or the crowd or something she’d seen in the news.

More importantly, she showed musical improvement every week. But the stage fright was always there, like some invisible Harpy hovering around her shoulders. You could never tell when it would pounce, or why. As often as not, it derailed her when she was singing well. Funny stuff, adrenaline.

Still sitting on the stage, lost in thought, Nathan heard Jackie clear her throat sharply, the first sign she was getting ready to lock up. If he didn’t respond, she would crisply remind him that some of us had homes to go to.

He put each mike into its little case and laid them in an old blue suitcase, where he’d already put the mixing board. He carefully folded a thick towel around them, tucking everything snugly into place. He was careless about so much in his life, but when it came to the music, even its accouterments, he was as tidy as a surgeon.

He heard Jackie clear her throat again, louder this time: “Ahmm-hemmm!” He looked up and grinned.

“Jeez Louise,” she said. “I start the day with you whining about why you’re even here and now I can’t friggin’ get rid of you.”

He stood up, bowed, and laughed as she tossed him the keys to the storage closet with a wild, sidearm toss, the way an irate Red Sox fan might throw an empty beer cup at a Yankees outfielder. As Nathan locked everything in the little closet, he smiled, trying to imagine Kit Palmer with a fiddle crooked under her chin.