Alonzo was going to be late.
He’d gotten a phone call from the senior arts editor at the Village Voice, Ed Gallegos, at just past eight o’clock last night. They needed him to step in and cover the Monterey Pop Festival if he was interested.
If. He. Was. Interested.
He’d been a third-string freelancer at a bunch of papers all over the Bay Area for nearly three years. Hell, he’d even filed a few articles in Los Angeles because he had a friend looking to bring on some new reviewers. But the Voice was the paper that mattered. The Voice was the paper where he had pinned all his hopes and dreams about becoming a real journalist one day, not just stringing a few assignments together when and where he could, making ends meet picking up handyman jobs around the neighborhood. Getting by any way he could.
He tried to stay ready, but there was ready, and there was ‘clear your weekend and get down to Monterey on less than twelve hours’ notice’ ready, and Alonzo was not the latter. Hell, he didn’t even have a car. He’d spent most of last night trying to track down his best friend and roommate Toonie at one of his many girlfriends’ houses to see if he could borrow his car or get a ride at least.
He’d been seriously considering hitch-hiking south when Toonie had come back to their apartment with a new girlfriend Alonzo had never met on his arm. He’d handed over the keys to his Nova with half a tank of gas and a deep nod for luck. Alonzo drove as fast as he dared, but still, he was going to be late. Not late enough to miss the first set of the festival, but late to meet the freelance photographer Ed said would be waiting just inside the fairground’s gates for him.
By the time he pulled Toonie’s car into the parking lot, he was two hours late and sweating.
Alonzo had never been to Monterey County Fairgrounds before, not when he was a broke kid and not now that he was a broke man. This was one of the things he liked about being a journalist, the ability to experience something new, something denied him. It was a perk that had an economic value but emotionally was impossible to quantify.
In another life, Alonzo would have been a dreamer, but in this life, he didn’t have that luxury.
He’d been working nearly half his life already. He used to hang outside the pool halls in West Oakland. At first, that loitering was practical. He’d waited on the curb for his father to get ejected from the front door, drunk and belligerent, so he could help him stumble home. After a while, he started running errands for the hardcore gamblers to make a little pocket change. But while he was waiting for a new assignment, he used to sit on the same curb where he’d helped his father up from the ground, with a notebook and a pen because writing was the job of his dreams. And writing about music was what Alonzo sometimes thought heaven on earth might be like.
There was something about the way he felt at a show, his slim pad of paper in his back pocket, a pen tucked into his afro, maybe a bottle of beer long gone warm in his other hand, someone wailing on an electric guitar on stage with expert, nimble fingers, each note making his skin feel like a trembling earthquake was building up to tear him down from the inside out. Music was not practical. Music stirred the soul. Becoming a music journalist was the only time Alonzo allowed himself to dream about something that was anything but practical.
All his life, he’d been holding this unfathomable fantasy all to himself, and on the drive to Monterey, he could feel that this concert was the key to making it come true. All he had to do was write the best review of his life and hope the photographer didn’t hate him enough to accidentally forget to take the cap off his lens.
“Fuck,” he groaned under his breath, pulling into the first empty parking spot he passed.
He didn’t even take a moment to compose himself after the long drive. He’d had to stop by the local Voice office to pick up the envelope with his press pass and tickets and a little bit of money for incidentals. His quick perusal of those bills indicated that it might be enough to cover some lean meals and some of his gas at best, but he didn’t have time to worry about that.
He threw the lanyard with his pass over his head and placed his ticket and a little bit of the little bit of money into his fanny pack, which already held his small notebook, a few pens, and his wallet. He locked Toonie’s car, shoved the keys to the bottom of his bag, and threw it over his neck for the jog to the fairground front gates. The sun was uncomfortably high in the sky, and small ponds of sweat began to form on his forehead and at his lower back, making an already uncomfortable situation worse.
There was a small line to get into the fairgrounds, and Alonzo went to the one that seemed to be moving faster than the others, but he kept his eyes roving, ready to move to another line if necessary; anything to get inside as fast as possible. He held up his press pass to the lady running the turnstile, and she frowned at him until he remembered to hand over his ticket. He snatched his stub from her fingers and rushed inside.
Ed had said the photographer would meet him just inside the turnstiles, and maybe if he’d been less tired after a full day helping Tommy Lucas move his grandmother into a new apartment or less excited about the last-minute assignment, he would have remembered to ask some crucial questions such as: What’s the photographer look like? What’s his name? What’ll he be wearing? But hindsight was 20/20, and foolishness was eternal, so as soon as he made it into the fairgrounds, he looked frantically around for anyone with a camera. Unfortunately, there were lots of people with cameras clutched in their hands or slung over their necks, and Alonzo couldn’t stop the self-recrimination from washing over him in waves.
The sun felt as if it was sitting on the back of his neck. He grabbed the front of his t-shirt and started pulling at it, hoping he could cool off while scanning the grounds for the photographer. Assuming the man hadn’t left nearly two hours ago, Alonzo hoped he wasn’t a sweaty mess when they linked up. He unzipped his fanny pack and pulled out a dark blue bandana he kept there, using it to mop at his damp forehead, and then tied it around his head. He checked his watch and swore to himself. Knowing his luck, the photographer was long gone, and there wasn’t anyone Alonzo could blame but himself.
Just a few hours ago, he’d felt as if this concert — this moment — was his chance, but now that feeling was evaporating in the dry summer heat.
“You look hot,” someone said from behind him.
Alonzo whirled around and came face-to-face — well, face to just about her forehead — with a woman who made him blink a few too many times as he tried to make sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.
“You don’t look so bad yourself,” he breathed, a lopsided grin on his face.
She eyed him up and down and back up again with a frown tilting her mouth. “Boy, you wish.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I mean, you look like you’re melting, your hair’s flat on one side, and you’re late. What made you wear all those clothes anyway?” she asked, each word dripping with as much disdain as sweat on his back.
“You sayin’ I should be wearing less?” Alonzo asked and then cringed. If Toonie was here, he’d have walked away in disgust. Alonzo had never been good at flirting, but this was his worst effort by far. It had barely started, and he knew he’d be embarrassed about this for a decade at least.
She rolled her eyes before turning to look at the crowd streaming into the fairgrounds. Alonzo followed her line of sight, and it took a second to catch her meaning. Truth be told, there were about as many people dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt like him, but he saw just as many people in shorts and tanks, dresses, and even less, which only seemed to make his shirt stick even more firmly to his skin, and he sighed.
“I got dressed in a hurry,” he said in a poor effort to defend himself.
He gave her the same sort of once-over she’d given him, and unlike her, he had no complaints at what he saw. She was wearing a yellow floral sundress. The thin straps bared smooth deep brown shoulders. The hem hit just about mid-thigh, exposing a pair of legs that were an even darker brown and looked thick enough to— “I’m not here for the concert,” he blurted out before he let himself continue that line of thought. He lifted his eyes immediately to her face and found her watching him with a graceful smirk twisting her glossy lips. Alonzo couldn’t help but sigh once more at his pitiful circumstances. “I mean, I’m here to work,” he said quietly.
“You planning to keep to the shade?”
He put his hands on his hips and glared down at her for a few seconds before he was forced to focus his gaze on the rounded tip of her nose. It seemed like the safest place to look but made it difficult to fully commit to the glare. Eventually, he just gave up and threw his arms to either side of his body as the only response he could offer to her very reasonable question.
And that made her laugh.
She uncrossed her arms and pressed her palms to her chest. Her eyes closed, and her lush mouth spread on a bark of surprise followed by the most delicate peal of laughter, and it was the most beautiful chime Alonzo had ever heard outside of the breakdown in a love song. She laughed with her entire body, every muscle in her face lifted, and her fingertips had curled gently into her skin, the cracked light blue nail polish only adding to her charm. The fact that she was not in any way trying to charm him only seemed to sweep him up in this moment even more forcefully.
She laughed at him hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, and all he could do was grin and bear the desire curling in his gut. It was a good thing Toonie weren’t here. He would have shaken his head and called him pitiful, and he would have been damn right.
After an uncomfortably long period of time, she wiped at her wet eyes and shook her head. “Well, you best be careful. Walking around in all this sun covered up like that, you’ll probably faint.”
“I’m not gonna faint,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“And I’m telling you right now that carrying you to the shade is not in my job description.”
“Why would you—”
“I told Ed that I’m just here to take pictures, groove to some music, and get paid.”
It took a few seconds for that sentence to sink in. “You’re the photographer?” he exclaimed.
Her eyebrows lifted. “I am. Do we have a problem?”
“N-no. No. I just… You’re just not what I was expecting.”
She crossed her arms and frowned up at him. “And what exactly were you expecting?”
“Someone ugly,” he said immediately. “Who smelled like cigarette smoke and stale beer.”
She slowly dropped her arms, and that frown lifted, not into a smile but flattened into a forced crush of her lips together as she tried not to smile.
But Alonzo wanted her to laugh, so he kept going. “Maybe wearing a Hawaiian shirt with long, dirty hair.”
“Stop,” she mumbled, barely moving her lips, trying to contain her laughter.
“Maybe dirty fingernails and bare feet?”
That broke her, and this time, when she doubled over in laughter, Alonzo let himself smile along with her. All his senses drank her in; that laugh, the sight of her shoulders shaking, and the way each new, moisturized depth of her hair caught new rays of sunlight.
“So you’ve met Stevie, huh?” she asked in breathy laughter.
Alonzo ducked his head. “He seemed nice, but…”
“But even he’ll tell you that he’s not too concerned about human contact. He’s a nature photographer most of the time.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She nodded. “Mmmhmm. He sells his work at a few galleries in San Francisco. You should check ‘em out some time.”
“Maybe we should go together.”
“I don’t shit where I eat,” she said simply, shocking the tentative smile from Alonzo’s face.
“I— I didn’t mean—”
“Yes. You did. But I’m not going to hold that against you. I’m just letting you know upfront that you should treat me like you’d treat Stevie. This is my job. Now I don’t know about you, but my landlord don’t take IOUs when I’m short, and fucking around with someone I work with is a great way to always come up short. So…you ready?”
Alonzo’s mouth had gone dry. “I’m sorry,” he said, once he unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth.
“Don’t be sorry, just be professional,” she said with a shrug that, even in its nonchalance, Alonzo realized was anything but casual.
He nodded quickly. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.
That made her smile again.
“How did you know I was me?” he asked.
“Ed said you was green, lanky, and dark-skinned with a good smile.”
“Ed said I had a good smile?”
She tipped her head to the left toward the fairgrounds just as the harsh chord of someone’s guitar warm-up screeched into the air. “Come on. Let’s get to work.”
She didn’t answer his question, and he watched her walk away from him with a bewildered smile. He kept his eyes on her shoulders even though he wanted to see her ass in that dress or, hell, even the backs of her thighs. But he hadn’t looked at Stevie that way, so he refused to let his eyes move any lower.
But then she turned to look over her right shoulder with a quirked eyebrow and a wry grin. Their gazes crashed into one another. “We’ll buy you a new shirt on the way,” she called.
He frowned but moved to follow.
“And my name’s Ada, by the way.”
Unfortunately, he loved her name and the slight Southern accent in the way she said it. “Alonzo,” he called, moving just a little bit faster to catch up.
“What?” she yelled before turning around and walking backward. Her smile was beautiful; big, bright, and mocking, a combination that shouldn’t have worked on him except it did. It worked so well that he was mad about it — because Ada with the lush fro and the pillowy soft lips and the no-nonsense frown was the exact kind of woman he conjured in his mind when Toonie asked him why he was always working. Why he never seemed to date.
Because he’d never met Ada before, apparently.
He had to jog a few steps before he met up with her. She turned, and they fell into an easy stride together. “My name’s Alonzo. Alonzo Reid,” he said, wiping his hand on his pants before offering it to her.
She looked him up and down again with a smirking scrutiny that he liked just a little too much to hide, so he smiled eagerly in return.
She stuck her hand out and grasped his in a warm, thankfully dry grip. “Ada Carr,” she said softly.
“Nice to meet you, Ada Carr.”
“I’ll reserve my judgment, Alonzo Reid.”
“And I knew in that moment that I was gon’ marry her,” Alonzo told Amir with watery eyes and a gentle grin that turned into a soft chuckle. “It took her a little longer to realize she felt the same way ‘bout me, mind you. But that was alright with me. She was always gonna be worth the wait.”