Silence. And then after the silence, “Hey Darby.”
“Yeah?”
“You wanna tell me a secret?”
“What do you mean?”
“A secret. One of yours. Could be anything. Go ahead, man. Unload.”
“Nelson, what the fuck are you talking about now?”
“Just one of the things I do, man. It’s my public service.”
He shifts on the stool, reaches into his wallet and slaps a laminated business card down on the counter:
N. MADDOX
KEEPER OF SECRETS
“NO SECRET TO SMALL”
I turn it over in my hands. The plastic is grimy and worn, as if turned over by a thousand hands before mine. “Anyway,” he says. “Free of charge. And I don’t tell a soul. But no pressure though. Let’s not fuckin overthink this. You seem like an over-thinker.”
“I do?”
“Oh for sure. Looking for meanings in rock songs and shit.” Then there’s a pause as he stares into his coffee cup and I keep playing with the card. “So you heard a lot of secrets in your day or what?”
“More secrets up here, man,” tapping his head, “than they got stars in the sky.”
I put the card back on the counter. “Nelson, you’re forgetting something.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t even know you.”
“Hey true enough. You don’t know me from fuckin Adam. Or Eve, for that matter. But Darby, there exists in this world a little thing I like to call trust. And from time to time—not all the time, god knows, hardly ever, really—but once in a blue moon, well, you just gotta put your trust in people. Without trust, man, I shudder to think.”