“Ah, David,” Drum said. “You’ve went too far this time.”
“Will you leave it to me?” said David.
“You’ve went too far, man.”
They drove the rest of the way without speaking. David frowned at the road, making some sort of calculations, shaking his head from time to time and then brightening as if an idea had struck. In the back, Drum kept plucking at the guitar string. Whenever the Jeep slowed, Evie could hear the single note repeating itself tinnily in the twilight.
They pulled in beside a motorcycle in the Unicorn’s parking lot. Not many other cars had arrived yet. After he had shut the motor off, David said, “Now, listen. You’ll sit at a table for one, right up front. I’ve brought you a candle. It’ll stand out. While the other guy’s on, Joseph Ballew, read a newspaper.”
“By candle?”
“Oh, shoot now,” Drum said. “Joseph Ballew is a friend of mine. She can’t do that.”
“Oh, all right. Stare down at your beer, then. What I want is a difference, you follow me? A difference that people will notice when Drum comes on. Sit up. Look close. I was thinking of some other things, but there hasn’t been time to work them out. Sending him flowers, for instance.”
“I would send them back,” said Drum.
“I figured you would.”
“Another thing,” said Drum. “I want you both to listen good, now. I am not for any part of this plan. I don’t approve, I never will approve. It makes me sick. And on top of that it won’t work, because while I am playing, my entire audience will be whispering and pointing at a fat girl with a name on her forehead. I just thought you should know that.”
Evie said, “Oh, well, I don’t want to—”
“Got you,” David told Drum. “Then I had thought of having her scream, maybe, but I guess not. She’s not the type for it.”
He looked at Evie for a minute longer, and then shook his head and climbed out of the Jeep. Evie had to trail behind them all the way across the parking lot.
The policeman at the door recognized her. He nodded at her and then rested his hands awkwardly on his gunbelt and stared into the distance. The proprietor recognized her too. When she walked in, he stepped out from behind the bar, smoothing his apron and looking worried. “You’re the girl that, uh. Look, I hope you’re not planning to pull something like that again. I had an awful time. Cops were down my neck all night, thinking there had been a cutting.”
“There had been,” David said.
“Not that kind.”
“Well, never mind. She’s here to watch Drum sing, that’s all. Have you got a table for one?”
“You know I ain’t. People like sitting in groups.”
“Give me a bar stool then, we’ll use that.”
He dragged the stool up next to the dance platform, and set a chair beside. It was the right height for a table but much too small, which David said was all for the better. “Ruin everything if someone came and sat with you,” he said. From a brown paper bag he took a tablecloth and a netcovered vase with a candle in it, the kind used in restaurants. Meanwhile Evie stood by awkwardly with her hands across her purse. Drum had disappeared somewhere. From a door behind the dance platform she heard laughter and the twanging of guitars.
“Sit down,” said David.
She sat.
“No, not like that, Straighter. And don’t put your purse on the table. I want you half-turned from the audience, not quite sideways, so that they can get a glimpse of—”
“I know how,” Evie said. “Leave it to me. I can figure it out for myself.”
And she did. She sat erect, her hands folded in her lap, an untouched beer in front of her. The candle glimmered more brightly on her face as the room grew darker. People filing in called out greetings to the proprietor, joked with their dates and scraped paths for themselves between the chairs, but when they saw the candle their voices seemed to skip a beat. They glanced at the candle and then at Evie. Evie stared straight ahead at nothing at all.
Drum Casey was the first to play that night. When he came onto the platform Evie looked up; nothing more. David signaled to her silently all through the first piece: “Do something. Move around. Could you stand? Take a drink.” Evie ignored him. “My girl has done and boarded a Carolina Trailways,” Drum sang, “She’s scared to death of planes and she can’t stand railways,” and Evie stared at his face without blinking. Out of all the chattering couples dancing or at least beating time, Evie was the only one motionless. She showed them the white mound of her back disappearing into a scoop of black cotton, the curve of one cheek turned rigidly away. Her dowdy clothes gave her a matronly look; her scars, what could be seen of them, seemed in the candlelight to be mainly vertical, a new kind of age-line or tear track which made her appear experienced and incapable of being surprised. “See that girl?” someone whispered. “I believe it’s the one in the newspaper. No, wait till she turns. Remember when I showed you her picture?” They were careful not to point. Girls indicated her by no more than a glance. “That’s her. No, don’t look now.” In the back of the room, a boy half stood to peer at her before Fay-Jean Lindsay pulled him sharply down.
“Will you see me to the door?” Casey asked.
“Don’t come no further.
“Don’t mind the lights.
“When you going to leave off that hammering?
“When they going to let me be?”
Evie looked down at the table. David had stopped signaling to her by now. His eyes skimmed the roomful of people, who stared from Evie to Drum as if following a dotted line. Then he nodded to himself and turned all his attention to the song.
7
She was hired for life, David said, meaning for as long as she could cause any kind of stir, make a ripple cross a room and bounce off the wall to cross back. But how long would that be? She had felt, the first night, a buzz and a whispering at the back of her neck. On the following Saturday it was quieter. “Maybe I shouldn’t be riding with you,” she told David, although she would have fought against giving the rides up. “Won’t it look funny? You and Drum bringing me here just to sit admiring you?”
“They don’t care,” said David. “It’s like watching a magician. They would like to believe his cards really come from thin air.”
David had other plans in mind. Now that Evie’s had worked he had grown jittery, impatient to improve on it. He was nervous about the sheer understatement of a single dumpy girl sitting there with a beer. Shouldn’t she drink too much? Cry? Send notes? But Evie said no. She walked a narrow line; it was all right to take money for lifting a scarred face toward a rock player every Saturday night but only if what she did was real, without a single piece of playacting. Her sitting still was real, and so was pinning her eyes on Drum. So were her scars, which turned white in time, raised and shiny, gleaming clean even if the rest of her face became smudged in the heat. “How about a new costume?” David asked. “Blacker and shinier. With a rhinestone necklace.” “No,” said Evie. It was as clear a no as Drum’s when he refused to stop his speaking out. David never brought the subject up again.
She offered to come to the Unicorn free. It wasn’t as if she needed the money. David said, “Fine,” but Drum, when he heard about it, said, “What is she trying to do to me? She gets paid. Then she can burn it, for all I care. But she gets paid, anyhow.”
“Sometimes I feel like I am dealing with porcupines,” David said.