There was no other band following us, so we didn’t need to hurry to strike our gear. I hopped down from the stage to hang out by the merchandise table, which looked lonely in the corner. Nobody headed that way. Instead, they were rearranging the chairs into a circle. Chatting, then sitting down again, pulling cases out from under their seats. It suddenly became clear.
I walked back to where Silva and Dave chatted. “What kind of music do you usually have here?”
“Old-time and blues.”
So that was the problem. They’d been polite, but we were just the opening act for a jam session. They wanted to play, not to listen. They probably weren’t even into the kind of music we were playing. Oh, well. A practice in front of people wasn’t a bad thing. A fiddle tune picked up, and I turned to listen.
They were excellent musicians, and their instruments filled the room in a way that felt organic.
I reminded myself that I needed to try to win every crowd, but I wasn’t always going to succeed.
We packed our gear into the van, careful to be quiet so we didn’t disturb the musicians, though they didn’t look like anything would distract them. When our instruments were stashed, we went back in to graze at the potluck table. I filled my plate and leaned against a beam to listen while I ate.
Someone approached from the direction of the music.
“Hey,” said Rosemary. “I missed most of your set trying to find this place, but you sounded great. I don’t know why they weren’t into you.”
“It happens.”
She shrugged and smiled. “I wasn’t too obnoxious, was I?”
“No—I guess I appreciated someone cheering for us. Um, what are you doing here?”
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for months. Nobody would give me your phone number, which I suppose is fair, but I finally convinced Joni to give me your lawyer friend’s contact info, and he said he wouldn’t give me a way to reach you, either, but he’d tell me where you were playing, on the condition that if I went to see you I couldn’t bring any device with me—I’m noncomm for the night.”
My lip twitched at her use of the phrase; it sounded too casual from the person whose Hoodie recording had killed my venue. She must’ve mistaken it for a different objection, because she rushed to add, “Sorry. I know noncomm is a philosophy, and I know I’m basically the antithesis. I shouldn’t have said that. I meant my Hoodie and my phone are both back at my place. No chance I’ll lead anyone here other than the people I came with. I’m still horrified that I did that, even accidentally.”
It still hurt too much to talk about the 2020. “How did you get here? Don’t you need a device to operate most cars these days?” I’d only recently learned that, riding around Nashville in Marcia’s little self-driving Chauffeur.
She waved in the direction of the musicians. “My friends Nolan and Sadie brought me. Nolan has a car, and he wasn’t hard to convince after I found out there’d be a jam.”
We both watched the fiddlers through their next song.
“So, Rosemary, are you still working for them?” I didn’t even want to invoke the name, lest I bring them down upon this lovely space.
“Yeah, but that’s what I wanted to talk—”
“You didn’t drive all the way out here to convince me to play for those bastards. Tell me you didn’t.”
“It’s not like that.”
I turned my attention to the casserole on my plate. “I’m going to eat my dinner now. Thanks for coming. Have a good drive back.”
“I didn’t come out here to convince you to play for them.”
“‘For them’ or ‘for us’? You can’t distance yourself if you’re still working for them after what you did.”
She sighed. “For us, then. But it’s not like that. I’ve figured out a trick. I find a place that’s got shows going on, and then I make offers if I see anyone good, and then I fake StageHolo out with a fake venue to raid. I’ve done it in Asheville and Charlotte now. Everybody wins. The bands that want a deal get a chance, the venue stays safe, StageHolo is off everybody’s backs for a while.”
I was a little impressed, but I didn’t let her see it. “Has anybody been hurt? Or arrested?”
She looked down at her left ankle. “Me. Both. Getting hurt was my fault, and the charges are minor.”
“Minor to you, but not to somebody who can’t pay the fines, or got in trouble in the past. Or the wrong officer gets called in on the raid, and somebody gets hurt for real. That sounds like a fun bait and switch, but you can’t possibly see yourself doing that forever. They’ll catch on if you get even a little sloppy.”
“I know, I know. I know it’s not a real solution. I’m still trying. That’s why I’m here.”
She’d clenched her fists into balls, the knuckles whitening. I softened my tone. “What’s why you’re here?”
“I came to tell you I have another idea. Something bigger. First I need to ask: have you seen ‘Harriet speaks truth’?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a vid you need to see.” She reached toward her neck, then dropped her hands. “Oh, crap.”
I recognized the gesture for what it was: she was so rarely without her Hoodie that she hadn’t connected her promise not to bring it with her need to show me something.
“Give me a minute.” She waited for their song to end, then headed into the musicians’ scrum to talk with her friend Nolan. I took the time to finally finish my dinner.
She put his Hoodie on herself as she returned to my leaning post, then took it off to present it to me like a trophy. I’d never actually handled one before. I put my plate on the corner of the potluck table and accepted the thing from her like it was something unclean; in point of fact, it was vaguely damp, from either the rain or Nolan’s sweat. My choices were to hand it back or to put it on and find out what had her going, and I was curious. Once wouldn’t hurt, as long as Marcia and Silva didn’t see me; they’d never stop teasing me for my hypocrisy.
The only impediment was my complete cluelessness. After I wrestled with it for what must have seemed to Rosemary an eon, she reached over and put it right. “You don’t have to do anything. I already queued it up.”
The barn fell away. For one long second, I stood in blackout darkness. A moment later, I whizzed through the air just above the ground, following a drone that was following a noise. Oh. I was a drone, following a drone, hurtling across a lawn toward a wall. The sensation was disorienting and exhilarating at once. How had I never realized that all those hooded kids knew what it felt like to fly?
Then I recognized the gate, and I knew where I was, and when. The disturbance was me. Graceland. However many months ago. This video was shot by one of the drones hovering on the other side of the gate, watching me lose my cool. “We’re still playing music in real life. Come find us.”
I’d been eloquent that day. Poetic in my anger. I hadn’t thought about it since, but now, watching myself, it was memory and artifact at once, filling in things I’d forgotten. Some of it had been pulled from my song notes, from things I’d thought but never said aloud. It mostly left me thinking I’d neglected finishing that song for far too long.
I struggled out of the Hoodie, momentarily disoriented. The other place had almost felt more real; no wonder these things were so popular.
“So what? The video’s gone viral?” I couldn’t think of the modern term, but I figured she’d follow.
“It’s everywhere. Millions of views. Not only that, though. Here, I’ll queue up—”
I hung on to the Hoodie when she reached for it. “You can tell me without showing. It’s okay.”