Chapter 15 Houston
HOUSTON
Sagebrush is quiet enough to hear the AC tick. I unlock the front, flip on the lights, and take the back hallway to the office. Lou needs references for the deck, and I said I’d pull anything that looks like craft and family. I like this work. Boxes, labels, order. There is no noise I can’t use.
Metal shelves run along the wall. Banker boxes.
Old reel cases. A cracked plastic crate full of cassettes nobody wanted to throw away.
I stack three boxes and start with the session logs.
Marker thick, dates everywhere. My mother’s handwriting shows up like a warm voice.
I pull those cue sheets with grease pencil smudges and set them in a pile for Lou.
I open the next box. Flyers. Polaroids. A bag of picks. A strip of gaffer tape with SALEM DO NOT TOUCH written across it. I put that on top of the pile because she’ll laugh.
The crate is last. Cassettes without cases, handwriting on spine labels that solved a problem thirty years ago and caused four this morning. I line them up, labels toward me. “Demos—open call.” “Untitled, singer from Reno.” “R. Navarro—2 takes.”
I stop on the last one and lean closer.
R. Navarro. Like Lou. Navarro is not rare. But spending time with Lou has made me wonder about fate and family more than I want to admit. The handwriting is my mother’s. I can see the way she looped the R. No date on the spine. Someone scribbled a phone number and scratched it out.
I look for a deck and find the old Tascam on the shelf under the window. The heads are dusty. I plug it in and let it warm for a minute, then slide the tape in until it clicks. I push play and keep my hand near the stop in case it chews.
Hiss. The room in the recording is small and dry. A count-off, soft. Guitar. Then a voice.
I know smoke when I hear it. Not the fake kind people put on for effect. A rasp at the edge of a chest tone. She sings like she’s not afraid of low notes, like the song sits in her ribs. It is not Lou’s voice. It is a shape that rhymes with hers.
The melody is quick and simple, two bars up and back, the kind a person finds when they stop trying to impress the walls. Words are plain. The chorus lands on a single vowel and holds. The pitch sags and corrects in a way that says raw, not trained.
I rewind and listen again. Same rush at the first line, the little slide into the second. The s on “house” disappears like she thought it was ugly. I catch myself comparing. It’s automatic.
R. Navarro. Lou’s locket says Navarro on the back. There are a thousand Navarros in this city, in this state, probably more. The voice has a color that makes me think of her anyway. I push back from the table and sit on the edge of the desk, so I stop pacing.
Could there be a connection? Maybe. Probably not. The studio did open calls. People came from all over. The tape could be from anyone.
I stop the deck and stare at the counter. The case is blank inside. No date. No song title. Just my mother’s note: “good ear, no breath.”
I hit play again and let the chorus roll. I think about the way Lou hums when she forgets she’s doing it. Not a show. Her guide track from yesterday is still on my phone. I hear it in my head the way you hear a faucet after you’ve turned it off.
I should tell her. I should hold up the tape like a kid with a bug in a jar and say Look. But what if it’s nothing? What if it’s a stranger who just happens to share a name with the only thing she has from before?
Hope is hard to handle. Some days it’s heavier than grief. I know the feel of it when it drops.
I eject the tape and put it in a Ziploc with a paper label, R Navarro.
I put the Ziploc in a banker’s box and the banker’s box on a shelf where I can find it.
I take a photo of the label on my phone and name the photo the same way.
I make a note to ask my mother later if she remembers a Navarro.
Or if the R could be a misread A. Or if the tape came with a number that belonged to a dead pager.
I don’t text any of that to Lou.
I go back to the live room. The piano lid is down.
The guitar leans on the stand. The stool is where I left it, half turned.
I sit at the piano and play a C just to set the room.
Then I play the melody I’ve been sitting on since the day she showed me the locket.
Three notes, then five, then a turn that returns without apologizing. It feels right.
I hear words whether I want to or not. “Silver on a chain, names I never knew.” “Found on a step.” I test them. Too on the nose. I keep the feel and lose the noun. Better.
I write the song in one sitting because if I stand up it will dissolve.
Verse first, because the verse tells me where the chorus can land.
The chords are simple on purpose. I don’t want to hide a weak line behind a move.
I sing into the air, then into the ribbon mic, then into the air again because I hate hearing my voice before the words fit.
I keep my vowels round, the way Lou likes words to sit in the mouth, the way she explained an O to me like I’d never met one before, and work lyrics as they flow in my head.
I don’t know if the you is a person or a life. I don’t try to pin it. It can be both. It can be a little of my mother and a lot of Lou and a ghost nobody wants to name. The second verse writes itself in lines I can sing tired.
The bridge is a problem until it isn’t. I stop trying to be smart and let the chords talk. I drop to the relative minor and hold the IV longer than makes sense. I tell the bridge to be the part where the pocket turns out and the coin drops.
Even if the pictures fade,
Even if it never fits,
I’ll wear you anyway.
I sing it through once and don’t hate myself. That’s rare. I arm a track and record a rough. Piano and voice first. Guitar second to double the chorus with a warm line that won’t age cheap. Brush loop light. No bass yet. No pads.
I name the session and save it with a number. I print a bounce and send it to the shared folder without the push notification. I don’t want it to pop up on Lou’s screen while she’s working. I’ll show her when I’m sure it’s a song and not a mood.
I sit back on the bench and let the quiet come back. I think about the tape in the bag and the name on the back of the locket and all the versions of what could be true. I think about how easy it is to make a myth from scraps. I don’t want that for her.
I make a list so I don’t solve it with feelings.
Ask Mom. She gives the best advice. Check the storage ledger for intake dates on open-call tapes.
See if the phone area code on the case survives under the scratch-out.
If there’s a date, see whether it lines up with the year Lou would have been born.
A little leg work never hurt anybody, and I’m not telling her anything until I know more.
I will not get her hopes up only to let her down.
The day runs. Knox texts a schedule change for the marquee test. Salem sends a photo from a stretch of highway and the words not dead. Crazy bastard was out all night again. I loop the bridge twice to make sure I can play it cold and then power the board down.
On the way out, I stop at the shelf and touch the bag with the tape through the plastic. I think about how many tapes never turned into anything. People come in with a voice and a want, and life pulls them sideways. Some leave a mark anyway. Most don’t.
Back at the hotel, the suite is quiet. Lou has the table spread with grids and laser prints. The deck is real now. Swatches labeled. Type rules written. Logo marks circled and crossed out and circled again. She’s in tank top and leggings, hair up, locket on, pencil behind her ear. Work mode.
She looks up and smiles. “Find anything good?”
“Photos. Tape labels. A baseboard that looks like a map.” I don’t say the name.
I don’t say the voice. I set the pictures on the table and step back so I don’t hover.
She arranges them without needing to tell me what she sees.
She places the scuff next to a type sample and the patch bay next to the mark. She’s building a system in front of me.
She catches me staring. “What?”
“Nothing. You’re doing the thing you do.”
She rolls her eyes like she can’t take a compliment straight. “You writing?”
“Yeah.” I touch the phone in my pocket. “A song called Locket.”
Her mouth does a half smile and stops. “That was fast.”
“It wanted out.”
“Is it good?”
“I like it.”
She nods and goes back to the deck. I make coffee because it’s one of the only useful things I can do in this room while she’s doing that. I pour for both of us. I set her cup within reach and leave mine on the bar so I don’t hover.
Knox comes in with a grocery bag. He sets it on the counter and checks the locks out of habit. Salem texts from the elevator 2 minutes. The day keeps moving.
I stand at the window with my cup and look down at the pool lights coming on.
I think about the song. I think about the tape.
I think about the way Lou hums when her hands are busy and what it does to the room.
I think about how careful I want to be with the part of her that still expects the catch.
R. Navarro. Breadcrumb or a coincidence.
I don’t know if the demo singer is a stranger my mother forgot or someone who sat in that room and tried to be brave one afternoon.
I know Lou has an ear she didn’t earn from lessons.
She has a knack for structure that doesn’t show up in people who only listen. It might be blood.
Salem comes in with wind in his hair. He drops his helmet and steals the pen from behind Lou’s ear. She steals it back without looking. Knox pulls chicken from the bag and a loaf of bread and a vegetable that wants to be roasted. The room becomes a room where people live for an hour.
All I can think about is R. Navarro.
After dinner, I slip back to the bedroom with my phone and headphones.
I listen to the bounce twice at low volume and make a couple of notes for morning.
The second chorus is too long by a beat.
The bridge needs a thinner left hand. The last line might land better if I cut the extra “I.” I save the notes and put the phone face down.
Lou taps the door and peeks in. “You good?”
“Just checking a thing.”
She leans on the frame. “You look like you’re hiding a surprise.”
“Not hiding.” Not true, but I can’t say anything yet.
She nods. “I’m trusting you.”
“Thank you.”
She leaves me with the quiet and the chorus in my head.
I lie back on the bedspread. I think about radio singles and the file with Troy’s name on it.
I think about a cassette with an R that might mean nothing.
I think about a song I wrote because a question wouldn’t go away.
I think about a woman at a table in a hotel suite who makes me want to be careful with my voice.
Things between us are tentative by design. We said discretion out there and honesty in here. We set the job first, not the story. I like that. I like her. I like her more than I planned to. Not sure if that’s a good thing yet.