Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Levi was supposed to be having a working lunch, but this Reuben sandwich was too good to split his attention. The corned beef was salty and well-spiced. The sauerkraut was perfectly tangy. The Russian dressing was creamy. The rye bread tasted like it had been made that very day.
It was a good sandwich.
Levi had, admittedly, been a little concerned that he’d be disappointed by the food scene in a small town like Magnolia Shore, Massachusetts.
He’d spent the entirety of his adult life living in Nashville, which had its own cuisine that he’d come to know and love.
And, sure, he didn’t expect that he would find a hot chicken restaurant in Magnolia Shore any time soon, but he was finding that he was perfectly happy with the offerings at the Main Street Diner.
Just thinking about Nashville reminded him of his obligations. He opened his laptop with a resigned sigh, nibbling at a French fry as he did so.
Darn, those fries were good too. The cook in this place was a genius.
His inbox was positively bursting with emails that he had been ignoring while he had gotten settled in at his new house.
Some of them were the usual things from his agent, the paperwork that he just needed to confirm, the updates on sales of this or that album.
He clicked quickly through those and identified the ones that actually needed his sustained attention.
There were still more than he would have liked, but it was better than it had been.
Well, Levi told himself, no time like the present.
He clicked on one from his agent, Janine.
Hey Levi,
Hope you’re settling in okay. I know you’re taking some time away, so I don’t mean to hassle you, but could you drop a line with the record label and reassure them that you aren’t leaving music forever? They’re starting to freak out, and when they freak out, they call me… a lot.
Thanks, Lev. Talk soon,
Janine
Levi stretched his shoulders uncomfortably when he read the words leaving music forever.
He didn’t actually want to leave his career behind permanently.
He knew he would miss music if he gave it up entirely.
But the idea of going back, or even setting a firm date on when he planned to return, gave him an itchy feeling under his skin.
But Janine was a great agent, and she had been very supportive of his time away from work. The least he could do was get the label off her back.
Not to mention that he already had an email or four from his representative at the label. Since they were all in the same thread, he clicked on the most recent one.
Hey Levi,
Just wanted to check in—how long are you going to be on vacation again?
Dan Kepler, Olympia Records
Then, from less than a day later.
Hey Levi,
Janine said you’re not on vacation. That you “moved?”
Levi wondered why “moved” was in quotes. He had moved. It wasn’t a euphemism for something else.
That can’t be right though, right? Let me know when you’ll be back in Nashville.
Thanks,
Dan Kepler, Olympia Records
Dan had waited a full thirty-six hours before emailing Levi again, which Levi would have considered an impressive show of restraint, if not for the email from Janine, which implied that Dan had spent those thirty-six hours driving his poor agent up a wall.
Hey Levi,
Okay, Janine has clarified that you did indeed move to Massachusetts of all places. You know there’s like no music scene there, right? If you wanted to do a show in Boston, I could have booked you a show in Boston. But maybe not in the winter. It’s cold up there, man!
I can’t believe you would leave Nashville. Who would ever want to leave Nashville? Most live music per capita in the world, man! But I guess people like to try other places… for some reason.
Just let us know when you’re coming back, okay? We’re at the center of the music world right here, not there wherever you are.
I assume we’ll see you soon.
Let me know.
Please.
Dan Kepler, Olympia Records
Levi sighed. Yeah, Dan was laying it on a little thick in that last email, it was true.
Frankly, the label rep had been downright rude about Massachusetts, which Levi had found to be perfectly nice in his admittedly limited experience with the place.
But even with the heavy-handed description of the various merits of Magnolia Shore versus those of Nashville?
Yeah, even so, Levi felt a little bit of a pang about leaving his home behind.
Dan clearly thought Levi was crazy, and while Levi mostly didn’t think so, he wasn’t immune to moments of self-doubt any more than anyone else.
He looked up, checking out the diner around him.
There was an older gentleman in one corner eating a bowl of matzoh ball soup while working on a crossword puzzle.
There was a family with twin toddlers, two exhausted looking parents, and a grandmother who was gleefully soaking up all the attention from the small children while the parents ate in what seemed to be a rare moment of peace.
None of them gave Levi so much as a second glance. Well, the boy toddler briefly held up a plastic toy truck with an expression of glee, but when Levi gave him a little wave, he just grinned and went back to the plate of French fries that he was sharing with his sister.
In Nashville, Levi couldn’t do this. He couldn’t just go to a diner and grin at kids without risking being recognized.
It sounded self-absorbed even in his own head to think of himself as being so famous that he couldn’t even go out and about, but the fact of the matter was that he’d had too many experiences to let himself believe otherwise.
Too many days where, while trying to just grab a cup of coffee, he’d been stopped by a fan who wanted his signature and a photo.
Too many dinners interrupted by someone who wanted to tell them all about that time they went to his concert in this or that city.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like his fans. Having fans was what let him have a career in music. That was how it worked.
But he did always have to be “on” in Nashville. He always had to address the possibility that someone was watching him, that they would be taking his picture for social media. He had to budget extra time for every errand, just in case someone stopped him.
He was grateful, but he was also exhausted.
The anonymity was a huge relief.
Here, he could observe the world around him in the relaxing knowledge that he wasn’t being observed in turn. Maybe that was unfair to want, but he figured that since he wasn’t going to post pictures of anyone on the internet, it wasn’t terribly hypocritical of him.
It was all very normal.
Take the waitress at this diner, for example. She had a classic ‘girl next door’ way about her, what with her blonde hair pulled back into a short ponytail at the nape of her neck, green eyes unadorned by makeup, and a simple outfit of sneakers, jeans, and a sweatshirt with the diner’s logo.
She was pretty, but not in the ornate, purposeful way of women who dressed up to go out to concerts in Nashville.
Not that Levi objected to such a thing. He’d dated several women in the music scene who tended toward a more glamorous style, and he still had the utmost respect for them, even if their romantic relationships hadn’t worked out.
Even so, this woman’s unassuming, everyday prettiness appealed to him.
Not that he expected that he would get a chance to talk with her beyond the brief exchange they’d shared while he’d ordered, since he didn’t think he had seen her pause for more than a minute since he had arrived at the diner.
She smiled attentively at each of the customers she served, but he noticed that when she wasn’t interacting with anyone, a tired sort of slump took over her posture.
The door opened, and the icy blast of wind that came through the door reminded Levi that he had been watching the waitress for probably longer than he ought to have let himself. He turned in the direction of the door and instead watched an older woman come in from the cold.
It was good that he did, because, as he watched, the woman tucked a hardcover book under her arm so she could free her hands to remove her gloves.
Doing so, however, caused a photograph to slip out of the book and fall on the floor.
The older woman didn’t seem to notice, as she just kept walking toward a free table at the front.
“Excuse me, ma’am?” Levi called, stepping out from his booth to grab the photograph. “I think you dropped this.”
The woman turned with a quizzical but friendly look.
She had a young sort of energy, even though her appearance put her somewhere in her seventh decade.
Her short haircut was stylish, however, and there was some pep in her step that said that age had not stopped her from living life to its fullest. She reminded Levi of his own mother, who was currently enjoying retirement with Levi’s father from the back of an RV that his success in music had let him gift to them.
Another reason to hesitate over taking a step back from his career.
It let him support his parents in their twilight years, something that was extremely important to him after all the years that they had scrimped and saved for his first guitar, for all those music lessons, for all the things that had let him become the man that he was.
“Oh my,” the woman said, pressing a hand to the front of her coat when she saw what he was holding. She looked down at the book under her arm, with a faint expression of surprise on her face. “Thank you so much!”
“Of course,” he said. He turned the photograph over in his hands before handing it back, just an unconscious gesture, but he paused when he saw that the photo showed a man on a horse. He wore a large cowboy hat.