Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
"That's Cal," I say. "He grew up six blocks from here."
Martin nods. "Good. That's good."
It's the most he's ever said to me at one time.
It's the most real he's ever been with me.
At brunch he was polite and careful and reading my patches with the assessment of a man deciding whether to trust me.
Here he's Martin with his shirt and his history and his ear for what matters, and he's telling me he hears it, the thing I hear, the thing that made me put on the jacket and stay in this neighborhood and pour drinks at a bar I'm trying to own.
Intermission. Zoe pulls us toward the nacho station.
She orders four baking sheets and hands them out and Patricia looks at the pulled pork and the jalapenos and the sour cream and she takes a chip and eats it and her face goes through a sequence of expressions that ends at a very specific, very Patricia conclusion.
"This is good," she says. She sounds surprised. Not at the nachos. At herself for being surprised.
"Right?" Zoe says. "I told you."
"You told me it was nachos on a baking sheet. You didn't tell me it was good nachos on a baking sheet."
Zoe grins and leans against my shoulder. "Good is implied when I recommend something."
"You recommended the sushi place on Vernon that gave us food poisoning."
She groans dramatically. "That was one time."
Patricia eats another chip. Then another.
She's standing in a lot next to a charcoal grill in her gold earrings and her denim jacket eating nachos off a baking sheet and she's not performing enjoyment or gritting through discomfort.
She's eating because the food is good and the night air is warm and her daughter is happy and her husband is wearing his protest shirt for the first time in years and something about all of it together is making her posture change, soften, shift from assessment to presence.
"Teague." She turns to me. Nacho in hand.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"You come to these often?"
"When I can. Britt, the drummer, is a friend."
"And this is what you do. On weekends. When you're not at the bar."
"Sometimes. This or smaller shows. Basements. Back rooms."
She nods. She's filing this. Adding it to the Patricia Kimball data set that includes brunch and the jacket and the patches and the bartending and the tattoos and the mohawk and all the pieces of me that she's been collecting since she found out her daughter was dating someone who wasn't the nice woman with the cocker spaniel.
"It's good that you have this," she says. "A community. Something you care about."
It's not approval. It's not acceptance. It's an observation from a woman who cares about her daughter and is trying to see the person her daughter chose, and what she's seeing tonight is me in a lot with a band I love and nachos and work lights and a crowd that comes because it matters.
She's seeing that my world has structure.
That it's built, not chaotic. That the patches and the mohawk and the music are pieces of something whole.
"Thank you," I say. "For coming."
"Zoe asked." She takes another chip. "I come when Zoe asks."
That's it. That's the whole Patricia Kimball philosophy of showing up: her daughter asked. The rest is details.
The second set starts. Cal does the new song about the bus route, which is slower, more spoken word than scream, and Martin stands with his arms crossed and his head tilted and I can see him comparing this to something in his memory, measuring the distance between Gil Scott-Heron in a college auditorium and Cal in a warehouse lot and finding it shorter than expected.
Patricia stands beside Zoe. At some point during the third song of the second set, Zoe starts moving and Patricia watches her move and her face does a thing that I'm not supposed to see, a softening that goes deeper than the nachos or the music or the warm night air.
She's watching her daughter be happy. Fully happy.
The specific happiness of a person in the right place with the right people doing the right thing.
And I'm part of that.
The show ends a few songs later. Cal says goodnight. The lot empties. We walk together, the four of us, through the neighborhood toward the Kimball house. Zoe between me and her mother. Martin on my left, keeping pace.
We walk a block in quiet. The ringing from the PA is still in my ears and the night is cool and the streets are empty and this is the walk home, the comedown, the part where the music stops and the regular world reasserts itself.
"Teague," Martin says.
"Yeah?"
"The Pretenders. 'Back on the Chain Gang.'"
I look at him. He's walking with his hands in his pockets, eyes forward, and he's offering me something. A song. A bridge between his music and mine. Gil Scott-Heron to Chrissie Hynde. The distance between them is wide but the line is real.
"That's a great song," I say.
"Eighty-two. I played it in my dorm room until my roommate threatened to break the record. Chrissie Hynde could sing anything and make you believe it."
"She still can."
He nods. We walk another block. Zoe and Patricia are ahead of us, Zoe's arm through her mother's, talking about something I can't hear.
"You know your music," Martin says. "That matters. People who know their music know what they care about."
I don't know how to respond to that. It's the biggest thing Martin Kimball has ever said to me and he said it the way he says everything, quietly, without emphasis, like the words have been sitting in him waiting for the right moment to arrive.
"Thank you, Martin."
He nods again. That's the conversation. Martin doesn't extend. He puts the thing down and walks away from it and lets you pick it up at your own speed.
We reach the Kimball house. Porch light on. Garden hose coiled by the steps. The swing moving in a breeze that wasn't there five minutes ago.
"Come for dinner next Saturday," Patricia says. She says it to me, directly, not through Zoe, not as a general invitation to the air. To me. "Six o'clock. I'm making pot roast."
"I'd like that."
"Good." She goes up the steps. Martin follows. At the door he turns and gives me a nod. Just a nod. Martin.
Zoe stays on the sidewalk with me. Her parents go inside and the screen door closes and we're standing in the dark in front of the house where she grew up, eight blocks from the station, and she's looking at me with that full-volume face.
Zoe steps closer and I put my arms around her. "Dad quoted Chrissie Hynde at you."
"He did."
She sighs happily. "He doesn't quote music at people he doesn't like."
"I figured."
"And Mom invited you to dinner. On her own. Without me asking." She sounds especially proud of that.
"I noticed."
She leans up and kisses me. Quick, warm, tasting like lime and pulled pork.
Then she pulls back and grins and walks backward up the porch steps, not looking away from me, and I watch her go and I don't leave until the screen door closes behind her and the porch light dims to the nighttime setting, which is part of the strategic lighting crime prevention program and which, tonight, I find completely reasonable.
I walk home. Six blocks to Anthem, six more to my apartment. The jacket is warm and the patches face out and the lot is dark behind me and Martin Kimball quoted Chrissie Hynde to me and Patricia Kimball invited me to pot roast and I said yes and I meant it.
The apartment is quiet. Machines below, streetlight through the window.
Zoe's sneakers are not by the door tonight because she's at home in her bed with the stars on the ceiling.
But the toothbrush is in the cup and the hoodie is on the chair and the charger is plugged in and every piece of evidence is waiting.
I take off the jacket. Hang it on the hook. The patches settle against the door, old and fraying and real.
I put on the Pretenders. "Back on the Chain Gang.
" Chrissie Hynde sings and I stand in my kitchen and drink water and think about Martin Kimball in his Gil Scott-Heron shirt mouthing words he heard for the first time, and Patricia Kimball eating nachos off a baking sheet in her gold earrings, and their daughter who brought them to a lot because she wanted them to see me where I'm real.
They saw me. They came and they stayed and they saw me.
I finish the water. Brush my teeth. One toothbrush in the cup tonight, black, alone. That's fine. Tomorrow the purple one will be here. Tomorrow or the day after. Whenever she comes back, which is always.
I go to bed. Right side. Left side empty. The machines hum. Chrissie Hynde plays in the other room because I left the record on and I'm not getting up to fix it.
I don't need to fix it. It sounds good from here.