“Oh. Sorry.”
She studied me for a moment, clearly working out if she should continue speaking to me or just go back to her table. She opted to keep talking.
“No, that’s fine. I’ve heard some stupid shit during my time as well. What I wanted to discuss with you…well, it’s a little delicate.” I tipped my head. She began to play with the small ball hanging from her right lobe, tugging at it nervously. A fissure of unease crawled up my spine. “Now, I don’t know how familiar you have gotten with Kenan. And that’s none of my business. We do see that he’s spending all of his time at your house, and again, that’s fine. You’re both grown men.”
Kenan broke into another song as she dawdled and pulled on her earring. “I’m not sure what it is you think you need to tell me. I know he’s a wandering soul, and I know he had an addiction to ketamine.” He’d not been shy about his past stints in rehab. The nights that he sang, he often prefaced this song or that song with his time battling back from his addiction. “I know he’s gay,” I tacked on just to be a snide son-of-a-bitch.
Her lips flattened. “That’s good. Good. Then he’s told you all about his time spent touring with Margo Morgaine and how they were at the Opry one night and he was so stoned he fell off the stage screaming about packs of wolves trying to eat Margo and him?”
Oh shit. No. That was all news to me. “Uhm…of course he told me,” I said, trying not to look as if she had hit me in the face with a pitcher of rocks.
“Oh good, phew! I mean, I assumed he must have. I mean, if you take away the scruff and cut his hair short, mostly everyone who knows a damn thing about country music could tell you that’s Lance Galloway. I assume Kenan is either his real name or he made it up when his career went into the shitter. But no matter what he is calling himself, there is no mistaking that voice.”
Lance Galloway. I’d never heard that name before. Then again, I didn’t do country. My sight flickered from Paula to Kenan. Lance. And there it lingered. Paula must’ve sensed I was preoccupied with the guitar man, so she stopped without saying another word. Perhaps she had also picked up that I’d been lying through my teeth. I’d never been one for deception. Say what you are feeling, Mom always said. She lived by that tenet and so did I, for the most part.
“I’d appreciate it if you kept this to yourself. Kenan is trying to build a new life for himself,” I said with some real bite.
“Oh, of course. My lips are sealed.” She pretended to zip her lips and scurried back to her table.
Shaken, I snuck back into the kitchen to take a minute or two to re-center. And search the internet for one Lance Galloway.
Yep. There he was in all his glory. My Kenan. Shorter hair, clean face, no earrings, smiling wide for the camera as he stood side-by-side with Margo Morgaine, the queen of modern country pop. And when I say side-by-side, I meanside-by-side,this is my man, this is my woman side-by-side. Jealousy flared so brightly I had to blink to clear the veil of green from my vision.
I found a song, one of several, from his debut album. Album. The man had an album. Headlines about him and Margo, pictures of them touring, hugging, making money hand over fist. Not one mention of him being queer or Jewish or a drug addict. One of his biggest hits played as background noise while I stared at a past life Kenan had never mentioned. I felt that hard granite slowly starting to encase my heart. He’d lied to me just like Paulie…
“Man, people are so in the giving mood! I think I made over a hundred bucks just from this party and…” Whatever Kenan was saying dropped off as the lyrics from his breakout hit “Twice Broken Fool” filled the small kitchen. “Shit.”
The door swung closed behind him. I searched his face. He looked stricken.
“Nice of you to let me know about this other you,” I said, the words as icy cold as the winds swirling down Main Street, bringing some light snow to the area. Yay, a white Christmas. “It would have been nice to be informed, you know, for when someone came up to me and asked me how the hell I managed to get Lance Galloway to sing in my shitty little alehouse on the backside of nowhere.”
He placed the wad of ones, fives, and tens on the sandwich prep cooler. “I should have told you, I know, but it hardly seemed relevant.”
That one got me. I started to laugh, a dry, aching laugh. “Not relevant he says. You were a fucking superstar!”
“No, I was riding the coattails of an established older woman who took a shining to me.”
“Were you fucking her?” I asked with such venom the words burned my tongue. And I knew that I needed to rein in my hurtand fear of being torn asunder back again, but I justcould not do it.
“I’m gay, Brann, remember?”
“Oh, well, you don’t look too gay in most of the images that I found.” I shoved my phone into his face, showing him a close up and personal montage of him and Margo kissing. He batted it aside.
Brann, by all that is holy, stop before you ruin this.
“She was a beard. And I was one for her.” He blew out a breath. “Look, we can get into this in depth, but first we have another hour of this party to tend to and—”
“Fuck them and their fucking holiday cheer fest.” I pushed around Kenan, our shoulders smacking, and stalked into the pub. The jukebox was playing an old Waylon song about Luckenbach, Texas. I wished everyone in this damn pub was there.
“Okay, party is over. Sorry. Sour lettuce was discovered in the kitchen. Everyone out.” I herded the forty or so people to the front door. “I’ll refund your money for the hour. Out you go. Merry whatever.”
Once the door was closed, I turned the lock into place and tapped my brow to the stout wood a few dozen times. Maybe if I hit my head hard enough, it would knock some sense into me while dislodging the irate, insecure asshole that was now running amok.
“That was rude,” Kenan called. The jukebox went quiet. I turned to find him standing behind the bar, his dark eyes unreadable. “Those people paid for this pub for a set time.”
“I’ll refund them. Their time will be better served being home with the kiddies instead of sitting here getting drunk, pinching Lois from Dog Licensing on the ass, and drooling over a man who was shagging a MILF to get his face on the Coming Soon posters outside the Grand Ole Opry.”
That one hit hard. I watched him wince.