Page 47 of A Boy Called Lovesong

Maybelle smiled, and in time with the music began to sing the gospel anthem “Oh Happy Day!”

As she sang, Lovesong licked his spoon clean. With the fingers of his other hand, he felt his way down my arm, reached the spoon in my fingers and gently stole it from me.

I watched as he licked my spoon without a care in the world, then joining the spoons together in one hand he began to play them…

Tapping them against his other hand…

His chest…

The table…

Keeping perfect time and rhythm with the song.

Ida-May and George joined in the chorus with Maybelle, as did Eloise and Lucy, Auggie and Leroy, and before I knew it, the entire table was belting out “Oh Happy Day!” in joyous harmonies.

Even Chet started howling with delight from under the table.

Everyone sang except me and Lovesong. “Now do you believe me?” he asked, leaning close to my face.

I could feel the heat of his words against my cheek.

I could smell paprika and cayenne pepper on his sweet, spicy breath.

I closed my eyes, wishing Joel could be here right now.

I thought about how much he would have loved this.

I thought about how much he should have been the one sitting here in this magical musical moment, not me.

And yet the only reasonIwas here… was because he was no longer here.

I opened my eyes and quickly brushed away the tear that fell, happy that Lovesong couldn’t see it.

“Okay, I believe you now,” I uttered. “Yes. I believe you.”

Out through the back door of the kitchen was a path that led to the juke joint shack next door. After three glasses of gin at the dinner table, I wasn’t entirely sure how I managed to cave in to the invitation to the bar next door. Hell, I was struggling to figure out how three glasses could get me this drunk. I used to be able to go head-to-head with Keith Richards in interview sessions that turned into all-nighters in the private cinema inhis mansion, alternating between Tarantino and Disney movies while we polished off one bottle of tequila after another.

But I hadn’t been this drunk since that ill-fated lunch with Margot and Brad and Mike on the East River.

Oh, how very, very long ago that felt now. And yet, in reality, it was only days ago.

Life can change quickly when it wants to.

“That wasn’t gin you were drinking,” Lovesong breathed into my ear as he felt for a seat for himself, then one for me, and sat us both down at a table in the rickety, ramshackle bar. “That was Maybelle’s home-brewed shine.”

“Maybelle’s what?”

He pointed to a sign above the bar, although he missed by at least three feet. Not because he was drunk. “Can’t you read? I’m told there’s a sign there. Not that I’ve ever seen it, but Leroy was damn proud of himself the day he painted the sign and hung it up.”

I blinked and focused on the sign over the shelves of booze.

The bar was calledMoonshine Maybelle’s.

It was a small and intimate juke joint, with a dozen tables, stools at the bar, and a row of windows facing out onto the street, their shutters open and the night breeze swaying in like someone who had had too much to drink.

Someone like me.

“Maybelle runs a moonshine bar?” I asked, probably more shocked than I needed to be. “As well as Maybelle’s Manor?”

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