Page 27 of Sounds Like Love

I SCRATCHED Adeep indent into the corner of my notebook with my pen, trying to come up with something that rhymed withgeyser.Not that the lyric was particularly good—how good could “my feelings for you are like a geyser” be?—but it was all I had, and if that wasn’t disheartening enough, I didn’t know what those feelings were. Hatred? Love? A fire hose of regret?

It sounded more and more like a depressing porno.

And it didn’thelpthat I had a song stuck in my head. Not even a song—amentionof a song, a sliver of one. A few melody lines on repeat. And I couldn’t for the life of me figure out where it came from.

Rooney had texted me earlier today, asking how my vacation was going, but I knew she was fishing for an update on my writer’s block. I just sent her another margarita emoji and hoped she didn’t prod.

Dad came into the kitchen and called to me, “Look sharp!” He tossed me the keys to the Revelry. They bounced off my hand and landed with a clatter on top of my notebook.Well, that wasn’t ominous at all. “Why don’t you go open up while your mom finishes up with her rummy tournament? She’s down in the rankings, so it’ll be a while,” he said, from the other side of the kitchen. “You know how she is.”

I looked back at the notebook, and I couldn’t remember a time when a half-scrawled page ever looked so imposing. I frowned at the keys.

“Make sure the Steinway’s set up for tonight and the shelves are stocked, I have a feeling we’ll need ’em. The Rocket Men always manage to attract the bingo parlor gals on their nights,” he added with a wink. “And besides, you look like you’re stuck.”

I closed my fingers around the keys and held them tightly. I wanted to ask him about the Revelry, about when they decided, what date it would happen, whom they’d sell it to—but all I could think was … “I’m not stuck,” I said a little too defensively. I felt jittery. “How do I look stuck?”

He rolled his eyes, and my anxiety numbed. Because he couldn’t know. I hadn’t told anyone about my writer’s block. “Okay, you’re notstuck, but you don’t look like you’re having fun, either.”

“Work isn’t always fun, Dad.”

“Especially when you work too hard,” he replied. “It does no one good to keep going all the time. You’ll burn yourself slap up. Whenever I need a break, I do something unexpected. Take a walk. Chase some seagulls. Shove firecrackers into anthills …”

“You donot.”

“I used to!”

“What, a thousand years ago?”

“Back in an age before dinosaurs. Did you know they probably hadfeathers?” he added, taking a box that read Tobacco from the drawer,and his old pipe out of his shirt pocket. “Wild stuff, daughter, wild stuff.”

I jammed my notepad back into my purse. “You always said seagulls were like pterodactyls.”

“It’s their squawks, I swear. Incites the fight-or-flight response in me. So? Care to do this old man a favor?”

Not like I had much else to do. I swung the keys around my finger and hopped off the stool. “Well thensomeonehas to open, I guess. AC still needs to be kicked to turn on?”

“Like God intended.”

It never changed. “You’re agnostic.”

“Praise be to our spaghetti overlords,” he intoned, shooing me out of the kitchen. Then he popped open the box, and the smell was so strong it alone almost knocked me out of the room. There wasn’t tobacco in there, not by a long shot.

Then again, as long as I’d known my father, there never had been.

I BOOTED UPthe register behind the bar and checked the thermostat because it felt hotter than hell in the Rev, but the AC was already cranking—afterI’d kicked it a few times—so I hoped that the Rocket Men wouldn’t melt onstage. It was always so much hotter with the stage lights on you.

Every once in a while, I heard the flutter of wings, but when I squinted up into the rafters, there was nothing there. Dad swore he had gotten rid of that errant seagull months ago.

The afternoon sunlight and the bright halogens overhead were not very forgiving to the Revelry in the daylight. Shadows easily concealed the scuff marks and discolorations on the wooden floors, the nicks in the pillars, the names scratched into the bar and the tables.Everything was outdated and faded—even the neon lights above the liquor shelves. At night, I could convince myself that the Revelry was timeless, but in the light of day, all I could see was time.

Even the photographs pinned to the walls in the foyer were faded and yellowed.

In the box office, I found the photo Dad had taken of the Bushels to put up on the wall. So I took the step stool out of the office and carried it with me into the lobby.

There were so many photos on the walls now, it was hard to find space for more. My parents refused to take any of them down, so who knew how many layers there were. I guessed we’d find out soon when they sold the place.

I was so distracted that I didn’t notice the music until I accidentally slammed my toe into the step stool. But there it was—again. The song that was in my head. That damn earworm. Was there a radio on in here?

“You hear it, too?”

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