Steve disappeared down the hall to the front room, and the green eyes came back to my face. “I haven’t forgotten your name, have I?”
“No.” I put my hand out, and he shook it. “John Deacon.”
“Banjo player,” he added. “I’m Willy Silver. Guitar and fiddle.”
“Not dulcimer?”
“Not usually. But I dabble in strings.”
That’s when Lisa came out of the kitchen.
Lisa waited tables at Orpheus. She looked like a dancer, all slender and small and long-boned. Her hair was a cirrus cloud of red-gold curls; her eyes were big, cat-tilted, and grey; and her skin was so fair you should have been able to see through it. I’d seen Waterhouse’s painting The Lady of Shalott somewhere (though I didn’t remember the name of the painter or the painting then; be kind, I was barely seventeen), and every time I saw Lisa I thought of it. She greeted me by name whenever I came to Orpheus, and smiled, and teased me. Once, when I came in with the tail-end of the flu, she fussed over me so much I wondered if it was possible to get a chronic illness on purpose.
Lisa came out of the kitchen, my heart gave a great loud thump, she looked up with those big, inquiring eyes, and she saw Willy Silver. I recognised the disease that struck her down. Hadn’t she already given it to me?
Willy Silver saw her, too. “Hullo,” he said, and looked as if he was prepared to admire any response she gave.
“Hi.” The word was a little breathless gulp. “Oh, hi, John. Are you a friend of John’s?” she asked Willy.
“I just met him,” I told her. “Willy Silver, Lisa Amundsen. Willy’s here for open stage.”
He gave me a long look, but said, “If you say so.”
I must have been feeling masochistic. Lisa always gets crushes on good musicians, and I already knew Willy was one. Maybe I ought to forget the music and just commit seppuku on stage.
But you can’t forget the music. Once you get the itch, it w
on’t go away, no matter how much stage fright you have. And by the time my turn came—after a handful of guys-on-stools-with-guitars, two women who sang a capella for too long, a woman who did Leonard Cohen songs on the not-quite-tuned piano, and the Orpheus Tin-and-Wood Toejam Jug Band—I had plenty of stage fright.
Then Willy Silver leaned over from the chair next to me and whispered, “Take your time. Play the chord progression a couple of times for an intro—it’ll settle you down.”
I looked up, startled. The white streak in his hair caught the light, and his eyes gleamed green. He was smiling.
“And the worst that can happen isn’t very bad.”
I could embarrass myself in front of Lisa…and everyone else, and be ashamed to ever show my face in Orpheus again. But Willy didn’t look like someone who’d understand that.
My hands shook as if they had engine knock. I wanted to go to the bathroom. Steve clumped up on stage, read my name from the slip of paper in his hand and peered out into the dark room for me. I hung the banjo over my shoulder and went up there to die for my art.
I scrapped the short opening I’d practised and played the whole chord progression instead. The first couple measures were shaky. But banjos give out a lively noise that makes you want to have a good time, and I could feel mine sending those messages. By the time I got around to the words, I could remember them, and sing them in almost my usual voice.
I got a bird that whistles, honey, got a bird,
Baby, got a bird that will sing.
Honey, got a bird, baby, got a bird that will sing.
But if I ain’t got Corinna, it just don’t mean,
It don’t mean a natural thing.
At the back of the room, I could just see the halo of Lisa’s hair. I couldn’t see her face but at least she’d stopped to listen. And down front, Willy Silver sat, looking pleased.
I did “Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight” and “Newry Highwayman.” I blew some chords and forgot some words, but I lived through it. And people applauded. I grinned and thanked them and stumbled off the stage.
“Do they clap because they like what you did,” I asked Willy, “or because you stopped doing what they didn’t?”
Willy made a muffled noise into his coffee cup.