Snake Face Page 14

  Fame was indeed a bird covered with tongues instead of feathers. Tongues wagging about Joe Wayne Brazos. He’d been in a bar fight with the boyfriend of a woman who’d taken a liking to him. In the past, he’d been arrested for drunk driving, accused of fathering children with two young women he hardly knew, and he’d recently had an open fling with a moneyed Texas socialite who was separated but not divorced. No mention of Joe Wayne having a wife. Sylvie wasn’t famous.

  But she had to be married to him. Mae said the last names matched, and there was no resemblance that could make Sylvie this man’s sister. Why else would Sylvie send Gasser to Joe Wayne’s house unless it was also her house? The article said he was on tour right now—in the same part of country Jamie was, and Sylvie had said her husband was on the road. Dabney had told Wendy that Sylvie had a good reason to take time off. Joining her husband would be a good reason. It all fell into place except for her job.

  Did Joe Wayne hide her, then, to market his wild-and-free image? Jamie’s ex-girlfriend had come up with the idea of using his Warlpiri skin name for a stage name, both to market his world music image and to protect his privacy. But marketing who you really were was different from selling a lie.

  No, Joe Wayne wasn’t selling a lie. He was exactly like his image, the kind of bloke who would pretend he had no wife. Even though she frightened him, Jamie felt sorry for Sylvie.

  Hubert arrived in the small bar just as Jamie emerged from the men’s room in one of his new thrift-shop outfits, plastic bags in hand. Even wearing the new-to-him clothes, he still felt shabby and ridiculous, with the jeans too long and the shirt too tight. Should have tried things on.

  It was easy to pick out Mae’s ex. The long-haired, well-made man with his chiseled face and no inch was like the Greek in a way, only younger and more country. Unlike Zeus, though, Hubert wore his perfection like his faded jeans, unaware of it.

  When he walked up and introduced himself, his easy manner and soft voice made Jamie relax a little. He had a different kind of Southern accent than Mae, slower and drawlier. Hubert’s girlfriend, Jen, a petite, perky young woman with bouncy sandy-brown hair and too much makeup on her kitten-like eyes, gushed about how she loved Jamie’s music, thanked him for the free admission, and spontaneously hugged him. Don’t let go. I need an hour of this. Alarmed at his neediness, Jamie let go quickly, apologized for leaving her right away, and went out to look at the van with Hubert.

  “Did you get to a Ford service center?” Hubert asked.

  “Not yet.” The fuck-ups and financial fears were too much to explain. “Crap got in the way. Got a sign on my back that says Rob me.”

  “Yeah, Mae told me. You’ve had some bad luck.” Hubert stopped at a sparkly lime-green Fiesta, opened the hatchback, and got out a toolbox. “So this is its first checkup since it acted funny?”

  “Yeah. Guess that’s stupid, but—”

  “Mae said you might not get around to it.” The firm closing of the little car’s hatch sounded like judgment on Jamie’s incompetence, though Hubert’s tone was mild. “I’ll check it out as well as I can for now. Anything in it you need tonight?”

  The question was odd, but after his warm-ups and sound check Jamie had realized in dismay that he still hadn’t changed, and had taken everything out of the van to get dressed. “Nah. Just an empty suitcase and some memories.”

  Hubert grinned. “Sounds like a song.”

  “Yeah, bloody country rubbish.”

  “You don’t like country?” Hubert unlocked the van and popped the hood, then gave Jamie a flashlight. “Aim that wherever you see my hands going. Country’s all I listened to until Jen expanded my horizons. She loves your music.” Hubert peered into the engine, reached in and moved something. “You dedicated a song to Mae.”

  “Um, yeah, I did.” “Heartbeat of Time” had the subtitle “Song for Mae.” The possibility of ever meeting the one person who might object hadn’t crossed Jamie’s mind. “Mae tell you much about me?”

  Hubert frowned, eyed Jamie with doubt. “Some reason she should have?”

  “Nah. I mean, yeah, she should have. But she wouldn’t think so—sorry. Sounds bad. I never—she never—I wanted—she didn’t—”

  “You hit on her and she turned you down.”

  Jamie exhaled, realizing he’d been close to holding his breath. “Yeah.”

  “She didn’t tell me. She just said you’re a friend, and that her daddy and his partner are old friends of your folks.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. Here you are trying to help me fix my bloody van, and you find out I cracked on to your wife.”

  “My wife.” Hubert slowed down his words and his prodding of the engine. “Yeah, she still is, for a while. Divorce isn’t final.” His mouth twisted into a forced half smile. “Doesn’t sound like it worked out so well for you, either. That’s a pretty sad song.”

  “Yeah. I couldn’t get past friend.”

  Hubert stopped his exploration of the engine again and faced Jamie. “You are seriously into her, aren’t you?”

  “Sorry. Yeah, I am.” Jamie met the other man’s eyes and saw, to his relief, not jealousy but compassion. “Sounds like fucking lunacy, but I fell hard. Knew her four days, and felt like this was it. The big one. Love at first sight.”

  Hubert nodded, resumed his work. “Guess it happens.” Pulling a filthy cylindrical object from the van’s engine, he looked at it under the streetlight. “There’s part of your problem, but I don’t have parts with me.” He shoved it back in. “And the stalling in the mountains and early mornings could have been carburetor icing. I think you might be running on three cylinders, too. I’ll have to take it back to Tylerton and check it out. You can take our car to Richmond and we’ll switch back when you’re in Norfolk.”

  The offer was blinding, like a sudden light in a windowless cellar. “You’ll drive this piece of crap home tonight? You’ll lend me your car? Jesus. You’re a bloody saint. I’ll pay for the fix-up, y’know, this isn’t just a favor—”

  “I know you’ll pay. I’ll make it reasonable.”

  “Because Mae asked you to.” The inner light dimmed in embarrassment, close to humiliation. Told you how fucking ignorant I am about cars. Told you I’m broke.

  Hubert nodded. “Don’t let it bother you. She cares about you. And she’s still got a place in my heart. She asks me to help you, I help.”

  “Did she ...” The seesaw of light and dark teetered. She might care more than Jamie realized. “Did she ask you to loan me the car? Was that her idea?”

  “No.” Hubert closed the hood. “Jen’s.” He smiled fondly. “She gets to hear you twice that way, talked me into hitting your Norfolk show, too, when we bring the van back. She thinks it’s cool that you’re driving her car. Anyway mine’s biodiesel, runs on used restaurant grease. We didn’t want to make you have to fill that tank.” They started back to the bar, and Hubert handed Jamie a key. “Jen’s is a Ford, kind of like Mae’s car, if you’ve been in that, only newer.”

  Hubert opened the hatchback again and put his toolbox back. A Fiesta. The color of a Roswell alien. How cheerful. How entirely unlike Jamie’s life right now. “Thanks.”

  He was taken care of, above and beyond anything he could have expected. These people didn’t even know him and they’d done this for him. Tears filled his eyes, and his chest and throat tightened. Mae had called her ex-husband to help while traveling with her new boyfriend, making Jamie the outsider in all this love and caring, the refugee in the midst of their relationships. The extent to which this moved him bewildered him, but the tears leaked anyway.

  Hubert didn’t notice, or pretended not to. “What was I thinking?” He took the tools back out of the Fiesta’s hatch. “I oughtta take these with me.”

  He returned to the van, opened the driver’s door, and climbed in with one knee on the seat, double-checking the interior. “You sure you got everything out of here?”

  Backpack. New clothes. Phone and chargers, toothbrush and roo in p
ack, flutes in pack. Jamie took a deep breath and pulled himself together. “Yeah.”

  Hubert set the toolbox behind the driver’s seat. “There’s a load of shit in the back.”

  “Jesus. I need to get rid of that. Long story. Only thing of value in there is my bike frame.”

  “What happened to your wheels?”

  “Stolen. Part of the long story.”

  “Shit. Hope you get ’em back. Is that a cat box?” Hubert, still checking out the van’s cargo area, sounded puzzled. “You got a cat on your tour?”

  Jamie’s voice failed. The thought of Gasser brought him close to tears again. He made an effort to reassemble himself and managed to speak without sounding broken. “Lost him.”

  This seemed to touch some irony or sadness in Hubert as he stepped out of the van and relocked it, speaking to its door rather than to Jamie. “Mae can find cats.”

  The mood shift was momentarily puzzling, until Jamie remembered that her psychic work was one of the issues in the breakup of her marriage. “She did. But I haven’t got him back yet.”

  They started toward the bar. “So you’re good with all that woo-woo stuff?”

  “Yeah. Dad’s an anthropologist, studies shamanic cultures, including Mum’s. That’s how they met. I grew up with all that spirit-world stuff. It’s normal.”

  “Really?” Hubert paused at the door, looking at Jamie as if he had not seen him fully before. “And she’s dating some fitness dude she met at school? I don’t mean to get your hopes up, but it seems to me ...”

  “Yeah. Seems to me, too. I’m working on it.”

  Though less inspired than the night before, Jamie’s performance helped reset his heart and head to a better place. He lost focus between songs sometimes, distracted every time the door opened by the expectation of seeing Sylvie, but he gave his audience at least ninety percent of his best. Maybe more, because he had to work so hard at it.

  On the break, he sat with Hubert and Jen for a drink. Jen eagerly plunged into talking about the show. She was what a fan should be, a true music lover who understood it both emotionally and technically, asking about techniques on the bamboo and cedar flutes, about the way Jamie worked as a composer, and what his next album would be like. She admitted shyly that she had recently started playing flute again for the first time in many years. “You inspired me.”

  “Jeezus, that makes my day.” Jamie beamed at Jen and grabbed both her hands across the table, shaking them as if she’d won some award. “Makes my whole bloody tour.”

  Jen started to say more, but they were interrupted by their server delivering a yellow gift bag.

  “Someone does this every night since I got into North Carolina.” Jamie dumped out two bars of red chile dark chocolate and a two-pound bag of green chile pistachios. “Gives me food, stuff I really like”

  Hubert read the label on the chocolate. “Organic. Fair trade.” He sounded approving. “Vegan. That because of you, or the giver?”

  “Me, I think. Weird that someone knows that, though. I don’t blog about food or anything.”

  “Amazing someone knows you’d like this. I never heard of it. Hot peppers and chocolate? Sounds like a bad combination.”

  “Nah—bliss. And it’s not so strange in New Mexico. Open it, try some.”

  Hubert and Jen both made faces and shook their heads, declining the offer. “So someone in North Carolina knows you.” Hubert examined the bag and the handwriting. “Funny they don’t sign it.”

  “Yeah. If it’s some old friend who moved here, y’know, I’d like to ...” It sounded so feeble Jamie gave up. “Don’t think it is.”

  “No. Unsigned, every night.” Jen squirmed. “It’s kinda stalker-ish. You don’t eat the gifts, do you?”

  This struck as Jamie as hilarious. He’d been calling this gift-giver the poisoner and Jen seemed to think so literally. A snort-laugh exploded from him. “Yeah, I do.” He stood, getting ready to go back onstage, and ran a hand along the inch in the too-tight shirt. “I’ve got a stalker who wants to make me fat.”

  Jen frowned. “That’s so mean.”

  Hubert chuckled. “He’s kidding, hon.”

  “I’m not. In my weight management group at Health Quest, I have clients whose spouses do things like that. It’s this possessive control thing. Making the other person fail.” She turned her round hazel eyes to Jamie. “You don’t look like you have a weight problem, though.”

  “Used to. Still fight it.” His imagination presented an image of the snake face man from the bar in Mesilla, fighting off snakes that carried bars of chocolate and giant cookies onto his pink-and-green, snaggle-toothed face, waving them over his mouth. Jen would have no idea why he was laughing, so he stifled it. “As best I can.”

  Jamie returned to the stage. While he introduced his next song, he saw Jen giving the chocolate bars away to their server, and the pistachios to the people at the next table. Then she crossed to the bar and asked the bartender to throw away the bag. Good woman. She’d rescued him yet again. But why? Did he look fat?

  Jen’s goodbye hug, and Hubert’s handshake and reassurance that he’d get the van fixed, left Jamie feeling so undeservedly cared for and rescued he nearly cried again. What was the matter with him? Even he shouldn’t cry that easily.

  The car soothed him, though. The Fiesta was like an automotive version of Jen, bright and pert and protective. It was so small and yet oddly spacious inside, it made him feel as if clowns should come out, hundreds of wild-haired Jamie Ellerbees. It smelled new. He’d never had a new car, only the van, and it was old when he’d acquired it. For the moment, he felt not only safe, but like a child with a new toy.

  He took I-85 North, aiming for Richmond. Since he had no hotel tonight, he might as well drive and put insomnia to a purpose. Staying below the speed limit, making everyone pass, not once did he see a black BMW with Texas plates. Safer and freer still.

  He luxuriated in the CD player and Jen’s huge music collection. She had Vivaldi flute concertos and Jean-Pierre Rampal’s suite for flute and jazz piano, as well as some country and rock—and Jangarrai, of course. The Vivaldi was a bubble of order and beauty, the Rampal suite a flight of freedom. The longer Jamie drove the Fiesta, the more he wanted to keep it and live in it, listening to music and never coming out.

  When he got close to Richmond, the storm that had been hovering over the Southeast for days broke open into a deluge. With a New Mexico resident’s delight in precipitation, he pulled over at a rest stop and watched the rain pour in blinding sheets all around him. It was like being in a castle with a moat. The wind howled the way it did in the monsoon season at home when a blessed ball of thunder rolled in.

  The aches in his bones let go. Jamie tipped the seat back and slept more easily than he had since losing Gasser. No fears. He dreamed he was locked up inside a magic green apple where nothing bad could touch him.

  Outside the apple, though, dangers swarmed: spiders, scorpions, and Sylvie prowled around it, and shadowy people poked around in hotel rooms and in the back of the van, taking everything he owned and replacing it with cookies and chocolate and nuts, and huge mugs of Locally Loco chocolate stout.

  He woke up with a start, relieved to find himself still in the Fiesta. What had alarmed him? Small branches had blown off nearby trees, and one stuck to the windshield like a bony hand. Was that what he’d heard? Tropical depression letting go, having a good cry and a howl.

  He’d forgotten this wasn’t a normal storm, but some freak thing that should have officially stopped happening in November. As if the sky cared. Bloody trauma magnet, he’d be the one to spend the night in a fucking abnormal hurricane in someone else’s nice new car.

  He turned on the radio for a weather report and got country music.

  “Bail. This ship is going under,

  Bail. Keep talking to my lawyer,

  Bail, baby it’s a wonder

  I’m not in jail”—drums, guitars, pounding piano—“and that you don’t bail.�
��

  It was stupid but clever and funny. The singer had a good baritone voice, a little husky but not nasal or strained, and the tune was original with unexpected turns like a mountain road. Jamie couldn’t believe he’d just had a tolerant thought about the country genre.

  The DJ’s robust voice said, “That’s Joe Wayne Brazos’s latest, Bail. And now the weather.”

  Joe Wayne Brazos. Sylvie had probably written that song with him. Fuck. She was actually talented.

  “Hurricane Sylvane has come ashore in the Outer Banks as a Category One storm with wind speed of eighty-five miles an hour, expected to weaken to a tropical storm as it moves up the coast. Look for winds up to sixty miles an hour and heavy rains as far west as the Piedmont for the next twenty-four hours. We’ll keep you posted for flash flood warnings.”

  Twenty-four hours of rain? Flash floods? Am I in the fucking Piedmont?

  Jamie turned off the radio. Hurricane Sylvane. Like Sylvie. The dream crept back around him. Locally Loco chocolate stout. Someone had kept buying him drinks, like a brewpub preview of the poisoner. The unconscious mind was wiser than the waking one. Safe in the magic green apple, he’d been able to look at what he didn’t want to know. What he really already knew.

  Anxiety swept in like the rain and made him long to hold Gasser. It was a poor substitute, but he took the roo from his backpack and held it and petted its remaining ear, calming himself as best he could while his thoughts fell into place with alarming clarity. Jen had suggested the poisoner was undermining him, not really giving. The thief wasn’t after things to sell, but was a saboteur, too. An invisible underminer and saboteur, like the person who’d bought him all those drinks in Austin.

  Wendy had at first thought Sylvie might be the thief, pretending to recover Jamie’s things in order to get him to buy back his own property. Then Wendy had cleared Sylvie’s character and reputation with Dabney at Locally Loco. Mae had initially thought Sylvie might be a crazed fan who stole Jamie’s things in order to get close to him for sex, but Sylvie had not asked for sex or money. She had even returned his flutes.