Love Me Tender

by Laurie Horowitz

  Nola stands up and waves with her whole arm. “I got you a seat!” she shouts. Leslie’s glad that no one’s on stage now, but also suspects that it might not matter to Nola. She obviously likes to be noticed. Her red hair is so voluminous, a family of goldfinches could nest in there and no one would be the wiser. And those red cowboy boots. Leslie has never seen a woman accessorize a little black dress with a pair of shit kickers. Nola looks like she should be on the cover of Garden & Gun. Leslie threads her way toward the empty seat at Nola’s table.

  “I’m so glad you showed. I was afraid you weren’t going to come. I’m dying for you to see my boy in action. You’ll think you’re looking at Elvis Presley’s ghost. I swear to God.”

  “Do you really believe that Patton is related to Elvis Presley?” Leslie levels her eyes at Nola. This usually causes a liar to look away, but Nola holds Leslie’s gaze.

  “I absolutely believe it,” Nola says with enthusiasm. “And you will, too, when you see him perform.”

  Patton is jumpy. He thinks he might throw up. He knows this is his big chance, and he doesn’t want to mess it up. Since the Bluebird has no green room or backstage area, Patton goes out behind the building and tries to calm himself. He’s got to go on in a few minutes. They often do in-the-round shows at the Bluebird. It’s intimate. Maybe he’ll be less nervous when he’s standing behind the microphone. If he wasn’t feeling so jittery, he’d be out in the crowd sitting with Nola.

  He should probably have a shot of bourbon to calm his nerves. He goes back inside and scans the room. One of Patton’s musical heroes, Bragg Evans, is standing in the corner talking to a hottie in skin-tight jeans. She’s young enough to be Bragg’s daughter or even his granddaughter. If Patton wasn’t about to go on, he’d go over there to introduce himself, even if it meant interrupting Bragg’s pitch. Patton wonders if he’ll be like that in another thirty or forty years. Will he be going back to his old haunts to keep his act fresh? And will he be trying to score with groupies? Jeez, that isn’t Patton’s idea of a happy future. He wants a wife and family someday, and he has no intention of turning into a cliché, popping Viagra to disguise nothing so much as a deep disinterest.

  With her Dolly Parton business attire and Loretta Lynn hairstyle, Nola would be hard to miss in any crowd. And there is Leslie sitting right beside her. She is wearing a simple silk T-shirt dress that clings to her body in a delicious way. She has a polish that Patton doesn’t see around here too often. Everything about Leslie is clean and pressed. She walks like she’s a member of the royal family. She seems to have been born with a sense that the world belongs to her. Patton finds that kind of confidence alluring. The people he knew growing up were scrappers—nothing belonged to them, and they knew it only too well.

  If Patton had the self-assurance of birthright, who knows what he would have become by now. Even if his background is made up, it wasn’t until he claimed a past that his career started to take off. It has given Patton a little something extra. This is what he has to remember when he gets up to sing tonight. Whether he is related to Elvis Presley or not, Patton is a part of the great heritage that is country music, and he can stand proudly on the shoulders of that.

  Patton looks for Hunter, but doesn’t see him. Patton can’t think about that now because he’s on. When he hits the stage, his nervousness fizzles out, and Patton turns into a souped-up hot rod running on all cylinders.

  “I told him to dress like Elvis, but he ignored me,” Nola says, leaning toward Leslie. Nola signals the waiter for another couple of drinks. “I have a passion for Dickel’s Tennessee Whiskey. They say it’s mellow as moonlight.”

  Mellow as moonlight. Leslie can’t help but appreciate these southerners for their way with words. The waiter comes back and puts four whiskeys on the table.

  “But there are only two of us,” Leslie says.

  Nola picks up a glass. “You never know when the waiter is going to get busy. Better safe than sorry. Drink up. We’re celebrating my promotion and my brand-new expense account. And I have you to thank. I think getting you down here to interview Patton was the thing that put me over the top. It showed my company that my connections are far-reaching.”

  “It was you who got me down here?”

  “Olive Poynter and I were in the same sorority at Lafayette College. Didn’t she tell you?”

  Leslie doesn’t want to look like she’s been left out of the loop, so she lies. “Oh, right. I forgot.” It’s a lame save, but at least she gives it a shot. What difference does it make if Olive and Nola colluded in this? Leslie still got the opportunity to write a terrific article.

  Leslie’s glass magically refills itself. No matter how much she drinks, the glass never empties. After about three drinks, the ninety proof whiskey goes down as smoothly as chocolate sauce. Leslie stops counting after that. A glance at Patton onstage makes Leslie’s heart lodge in her throat. He’s magnificent up there. She has to admit that. She could have sworn that yesterday his hair was darker. It had made his blue eyes almost purple.

  But this man is definitely Patton—or at least his identical twin. He has lighter coloring. It’s almost like Henry’s: brown and tipped with gold. Without all the gunk Patton had in his hair, his curls fall loose. Stripped of the Elvis paraphernalia, there is something even more Elvis about Patton—something authentic, something arresting. It’s in the swing of his hips and the tilt of his head. He seduces the audience. Leslie can tell by the way the energy in the room has shifted.

  His magnetism is working overtime on her. When Patton sings “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” Leslie feels like the two of them are alone in the café. It’s an illusion, and Patton is creating it just like a conjurer in a magic act. That’s what a great entertainer can do. That’s what Elvis could do, and even though Leslie recognizes it as sorcery, it is having its way with her.

  Leslie knows she’s especially susceptible to it. She’s a sucker for the leading men of musical theater. At Deerfield Academy, she fell for James Winthrop, who played Hugo Peabody in Bye Bye Birdie. Sometimes, these infatuations are temporary, the length of a dream that’s over in the morning. She wakes up all flushed and pumped with the feeling of infinite possibility. Other times, she has tried to make the feeling last by turning her make-believe love into reality. It has never worked out, not yet.

  Patton mixes ballads with rockabilly hits, and when he stops with a wild slap of the thigh and a loud thank-you, the room erupts in applause. No one is more enthusiastic than Leslie, who claps so hard her palms sting. Patton starts to play “Jailhouse Rock,” and when he begins to twist, a woman in the back lets out a squeal.

  Leslie dips her head toward Nola. “That your doing?” she asks, referring to the shriek. Nola acts all innocent, but she looks like a satisfied cat. Leslie stands and lets out a shout. The rest of the audience follows her lead. People get up and sway, hoot, and holler. Onstage, Patton’s smile is like a spotlight directed at her. At the end of the song, when the crowd is in a frenzy, Patton makes a significant shift in tone.

  “I’d like to try something new out on y’all.”

  It takes a minute for the room to quiet down.

  “Shit,” Nola says. “I specifically told him not to do this.” Nola upturns her glass into her mouth.

  “Do what?” Leslie asks.

  “He’s about to play a song he wrote this afternoon. Never a good idea. The guy hasn’t listened to a thing I’ve said. Maybe I should try to stop him. This could ruin everything.” Nola begins to stand, but Leslie puts her hand on Nola’s arm.

  “It’s too late,” Leslie says. Too late to stop him and too late to stop herself from falling for him. She’s hurtling over the edge of desire, no parachute in sight.

  “It’s called ‘Northern Lights’.” Patton launches into a ballad about a boy from the south and a girl from the north who fall in love. She shines like the Northern Lights.

  Leslie has never seen herself as the kind of woman men write songs about, especially when
she’s in her hard-edged reporter persona. She figures that you have to be soft to inspire a song, and she’s been wearing her ambition like a hazmat suit.

  When Patton’s song comes to a close, there’s a moment of scary silence. Patton stands there, his head bowed, waiting. Leslie is the first to start clapping, but she is quickly joined by the entire audience, who stands up around her and gives Patton the ovation the song deserves. Leslie remains seated, almost in a trance, until Nola pulls her to her feet.

  Chapter 13

  Before Patton enters the crowd, he goes into the back alley to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his face with a bandana he keeps in his back pocket. Shit. That felt good. It must have been Nola who started the standing ovation, and he probably has her to thank for all the hooting and hollering. That girl knows what she’s doing. No doubt about it. Still, Patton feels lousy about Hunter. He wasn’t in the audience. Patton pushes his hair back from his forehead and is very glad that his hand does not come back covered in pomade. He doesn’t mind the idea of creating a facade—even Elvis did that—but Patton wants to make his own mark.

  He saw Leslie out there. Now, he wants to rush toward her and take her in his arms. Let that be his reward for a job well done. It would be like the end of Rocky—the first and only Rocky that Patton thinks is worth a damn—where Rocky is all bashed up and screaming for his girl, Adrian. If success finds Patton, there will be plenty of women, but he only wants the one who is sitting beside Nola. And he can’t wait another minute.

  When Nola sees him, she jumps up and enfolds him in a bear hug. He wriggles loose and grins. He knows Nola doesn’t mean anything when she presses her formidable breasts against him, but he doesn’t want Leslie to get the wrong idea. Patton can be a little reserved. His mother, Jo Lynne, poured her affection all over the place like a leaky jug. It’s probably the reason Patton was conceived, but still, people who gush make Patton uncomfortable.

  Leslie stands up, and Patton doesn’t know what to do so he leans over and pecks her on the cheek.

  “Thank you for coming,” he says.

  “Thank you for the flowers,” she says. He has no idea what she’s talking about, so he just smiles. “You were fantastic up there.” Leslie’s enthusiasm illuminates her face and in the muted light of the club, she looks like she bathed in moonlight. He wants to take her face in his hands and feel her lips against his. Instead, he sits down in the empty chair at their table.

  “You didn’t see Hunter?” he asks Nola.

  “Who?”

  “My friend Hunter. You met him at the Stompin’ Grounds.”

  “Right,” Nola says. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him.”

  At the mention of Hunter, Leslie cringes. Little does Patton know that his best friend made it possible for her to write her scathing story. Better not to think about it. Leslie’s brother always says that she’s good at compartmentalizing, and she needs that now more than ever.

  She’s a little drunk. Okay, more than a little. Maybe that’s why Patton looks so good to her. Explosions are going off below her belly button. Tiny fireworks. Patton could look like Quasimodo, and it wouldn’t matter now. She’s hooked. He’ll always look good to her now. Part of her—and that would be the drunk part—is very happy about it. But part of her has always felt that this kind of desire is like catching a disease for which there is no known cure. Leslie realizes that it is utterly irrational to fall for a country music singer, especially this one, since he is likely to be ruined by the piece she just wrote. There is no future in this, but she doesn’t have to think about that, not tonight. She is in a strange city, and she can be a different version of herself.

  “You didn’t do it my way,” Nola says to Patton. “Lucky for you, it turned out all right.”

  “I had to take the chance,” Patton says.

  “No, you didn’t. People say stuff like that, but it’s rarely true.”

  “Well, let’s just say I got a solid pinch from my sense of integrity.”

  Integrity, Nola thinks. Is this guy for real? She looks at Patton, then at Leslie. The two of them are looking at each other in a way that Nola understands perfectly. She might as well take off. They don’t even know she’s there. And that’s after everything she’s done for this guy.

  Well, fortunately for her, Nola’s not in love with him. This is commerce. Her brief inkling that she and Patton could turn into a Nashville power couple should have been snuffed out as soon as she heard “Northern Lights.” Nola looks pointedly at her phone. “I’m gonna go. Things to do. People to see.”

  Patton manages to rip his eyes away from Leslie long enough to say good-bye and even toss Nola a quick thank-you. Nola sashays out of the Bluebird, making sure everyone gets a good look at her butt in its tight black dress.

  She glances back once. Patton is transfixed, but not on her.

  Chapter 14

  Patton puts his key in the lock to the front door of his bungalow. Leslie hopes like hell Hunter isn’t in there. It would blow everything. Back at the Bluebird, she thought of suggesting that they go back to her hotel, but that wouldn’t necessarily make the problem of Hunter go away. Besides, she was curious to see where Patton lived.

  Though they are not touching, the force field between them is so strong that Leslie feels as if they are. As drunk as she is, she’s still hyper-conscious of a zinging energy between them. She expects Patton’s place to be like a frat house. He is only twenty-six, after all, and when two guys in their mid-twenties share living space, it isn’t exactly the recipe for a beautiful house.

  Leslie follows Patton into the living room. There are no half-empty beer bottles peppering the flat surfaces, nor are there any takeout boxes waiting to be thrown away. The room may be a bit shabby, but it’s clean and orderly. Musical genius meets Zen monk.

  That’s all she can register because Patton is standing only millimeters away. He lifts her chin so that she is looking into his dark-blue eyes. Then, he kisses her. It isn’t until she drinks in this kiss that she realizes how thirsty she has been. Patton wraps her in his arms, Rhett Butler style, crushing her against his chest.

  Leslie’s read that some people play the washboard as an instrument. Patton’s washboard abs would make beautiful music. She wants to play them with her tongue. She begins to unbutton the shirt he changed into after the show, and he helps her by ripping it apart, shooting buttons across the room. They laugh at their own enthusiasm. Patton helps Leslie lift her dress over her head, and she flings it into the corner. She usually wears simple athletic underwear, but tonight she chose La Perla—a set of bra and panties in white lace. On some level, she must have known what could happen, or even wished for it.

  “Where’s your roommate?” she asks. Her voice cracks. It’s an “I’ve gone too far to come back” voice.

  “I don’t know.” Patton sounds husky, passionate. He can’t flick open the hook on Leslie’s bra fast enough, so he tugs the cups down and covers her breasts with his palms. “You are so beautiful.”

  “My breasts are too small.”

  “They’re perfect.” He leans down and feasts on each one.

  Leslie knows that there is no such thing as perfection in this world, but this sensation comes very near to it. She wants to feel the length of Patton’s body against hers. She pulls his head toward her face and kisses him. He leans in and scoops her up in one motion. She didn’t realize that she was the kind of woman you could pick up like this. She’s tall, but Patton’s taller, and he cradles her with ease. He lays her gently on the bed, then straddles her, looking down into her face.

  When he smiles, she shivers. Her legs tingle, and she wants him inside her. Her tongue and fingers are no longer taking messages from her brain. They are being ruled by something else entirely, by a queen in a kingdom so deep and magical that Leslie knows she could get lost there and never come back.

  Patton’s fingertips are calloused from playing the guitar, and she loves their texture and the way they feel on her
skin. Patton closes his eyes and breathes fast as if he’s about to reach their final destination, but then stops and twists out of his jeans in one swift motion. Then, she, too, is naked and Leslie wonders if there is anything in this world that feels as good as this. The pressure of a man’s body—this man’s body—against her own is so delicious. And as it turns out, Patton’s rhythm and musicality are not limited to the stage.

  It’s hours before they come up for air.

  “I’ll be right back,” Patton says. He jumps out of bed and walks naked in the shadows to the bedroom door. Leslie watches him. He has a terrific ass, high and round and firm. His shoulders are broad and muscled. She could gaze at him coming and going for a good long time. He has a birthmark on his left butt-cheek that looks like a thumbprint. That slight imperfection twists her heart.

  When Patton is gone, Leslie turns on the bedside lamp and looks around. The room is not exactly a shrine to Elvis Presley, but it comes close. It’s not a temple of tackiness, however. Patton has old album covers leaning on a shelf in the tasteful way that interior designers sometimes display artwork. There is a large black-and-white photo of Elvis playing the guitar and a framed autographed TV Guide with Elvis on the cover. The only thing that could be considered tacky is a Graceland snow globe that Leslie, despite herself, finds charming. It’s on the nightstand beside her. She picks it up and shakes. A whole world appears inside, a world she never thought she wanted to enter, but things change. She’d happily dance around in that snow globe so long as she could do it with Patton. Her brain has gone all syrupy.