My Cheating Heart

by Ann Steinke

  Lou started to object, but Scott overruled him. “Yeah, definitely. And we also need something more recognizable,” he said. “We can do the familiar songs first and maybe close with Lou’s piece. So what do you guys think.”

  “Great,” I put in. “And we should do Tell It Like It Is first. If our name is High Pressure, we need a rocker to open with.”

  “Right,” Scott said, taking up his electric guitar. “Why don’t we try that song now?”

  The rest of us grabbed up our instruments and waited for Lou to give us our cue. He counted out three beats with his sticks, nodded, and we went right into it.

  I was playing pretty well, and I was amazed that I managed to submerge myself in the music so that I hardly even noticed Lou. He was set up behind Scott and me, and I couldn’t see him from where I stood, and it helped. If I had had to look at him, I don’t think I could have kept my concentration.

  After practice, we filed into Lou’s house for snacks. The guys wolfed down chips and salsa, and Ter took a piece of paper and tried to work out a new practice schedule. I just stared at my hands, which were wrapped around a can of soda, in an effort to avoid making eye contact with Lou. Ter’s voice washed over me as she went over everyone’s work hours. I wanted to get out of there—out of Lou’s kitchen and away from him. My efforts to not look at him were really beginning to wear me down.

  “Okay, listen up, everyone. This is it,” Ter announced, waving the schedule in the air. “Tomorrow’s out. Krista and I work Wednesdays. But we have Thursday, all afternoon and evening. We’ll have to just stay here and practice like crazy from right after school until we collapse. Friday, Krista and I work, so that’s out. But we’ve got Saturday morning and afternoon, since Scott doesn’t work then.” She looked at each of us, her eyes round and alert. “Do you realize how little time we have to prepare for this guy who’s going to hear us?” she said.

  Scott and Lou nodded, and I gave a ragged sigh. “I hope we’re ready come Saturday,” I said.

  “We just have to be,” Scott stated emphatically.

  Ter took me home, talking nonstop about how incredible it was that we were going to have a chance to play for an audience. I was pretty excited too, but I also wished that Scott had arranged for us to practice in front of some of our friends. That way we’d know how we sounded to someone other than ourselves. And maybe we’d have more confidence about playing in front of a paying audience.

  Then Ter started to talk about Lou again, which made me tune out and stare glassy eyed out the window. It occurred to me then that Thursday night was going to be tough. I would have to remain in the same room with Lou for roughly six hours straight.

  When I got home I marched directly to my room and took out a large photo of Ter. I placed it on my music stand as if erecting a shrine. And in a sense it was a shrine. It was a tribute to so many years of a great friendship with a truly wonderful friend. I would never jeopardize my friendship with Ter. I would never go after a guy she was seeing. Of course, if it worked out the other way . . . if Lou were to show interest in me . . . A little spark of hope flared briefly in my heart, like a match, but before I could carry the thought too far, I snuffed it out. No. Even if Lou made the first move, it would still be an act of betrayal.

  I called my mother before leaving work the next night to see if she needed anything. For all her organization, she gets a little out of whack when it comes to keeping the kitchen stocked. So I’d gotten into the habit of checking in with her before coming home. And sure enough, she needed orange juice.

  I drove south on the highway, telling myself that it would be silly to go to a large grocery store for one item. A small store—like the Quick Stop—would make a lot more sense. But to go there would really be pushing my luck. It would be like reaching out to touch fire knowing full well you’re going to get burned.

  Somehow the fear of being burned wasn’t a big enough deterrent. Or maybe, on a subconscious level, I wanted to get burned. I exited the highway and parked in front of Lou’s father’s store. Maybe Lou wasn’t working tonight anyway, I told myself, but I knew full well he probably was.

  When I stepped through the door and saw him, I felt like bubbles were traveling up my body and popping in my head. He was wiping down the glass doors of the freezer section. I slowly made my way over to the refrigerator section and began searching for the orange juice.

  “Krista,” he said from right beside me.

  I turned to him and smiled. “Hi. My mother needed orange juice,” I explained unnecessarily.

  He nodded. “Oh.” He was looking at me intently.

  I felt as if I were on fire. Blindly, I reached for a quart of juice and clutched it to my chest. The shock of the cold container woke me up and, with a start, I edged toward the front of the store.

  Lou followed after me.

  “Scott was just here,” he reported. “You just missed him.”

  “Oh” was all I could think of to say.

  Lou stepped behind the register and rang up my juice. “That’s $2.95,” he said.

  “Okay.” I took out three singles and handed them to him.

  He took them from my hand slowly “He was talking about you,” he said tentatively.

  “Oh really?” I answered inadequately. I wondered if he was expecting me to react in a particular way.

  “Yeah. He’s always talking about you,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything. Why was he telling me this? I wondered.

  “You nervous?” he asked as he gave me my change.

  “W-what?”

  “About Saturday.”

  “Oh.” I gave a kind of strangled laugh. He’d changed the subject on me, I realized. “Yeah,” I answered. “You?”

  “Sure. I just hope we don’t blow it.” His eyes stared into mine. Was he talking only about music? Or was there more meaning in what he was saying?

  “That would be terrible,” I said, still looking at him.

  “Yeah.”

  He handed me the orange juice in a paper bag. I took it, my eyes focusing on his hands. He had long fingers—musician’s hands. They were the color of caramel. Beautiful hands for a guy. I ripped my gaze from them and looked up at him. He had a funny-looking smile on, kind of a lopsided slant on his mouth. His lips . . . how would it feel to . . . ? I trampled down the rest of that thought.

  “Well, see you tomorrow,” I said, backing away from the counter.

  “Yeah.” His dark eyes lingered on my face. I was having trouble breathing.

  I somehow managed to get out the door and back to my car, moving like a sleepwalker. Dropping behind the wheel, I let myself look into the store one more time and was just in time to see Lou slam his fist into the metal frame of the freezer door. My God! I thought in shock. Why did he do that?

  Once I got home, I put the orange juice away and went to my room. I lay down on my bed without turning on the lights and closed my eyes. Had it been my imagination that Lou’s eyes had said things his mouth didn’t? Was it just wishful thinking on my part to imagine that he might actually be attracted to me?

  I thought about how he’d hit the freezer door. If he did like me, I reasoned, he’d be facing the same struggles I was experiencing. Like me, Lou would be trapped by his loyalty to Scott and unable to betray his friend, even if it meant denying himself something he wanted.

  I flicked on the bedside lamp, and my glance fell on a photo album beneath it. I sat up, pulling the album into my lap. I opened to the first page. It was like reading an autobiography. My childhood lay before me. I had written all kinds of silly captions under the pictures. There was a snapshot of the time Ter and I had wanted to go camping in our backyard. We were eight, and my father had erected a tent for us. We had been afraid of the dark, so he had pulled out an extension cord and plugged in my Mickey Mouse night-light. “The brave explorers,” I’d written underneath the photo. I laughed. It was all so silly.

  Then there was a picture of Ter and me playing in a recital, a p
icture of us dressed for our first date back in ninth grade, a picture of Cathy and Jojo, Ter and me lying in our bathing suits on the patio with our noses covered in zinc ointment. “Sex goddesses at play,” the caption read.

  I pried open the plastic sheet over a letter Ter had sent me after I had moved to Washington. She’d written that she missed me. Cathy and Jojo were nice, she’d said, but nothing was the same without me. I remembered how I had felt the day I got that letter. . . .

  And suddenly all my emotions welled up inside me. “Oh, Ter,” I said out loud. A hot wet tear rolled down my cheek, falling on the letter and staining it. “I can’t do this to you!”

  “You guys want to try that again?” Scott asked, running a chord up and down his guitar.

  “Yeah, okay,” Lou mumbled.

  Teresa shrugged. “Fine with me,” she said. “We weren’t exactly sensational.”

  “Krista?”

  Scott’s voice startled me to attention. “Um, yeah,” I replied.

  Scott looked at me for a second, then shook his head. “Okay, from the top,” he called out.

  We broke into the first bars of Heart’s Tell It Like It Is, but I couldn’t seem to get into the music. There was so much tension between Lou and me now, yet we both acted as if nothing was unusual. My head felt as if it were filled with scrambled eggs. Then my fingers stumbled over a note that sounded obscene, making the others stop playing instantly.

  “Whoops,” Scott said, touching my shoulder. “You got a sour note there.” He looked at me with concern.

  “Sorry,” I said, looking down quickly.

  “Hmm,” Scott said thoughtfully. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you guys about Saturday.”

  When we’d met outside the band room before orchestra that day, Scott had had more great news. The man who owned the coffeehouse was going to give us a chance to play for an audience that same Saturday of our audition. He told Scott he’d listen to us in the morning, and that if we were good enough, we could play that night.

  So today’s practice was even more important now. It was our last rehearsal before Saturday.

  And I was playing as if I had palsy.

  “Count of three, guys,” Scott instructed.

  Lou did the count, and the rest of us joined in. But within sixty seconds, it became apparent that I wasn’t the only one having trouble. Scott signaled for us to stop. Then he turned around and looked at Lou.

  “Amigo, it might be my imagination, but your drums sound like they’ve got a terminal disease,” he said lightly. “Can you give them resuscitation so they’ll keep up?”

  Scott was clearly joking, but Lou didn’t look amused. “Yeah,” he said tersely.

  Raising one eyebrow in consternation, Scott said, “I think we’re just a little bit overplayed right now. We’ve been at this for three hours anyway. Why don’t we just can this tonight?”

  Lou was watching him without emotion.

  Scott went on. “We’re probably all crazy thinking about Saturday morning,” he said. “Maybe we’d better just chill out for the rest of the night. What do you think?”

  Scott was being incredibly nice, I thought. It was only me and Lou who were playing badly, yet Scott wasn’t pointing any fingers at us. I sort of wished he’d been disgusted with us. If he’d yelled at us, it would have eased some of the guilty feelings that swamped me.

  “Well, since nobody’s arguing, I guess that means yes,” Scott said. “So let’s go have a few snacks.” He looked at Lou. “Where’s the stuff, amigo?”

  Lou didn’t answer right away. “There’s some chips and soda in the house,” he said, fiddling with his drumsticks.

  “Chips and soda?” Scott repeated incredulously. “No chili con queso?”

  “I wasn’t in the mood to cook last night,” Lou said dully.

  Scott walked over to Lou and felt his forehead. “Nope. There’s no fever,” he teased. “But you must be sick. That explains why you don’t seem to know which end of the drumstick to use tonight.”

  Lou gave a half smile, then I suddenly realized that his eyes were fixed on me. Don’t, I begged. Don’t stare at me that way. Something in his expression had made weird little shivers run races up my spine.

  He looked away quickly, as if I’d spoken out loud, and for one terrified moment I wondered if I had.

  “Ter,” I said after a moment. “I’m not feeling so great. I—I have a headache.” It was a white lie. A part of me did ache, but it wasn’t my head. I looked at Ter pleadingly. “Can we go home now?”

  “Oh, Krista, can’t you take some aspirin?” Ter asked, obviously not ready to leave yet. She looked as if she were ready to send down roots right next to Lou, and I felt like a world-class creep.

  “I don’t think there’s enough aspirin in the whole town to take care of this headache,” I answered, fumbling with my guitar strap.

  “Well, okay,” Ter said reluctantly. She walked over to Lou and put her arms around his neck. “I hope you feel better soon, too,” she said in a voice just barely loud enough for me to hear. She planted a big kiss on his mouth before turning to leave.

  I put down Scott’s guitar, hoping no one would notice my jerky, uncoordinated movements.

  Scott walked me over to Ter’s car and took me into his arms. He kissed me slowly and for a long time. “We’ll do okay, Krista, on Saturday. Believe it,” he whispered.

  I wished I could.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  By ten o’clock Saturday morning, the four of us were gathered in Lou’s garage, practicing while we waited for the owner of the coffeehouse. Each of us was reacting to the pressure in different ways. Scott was the most confident, but also the most frenetic. He seemed to be jumping instead of walking, and he danced around while he played his guitar.

  Ter seemed a little subdued. But I knew that was a cover up for a severe case of nerves. Her face was serious and expressionless, and on the keyboard her manner was studious—almost like a classical concert pianist’s.

  Lou appeared to be completely focused on his drums. He never looked up from them, which was unusual because he could play those drums like John Bonham without ever looking at them.

  And I felt as if I were playing under the influence of a really strong cold remedy the kind that makes you feel like all your limbs are weighted with five-pound sacks of flour. My brain sent messages to my hands, but my hands weren’t getting them fast enough.

  Despite our agitated states, Scott seemed happy with our playing. He told us we were terrific and wonderful, and he had us so pumped up by the time we did our audition that I think we all believed in our imminent success.

  Ed Kingston, the owner of the coffeehouse, came in wearing scruffy blue jeans, a sport shirt, and sneakers. He didn’t exactly fit my idea of what the owner of a popular night spot would look like. He introduced himself to each of us, then said, “Okay let’s see what you’ve got.” He stepped back, taking up a position far away from the amplifiers, then nodded for us to begin.

  We played the first number pretty well, then got better with the second, and by the time we’d moved on to the piece Lou wrote, it was as if Ed Kingston were invisible. We really got into it, and while each of us played our solos, the others smiled encouragingly.

  The last notes sounded, and Mr. Kingston immediately broke into applause.

  “Tonight,” he said. “The show begins at eight thirty.” He smiled at us approvingly. “Come around seven thirty to set up.” He shook hands with each of us, then gave Scott directions to his place and left.

  We stared at each other in shock.

  “That’s it?” Ter said in disbelief. “Just like that? We’re in?”

  Scott whooped and ran a wild series of notes up and down his electric guitar. Ter and I hugged each other. And Lou pounded on his drums, bouncing his sticks off the heads and into the air, then catching them to bang out more rhythms.

  Scott put his guitar down and came over to pick me up off my feet. As my legs dangled in midair, he d
anced around in circles. Ter pranced over to Lou, and the two of them hugged. Then they kissed—and I closed my eyes to blot out the sight of it.

  I felt my feet hit the garage floor as Scott put me down. He whooped again and ran over to pound his best friend on the back. Lou punched him in the arm in return. Affection, male style, I thought, smiling at Ter.

  “Okay,” Scott said, finally getting himself calmed down enough to speak. He rubbed his hands together excitedly. “Lou and I will come to your house, Krista, at seven. And you two can follow us in Ter’s car.” He stopped speaking as if an idea had suddenly come to him. “You know, soon we’re going to need some kind of transportation that can carry all four of us and our instruments,” he said.

  “Amigo,” Lou said with a smile. “This is only our first gig. We may not get any more after tonight.” He laughed. “So get a grip, okay?”

  We were all behaving as though someone had just pumped laughing gas into the garage. But Lou was right. We really shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, I thought. We’d just had a good audition in front of one man, but that didn’t mean we’d do as well in a coffeehouse full of strangers.

  That night something happened just before the show that really affected my performance. We had been setting up our instruments, and Ter and I were helping Lou haul his drums out on the small stage. Scott was setting up an amplifier and needed help plugging it in. He turned toward Ter and me. “Hey, can one of you give me hand?” he asked.

  Ter had been holding a drum, so she set it on the ground and clapped the dust off her hands. “Why?” she asked brightly. “Want to get used to hearing applause?”

  I giggled.

  “Funny girl,” Scott said, faking a fierce expression. “As long as you have free hands, come over here and plug this amp in.”

  Ter trotted over, grinning unabashedly.

  I continued to help Lou with his equipment, though I was feeling a little edgy. He reached for the cymbals I was handing to him, and I think I must have let go too soon. Lou lunged for the cymbals. I lurched forward, trying to retain my hold on the metal disks. We collided, Lou’s hands suddenly making contact with my body. One of the cymbals clanged noisily to the ground.