by Amber Foxx
“Dark of the night in my left-alone bed,
Dark of the heart going out of my head,
I need someone to hold onto, something to lose,
Or I’m gonna drown in these left-alone blues.”
His voice was like a bell, a huge bell rung hard, passionate yet seemingly effortless, with none of the rasping or straining of many rock or blues singers, every note perfectly pitched. In a second verse, he juggled the words in ways that ceased to make sense and explored the melody in variations that reached highs and lows of both sound and feeling. Eyes still closed, he almost danced, swaying, sometimes close to crouching, sometimes lifting and lengthening, only to be pulled down low again as if possessed by the song.
“Streets of the night it’s the walk of the dead,
Dance of the lost going out of my head,
In the dark of my heart holding someone to lose,
Deep in the hole of the left-alone blues.”
It was only when he finished that Mae realized he had sung unaccompanied. No instruments. He’d filled the song and the space with his voice alone. Mae hoped Wendy hadn’t gone out the door yet. If she wanted to discover something new in Jangarrai’s repertoire, this was it. The song left Mae feeling as if she’d been through an emotional catharsis, shaken clear and alive.
As the musicians divvied up the money from the basket after the concert and Mwizenge packed up the remaining Afreaka CDs, Mae came downstairs and took a seat at one of the recently vacated tables near the performers.
Jangarrai swooped in and leaned on the back of an empty chair. “Thanks for staying. This place is closing in a few minutes, so why don’t we head over to the bar at Marisol’s? Buy you a drink, bite to eat. Sound good?”
“I’m a tourist,” she said, “so I don’t know where that is.” She wasn’t ready to get in a car with him. “Is it close?”
“Yeah. I’ll lock my instruments in the van. We can walk.” Straightening up, he hesitated, fidgeted, glanced back at the other musicians, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “D’you mind carrying a few things? Or I can ask them, if you can wait a bit.”
“I can carry things.”
She watched him return to his bandmates. As Jangarrai began slipping his flutes into their cases, Mwizenge laid a hand on Jangarrai’s arm, saying a few words, and Dagmawi smiled, adding something at which the three of them laughed. Did they think he had a date? She could swear the exchange among them had that feel, as if congratulating Jangarrai on a triumph.
She stood as the two African men carried their drums past her toward the exit and wished her a good evening with knowing smiles, like the look Andrea had given her. Darn. He really does think this is a date. She’d never said that. She’d clearly said she wanted to get him in touch with Deborah.
Jangarrai approached Mae with the didgeridoo. “Do the honors with the didg? I’ve got everything else.”
He laid the long bamboo tube across her arms, and walked back to pick up his drum and a backpack containing the flutes. Mae studied the object in her arms. Listening to the CDs, she had imagined something like a bassoon. “This is different from what I thought it’d look like.”
He caught the drum in one arm and felt in his pocket for keys. “Never seen a didg?”
“No. It’s bigger and longer than I’d expected.”
A half-swallowed laugh escaped him as he led them toward the door. The laugh turned into a snort and single hah. Mae didn’t know him well enough to appreciate sexual innuendo from him, and stifled her urge to giggle at his laugh.
He seemed to notice her lack of response, and lost his smile as he held the door for her. “Sorry. Bloody juvenile.” Subdued, he led her across the parking lot to a van that looked old enough to vote. Its faded paint, possibly green at one time, wore a coat of reddish dust. “Hang on.” He unlocked the driver’s door, set the drum in the passenger seat, scrambled into the cargo area, and opened the back gate from the inside. “Sorry. The latch is fucked. Have to do this stupid thing with wire ...”
She walked around to the open rear gate and handed him the didgeridoo, which he gently nestled into a bed of pillows and blankets, protecting it from a bicycle, using a cardboard box to help prop the bike. Somehow she’d expected him to have better things, considering that he had some moderately successful recordings. She sensed his embarrassment as he fumbled with the latch again, muttering more apologies for the time it took, for making her carry something, and for making a stupid joke. “Off to a bloody great start.”
He disappeared briefly in transit through the van. The evening air had turned cool, and Mae shivered in her sleeveless dress. The elevation had its surprises—not just lack of oxygen, but cold nights. Starting to hop from the front of the van, Jangarrai stopped, held up a finger, disappeared within, and reemerged with a sweatshirt. “Hate to cover you up, but you’re cold.” He offered it to her. “It’s clean.”
“Thank you. I’m sure it is. A gentleman would never offer a lady his dirty shirt.” She pulled the shirt on, and regarded the words on it with amusement once they were displayed across her chest. Don’t Worry, Be Hopi. The shirt was too big and didn’t look like it would fit him, but it seemed old and well used. “Is it really Hopi?”
“Nah. Dunno. Maybe. Got it from a vendor at a Pueblo corn dance.” As they walked, he sang a few bars of Don’t Worry, Be Happy, complete with multi-octave vocal effects. His voice fascinated her. Who was he? There had to be quite a story to his music. How did a classically trained singer and flutist also end up playing drums and didgeridoo and singing the blues? “Don’t mind me.” He flashed a quick smile at her. “You put me in a good mood.”
She looked away, wishing he hadn’t said that. “Thank you.”
“Short cut here.” He led her to a paved path alongside the railroad tracks, passing bars and restaurants on one side, and several parked railway cars on the other. A cluster of couples poured out of a large brewery and pub, noisy and cheerful. “Good biking trail, if you follow it all the way. You like to ride?”
He’s checking out future dates. “Not really. I’m a runner.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” He sounded as if he knew this about her and had been reminded. How was that possible? She must have misread him. “Runner.”
They crossed a parking lot behind a low brown building with a sign announcing it was Marisol’s, walked around to Guadalupe Street, and he opened the door to a noisy little restaurant and bar with a neon green chile in the window above the name. The door was pink, the frame was green, its interior walls were turquoise, and the smell of food hit like a wall of warm spices.
Jangarrai took her by the elbow and steered her through the crowded room to the bar. His touch startled her. Though it was gentle and considerate, sexual energy flowed through it too, a subtle but unmistakable charge.
Not once in her years with Hubert had she had any inclination to cheat. She had come to think of other men’s attraction to her as nothing more than the annoyance of a trucker’s honk or a passing whistle on a street. It wasn’t real. She still saw herself as Wife and Mama, not someone men flirted with. Wrong on both counts.
Chapter Seven
“Beer? Wine?” Jangarrai asked as they took seats at the bar. “What would you like?”
“Oh, I’m the one who wanted to talk to you.” Mae started to open her purse. “Let me pay.”
He laid his hand over hers to stop her. She felt a soft surge of his energy again. The smile, half-nervous, half-happy, flickered on and off. “You strike me as a lady who would prefer wine.”
“I do.”
“Go easy if you’re new to the altitude, though. It’ll get to you. Turn you into a two-pot screamer.” He turned to the bartender, ordered a local microbrew beer for himself, and white wine and a glass of water for her, and then spun his barstool to face her again. Their knees bumped and she turned away as much as she could without being rude, aware of how unskilled she was in situations like this. With her first marriage straight out of
high school and her second too close on the heels of the first, she had no experience of being a single adult going out for drinks with a man.
He watched her taste the wine. It was dry, and to her surprise, spicy, giving her a little jolt.
“Green chile wine,” he explained. “I love the stuff.”
“No wonder you ordered me some water.”
“Do you like it?” He looked genuinely concerned that she might not.
“Actually, I do.”
He smiled, and she sipped her water, avoiding his eyes. Big, long-lashed, black-brown eyes with the beginnings of smile lines crinkling the corners. If she were interested in men right now, those eyes would get to her.
“Um—I feel stupid,” he took a swig of beer, exhaled, “but I didn’t get your name.”
“Mae Martin-Ridley.”
He went from bright to gloomy halfway through her name, drank more of his beer, and stared at the bottles behind the bar. “Hyphenated. Married, then?”
Should she say she was getting divorced? Or was it better to let him think she was still married? She didn’t want to lie, but she didn’t want to encourage him. “Just separated a few months ago. Still married, in a way. Not done yet—and not looking.”
He drank again, set the bottle down a little too hard. “Fuck. I thought that was a line, y’know? About your friend wanting my CDs. A really good one. Like me seeing your heart-stopping bum and saying, ‘I’ve got a friend who’s a photographer, you could model,’ only more original. Like,” his voice dropped, “like ... you liked me.”
The way he said liked made her uncomfortable. It was too vulnerable. They were almost strangers. “I really do know someone who wants to sell your music. And that Asian lady with the tattoos, did you see her?”
“Yeah. Cracking onto me.” He came back to his cheery, outgoing mode. “Weird. Women don’t usually do that.”
“She wasn’t trying to hit on you. She wants to manage your music career.”
“Fuck me dead. You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I talked with her. And her girlfriend. Seriously, she’s only got a professional interest in you.”
“Bugger. I blew that.” His mood darkened so abruptly she was taken aback. He frowned, clenched his fists and pressed them together, elbows on the bar, avoiding Mae’s eyes. “So give me her card and we’ll be done with it.”
“I will. I wasn’t sure you were even interested in selling your music. You kind of drifted off like you weren’t—”
“You could have left. You could have just given me her fucking card and left.”
“Don’t bite my head off. I like your music.” Why was she defending her decision to go out with him? She hadn’t led him on. “I wanted to make sure you did something with it.”
“Sorry.” He relaxed in part, his body taut but his voice gentle again. Drawing lines in the cold wet sides of the beer bottle, he watched the drips from the rearranged condensation trickle, and then looked at her, his eyes soft and hopeful. “It’s—it’s what, then? You’re into the music, you’re ... what?”
The moment felt so profoundly awkward, Mae froze. At least he’d only stayed angry for about ten seconds, but now he seemed to be trying to ask her—who in the world actually asked anyone this?—if she liked him, and he so nakedly wanted to be liked.
“I’m here to help my daddy and his partner get their rental house ready. The manager at the Healing Balance Store in Virginia Beach asked me to try to find you while I’m here. She said your web site was down and the phone number for contacting you was gone. Then I met Wendy, who wants to handle your whole everything—you have to talk to her. So, that’s what I’m doing. I like your music, and I’m helping these people sell it.”
She opened her purse, got out her business card case, and set it on the bar. He’d been so disappointed that she really meant business, she probably should close the conversation as soon as possible, although he’d bought her a drink and been sweet in a way, before he got temperamental. Wendy’s and Deborah’s cards were in with her own, and she had to dump a few out to get to them.
Jangarrai picked up both of hers, one in each hand, ignoring the other cards that Mae set by his elbow.
“These are both you. Same phone number.” He slid the cards together, played with them as if he were shuffling a deck of two. “You’re a personal trainer and a psychic.”
She nodded. “I guess that’s not as weird in Santa Fe as some other places, but it worked better back home to keep it separate.”
“Not here. Makes you fit right in. It’d only be weird if you did it naked with aliens, and even then, only if you added fish-slapping or something.” He flashed her a smile, a sudden blast of light and warmth cracking the clouds of his moodiness. Mae started to think of it as The Smile, some patented Jangarrai mannerism calculated for effect and yet sincere at the same time. “What kind of name is Breda Outlaw?”
“Country. And family. My granma was an Outlaw.”
He let out the snort laugh in mid-drink, choking on his beer, and turned away from her. “Crap, fucking beer up my nose.” He grabbed a napkin, wiped his face, turned back to her, and sang in a caricature of a country western singer’s voice and accent, “My granma was an outlaw, but Grampa he was the law. She stole his heart—”
“It’s a name.” She laughed. “Lots of folks are named Outlaw up in the Blue Ridge.”
“It’s a weird name.”
“Not that weird. What kind of name is Jangarrai?”
“Not weird either. Warlpiri. It’s my skin name, like a clan name, sort of like a middle name. Tells me who I could marry if I was living bush and being traditional, following the rules. Mum didn’t. Obviously.”
“Because you’re here?”
“Nah. Because my Dad’s white.”
She sipped the chilled hot chile wine and the water. He looked black to her except for the hair, and that had to be dyed, a peculiar choice. She wondered why he wanted to be strange looking, when he seemed so socially awkward as it was. Maybe it was part of his performing persona, making himself memorable. Funny he’d never put his picture on his CDs if he wanted to be noticed and remembered, though. If he had, she wouldn’t have missed him the first time in the Plaza, and would have been spared this awkward situation.
“You picked up the wrong cards.” She nudged Wendy’s card at him. “Unless you don’t need a manager.”
“Jeezus. All business, aren’t you? Aren’t you lonely here without your husband? And I bet you have kids. You seem like a mum.”
“Two young’uns. Stepdaughters. I miss ’em, but—you keep changing the subject.”
“You’re psychic.” He looked at her card again. “You know if I need a manager.”
“I have to work at being psychic. I don’t just sit here and know everything about you.”
“That’s a relief. Fuck. I’d hate to have you, y’know, see everything. Destroy my aura of mystery.” Giving her a mischievous grin in the mirror, he paid as his second beer arrived. He lifted the bottle for a long swig and set it down, failing to stifle a loud belch. “Sorry.” He spun the stool to face away from her for a moment. “Can’t seem to drink without doing that.”
“Kind of blows your aura of mystery.”
“Yeah.” He snort-laughed, faced the mirror again and drank more slowly, swallowing the noises. “Least I didn’t blow it out the other end.”
“Look, there’s only two mysteries. Why are you so hard to get hold of, and why aren’t you jumping on this chance to get a professional manager?”
Shrugging alternate shoulders in a kind of dance of doubt or indecision, Jangarrai picked up Wendy’s card and looked at it. “How do I know she’s for real? Or any good?”
“I don’t know. She’s done other management work, but I think you’d be her first music client.”
“Is that good?”
“Talk to her. She said she’d like to do everything—guide your career, do the marketing—‘hands-on’ is how she put it. She thinks she
could discover you, like you’re the next big thing.”
He crunched the card up in his fist and chewed on his knuckles, eyes closed, and then looked at Mae. “Fuck. Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“Jesus.” Wide eyed, he fixed his gaze somewhere past her head, almost not breathing. Then, pressing his fingers to his temples, he leaned his elbows on the bar, letting the crumpled card fall beside Mae’s intact ones. “Fuck.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Dunno what to do.” The distress in his voice surprised her. What was so hard, or so alarming, about a career advancement? “Don’t push me. Please.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
He looked up and took a short, harsh breath, starting to sweat despite the air conditioning.
“Are you all right?” she asked
“Having a wobbly.” His voice was tight and his eyes dazed, as if he couldn’t see. “Not too bad.”
What could make someone go into a state like this? Low blood sugar?
“Have you eaten?”
He shook his head, leaned it on his hands again. She picked up a menu from between a hot sauce bottle and napkin holder. “Guess you’d better get something then, sugar.” Where did that come from? Mae never called people sugar. “You worked hard tonight. What do you want?”
He mumbled the word “vegan,” and ran his fingers into his hair, knocking his hat onto the bar. Mae caught it from falling over onto the far side, and waved to the bartender.
“What’s the best vegan thing on the menu?”
“Black bean wrap and the potatoes. His usual.”
“One order of that.”
Putting the menu away without looking at the price of what she’d ordered, Mae watched Jangarrai. He hadn’t moved, but his breathing seemed shallow and fast. The name. Too long. That was why she’d called him sugar. Brook and Stream, and once upon a time Hubert, were sweetie and honey, her names for people she loved. She couldn’t call him that, but she couldn’t use a name like Jangarrai when she was worried about him.