“Joseph’s our lead player,” the proprietor told him. “You know that.”
“Have you got some method to tell who draws in what people? No. All you got is—”
“Look, Drum, you’ll still play on Saturdays. But Fridays, face it, there ain’t all that big a crowd nowadays. You want me to lose money?”
“What’s going on?” Evie asked.
They looked at her and then turned away again, not answering. Finally David said, “Zack was just saying how—”
“I been cut back to one night a week,” said Drum. “There was a full house tonight and it’s almost Christmas and now Zack here decides he’s losing money.”
“Now, Drum, if I could see my way clear you know I’d—” Zack said. He looked fatter than ever and very sad, with sweat running down the sides of his face like tears. “Spring, of course, we could see about having you for both nights again. It all goes by seasons, don’t you see.”
“He’s right,” said Joseph.
“You can talk,” Drum told him. “How would you feel to get cut back without no warning?”
“Sure, I know how—”
“Ah, forget it,” Drum said. “Where’s my coat?”
“It’s right behind you,” Evie said.
But Drum went on stamping through the room, shoving chairs aside and looking under instrument cases. When finally he found the coat he said, “Another thing. You can forget Saturdays too, from now on. I ain’t coming back here. You’ll have to get along without me.”
“Now, Drum, wait,” said David.
“Do you want a ride or don’t you?”
He pushed his way out of the room, right past Evie, and David looked at the others for a minute and then shrugged and followed him. Evie had to run to catch up with them.
Outside, the air was crackling with a sharp dry cold that made her ears tighten. She stumbled after Drum and David, struggling into her coat on the way. Their car was haloed with frost. While Drum unlocked the door Evie shifted from one foot to the other to keep warm, but Drum didn’t look cold at all. He pulled the key out of the handle and then just stood there a minute, staring out over the icy roofs of other cars. “Hop in,” David told Evie. “Let me sit up front. I’ll talk to him.”
Evie perched on the edge of the narrow back seat. One knee rested against Drum’s guitar, which had kept some of the warmth from the Unicorn. While Drum was backing out no one spoke, but then on the highway Drum said, “Damn fat fool.”
“He’s just having to look out for his business,” David said.
“What, over Christmas? School’s letting out, the place’ll be jammed. And how about Joseph, now? How does he get to stay?”
“Zack told you. Joseph is the—”
“All right, all right. The lead player. Who don’t even have a sense of rhythm. I tell you, we’re well out of that place. Got to find us something lively now.”
“Well, where, Drum? Do you think you can pick up a new job just by snapping your fingers? I can’t even find us private parties nowadays, and here it is Christmas time and I have sent ads all over town.”
“Something will turn up.”
“Nothing will turn up. Tomorrow I’m calling Zack. I’ll tell him we’ll be there next Saturday same as usual. You were just a mite put out, I’ll tell him. He’ll understand.”
“No, he won’t, because I ain’t showing. Me and Evie are going to the movies.”
“Suit yourself, then,” David said. And he was quiet for the rest of the ride, although he whistled under his breath.
When they dropped David off at his house, Drum jerked his chin toward the front seat. “Come up here and sit,” he said.
“What for?”
“Come talk to me.”
She looked at his face in the rear-view mirror. It was pale and shadowed. And after she had settled herself beside him he said, “I made a fool out of myself, didn’t I?”
“Oh, no.”
“Seems like I am just going through one of those low periods. Last Christmas we played at three different parties; this Christmas they forgot all about us.”
“Maybe you need more publicity,” Evie said.
“I don’t see how I can get any more. Oh, pretty soon he will fire me for Saturdays too, I can feel it coming. I will have to play at those free things he has on Sunday afternoons, everybody drinking coffee. That’s how low I’ll come to.”
“You just need a good night’s sleep,” Evie told him. “Things will look different in the morning.”
“Oh, sure, I know.”
When they got home, he pulled off his shirt and jeans and then climbed into bed with a jelly glass half full of bourbon. He watched Evie while she moved around the room straightening up. She folded his clothes and laid them in a chair, she changed into her seersucker nightgown and then stood before a mirror to curl her hair. From one of her drawers she took a plastic barrette and pinned her bangs back. They would have to be trained that way. She planned to leave her forehead bare again, showing Drum and all the rest of the world what his music was worth to her.
“This business about Saturdays,” Drum told her. “I ain’t going to change my mind; I meant it. I don’t want to play there at all any more. Why should I go where I’m not appreciated? I would like to find me something new, switch over. Now, are you going to side with David and start beating me down about this?”
“You know I wouldn’t,” Evie said.
“Well, I was just wondering.”
He set the empty jelly glass on the window sill, and by the time Evie had put the lights out he was asleep.
But Evie stayed awake, long after she had gone to bed. She lay on her back, stiff and still, watching how the cold moonlight frosted the rim of the jelly glass. That had been the last of the bourbon. It was a reckless purchase one weekend when they had extra money, and for two months the bottle had sat in the kitchen cupboard growing sticky and fingerprinted, brought down rarely and measured out carefully. Now how long would it be before they bought more? Their money came in dribbles — five dollars here, fifteen there, sometimes a little from her father who said, “This is for a sweater,” or for books, or a new hairdo, making it too explicit for Evie to object, although she never spent it on what he suggested. What they had they kept in billfolds; it wasn’t enough for a bank. And it was paid out in dribbles, too, so that the dimestore budget book with its headings—”Mortgage,” “Insurance,” “Transportation”—seemed unrelated to their lives. They spent it on cigarettes or records, or on a can of artichoke hearts which Drum said he wanted to try just once before he died. When they were poorest they ate stale saltines and spaghetti in dented tins, reduced for quick sale. They turned out coat pockets and dug between sofa cushions. And in the end, more money always dribbled in again.
But now their only income would be from the A & P and the filling station. It wasn’t much. If she didn’t want Drum pumping gas all day she would have to find a job, and she even knew where: at the public library. Her father had told her about a position there, intending it for Drum. (Money was something her father worried about. Money and balanced diets.) But how would Drum ever endure a library? He would sit behind a circulation desk in spurred boots and a black denim jacket, sinking lower every time he jabbed a rubber stamp against an ink pad. It would have to be Evie who did it, afternoons when school was out. She even thought she might like it. She pictured herself in a blue smock, calm and competent, going through a set of crisp motions with catalogue drawers. When she finally slept she dreamed she walked up to the Unicorn’s band platform with a stack of historical romances, and one by one she laid them in Drum’s lap. “Thank you,” said Drum, strumming his guitar. “It’s what I always wanted.”