Teresa kept her voice low and the two of them carried through the song with an easy harmony that actually made her smile when they finished.
“I knew what song you were trying to sing,” Dan said. “My mama used to listen to it a lot.”
“So did mine,” Teresa said. “It was one of her favorites.”
“You changed the words around.”
“I didn’t remember them,” she admitted. “Or I remembered hearing it differently.”
“You start inventing words, that’s true,” Dan said, handing back the guitar. “Playing is harder than it looks. You practice a lot?”
“Not enough. I don’t know that much about how to play.”
“Who taught you? Your daddy?”
She couldn’t find the best answer, thinking of Cheno outside, wondering if he was searching up and down the street for her.
“You have a nice voice, though,” he said, reassuring her.
He stood smiling at her, and when Teresa couldn’t think of how to respond, she laughed nervously. He laughed with her but wouldn’t say anything more to help her out of the fluttering tension in her hands, her stomach, her throat. She looked down at the guitar and picked at one of the strings.
Dan reached over and moved her left hand to the fret board, positioning her fingers. “Right there. Bend this finger. Firm as can be.” Satisfied with her grip, he eased right behind her with one solid step and cast his arm over her shoulder. Not touching her, but close enough for Teresa to feel the soft fabric of his shirt. He helped her play the briefest of notes, just the beginning of something, unsaid and unsung and sad-sounding enough to warrant feeling that way, and then stopped.
Outside, through the open door, a vehicle sounded across the gravel, slowing down. The vehicle stopped and they could hear a door open and close. “That’s Ed,” he said. “Across the street.”
He stepped away from her, and Teresa rose from the stool to look out the door, but all she saw was the vehicle — another Ford truck — and Cheno nowhere in sight.
“Sing for me,” Dan said.
“That’s the only song I know.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, sing for me, not Ed.”
That’s how it begins, the women on the television told her. You have to open your arms wide first.
“I’ll play guitar,” Dan said. “Or someone else will. All you have to do is sing.”
Across the street, the door to Ed’s bar stood wide open, but it wasn’t a place she wanted to enter anymore.
“I can’t pay you,” said Dan quickly. “You can keep any tips, though.”
Had Cheno come and gone? She thought of what he might say when she presented this situation to him, but what made her dismiss him was the spark of her mother’s voice, the need when she sang along with those records, and what bloomed in Teresa was something close to forgiveness. Of course her mother would’ve boarded the bus to go back to Texas.
“Okay,” Teresa said, and nodded. “I’ll sing for you.” Then she froze. “You don’t mean tonight, do you?”
“No, no. Practice first. Practice as much as you want. In here, if you like. In the afternoons when I do the cleaning, so you won’t feel nervous.”
He made his way to the front door, picking up his keys from the top of the bar. “Unless you’re going to help me sweep up, maybe I should take you home right now before the drunks come in.”
“I can walk,” Teresa said. The old feeling came back: she wasn’t just worried about Cheno seeing her in Dan’s truck, but about the people in town, how a ride through the afternoon streets with the windows rolled down was far different from Cheno’s careful, tiptoeing courtship.
“It’s not a problem,” Dan said. “Come on.”
Seven years ago, when her mother had announced that money was too hard and that they would both board a Greyhound to Texas, where Teresa’s father lived, Teresa had said, I’m not going with you. Saying that had been like singing a song: opening her mouth and letting the sound crack through. She knew, even then, that Texas was not for her, that her mother wanted to go to the place where the records took her, the violet dark where Teresa’s father lived. She had said no, the static of the record turntable going round and round, and she couldn’t see her mother’s face when she said it.
Dan locked Las Cuatro Copas and made his way to the black Ford pickup truck, opening the door and holding it for her. Teresa looked across the street at the other bar, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ed or even Cheno, some opportunity to stop herself from her own falling, but the building only yawned back with its open door, Dan standing, waiting, his tall, wide-shouldered posture.
“Come on,” said Dan. “What are you waiting for?”
It’s your life, her mother’s silhouette had said, after a long silence between them, in the violet dark of their little room. You do what you want.
Five
She had known, since it was Bakersfield, not to expect anything fancy, but as the driver took them through the center of the city, it became clear to the Actress that all she was getting was a room, plain and simple. She didn’t need anything more, really, though she imagined there were people in the industry who begrudged everything. The driver stopped the car at a building that wasn’t more than four stories or so, flat at the top and made of brick, and they got out. She opened the door on her own, the driver rushing to her side, but she let him know implicitly that he needn’t be at her beck and call. They walked together through the plain glass doors of the lobby — no bellhops, no concierge, but more important, no Director. She had somewhat expected him to be waiting in the hallway lined with striped wallpaper that served as the lobby, sitting at one of the two tidy love seats and examining the fresh flowers set on a long table: the hotel was small, but the effort of small-town pride came through. It was only nine thirty in the morning, and the meeting wasn’t set until ten. She asked at the front desk if anyone from Los Angeles had checked in, but the clerk told her no.
“Are you expecting someone?” the clerk asked.
“A fellow traveler,” she answered, aware that the Director might try to shield himself from scrutiny.
Her room was ready, and the driver accompanied her to the top floor in the tiny elevator, her overnight bag in his hand. At her door, he scurried inside her room and placed the bag on her bed so quickly that she barely had time to open her purse for a tip. “No bother, ma’am,” he told her. “The studio asks that I not take tips. I’ll be with you the entire trip anyway.” He gave her a slight nod and made to exit. “I’ll be waiting in the car after you freshen up. I’ll have the front desk ring you if the Director shows up.”
He closed the door behind him, leaving her alone in the room. Nothing fancy, as she had suspected: a tidy double bed, a nightstand with a lamp and a radio, and a desk tucked in the corner. Enough space for the Los Angeles and San Francisco oilmen to come to town, make their deals, and get some rest. The air felt a little trapped and still, as if no one had actually been in the room, not even to turn down the sheets and check the towels. But this didn’t surprise her — if it had been her job to go from unused room to unused room, she wouldn’t bother with these tasks either; she would kick off her shoes instead and listen to the radio, the minutes of each work morning slowly passing by.
That’s what she was thinking of — what it would be like to be a cleaning woman in a small hotel in an inconsequential city, the daily humdrum of that kind of life. Her mind circled around that scenario as she unzipped her overnight bag and set aside her belongings, giving tomorrow’s blouse a quick snap before putting it on a hanger. She imagined the uniform and the soft shoes, pushing a cart along the narrow corridor she’d just walked along, the quiet red carpet, and the discreet closet at the end where the cart would be hidden away overnight. There was more, she knew, as she emptied her toiletries and set them around the bathroom sink, confident no one would come in to clean: say, for example, the awkward moment when a hotel maid politely knocked on the door and, hearing no one, came in even though the guest was sleeping. Or the curiosity around a stranger’s suitcase sitting like a diary in the corner of a room, the temptation to unzip it and rummage around. Or the toiletries kit left in the bathroom, the inside pocket holding a vial of pills that spoke of nerves, of insomnia, of depression, of a lingering sexual disease.