“Pfff. If we were talking about the UK, it sort of halfway might make sense—the labels still scout London. But the Continent? Are you kidding me? Can you name one Top Forty hit that ever came out of France or Germany?”
“It’s not just about the labels, though, right? It’s about developing an audience.”
“Damn straight it is. And how do you do that? You play the Holiday Inn Rockford and then you move on to Rock Island. Hit enough big little cities, you start to get a name, and that’s what the A&R guys are looking for. You’ve got to trust me on this, Becky. Your guy is literally better off playing Decatur, Illinois, than Paris, France. There’s an act I booked into Decatur eight months ago that just signed a major-label deal. I’m not lying to you.”
“But he can still do that—I mean, the Holiday Inns. He’ll come back even better, with new contacts.”
“Listen. Baby. Sweetheart, listen. Your guy’s okay. I admit I kind of signed him as a favor, because I like your style, but I’m not keeping him on as a favor. He’s a pro, he takes direction, he’s a hit with the ladies, everybody’s making money. But my honest opinion? I’m not in love with his original material, and neither are the audiences. Time will tell if he’s got better songs in him, but there’s a million and one acts at his level. The best thing he’s got going is he’s young and super easy on the eyes, and you know what they say about the record business—the vampire thirsts for youth and beauty. The last thing your guy needs is to sit on the shelf for a year.”
“Okay,” she said in a very small voice.
“I told him, if he wants me to represent him, he’s got to flush this Europe thing where it belongs. He didn’t want to hear me, but he’ll hear it from you. You need to take him in hand and lay down the law. Will you promise to do that for me?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re the brains of the outfit. He’ll do whatever you say.”
When she hung up the phone, the sun was still strong in the windows, but the kitchen seemed dusky, as if what had brightened it weren’t the sun but the dream of Europe. She felt punished and guilty and disappointed; sorry for Tanner, sorrier for herself. Tuning out Perry’s weird patter, she mechanically drove him to the church and mechanically drove home again. Never had she felt less like working her Friday-night shift.
To ignore Gig’s advice, at the cost of his firing Tanner, would obviously be the height of selfishness. But Shirley had died imagining her niece on a Grand Tour of Europe, Becky had already given away nine thousand dollars of her money, and the alternatives to Europe were dismal: either another summer with her parents, waitressing at the Grove, or a succession of cornfields and depressing small cities, the steambath of July in the Midwest. She understood that this was the reality of the music business, but the vision of going to Europe and advancing Tanner’s career was too perfect to be defeated by reality. She didn’t see how she could give it up.
Her problem was still there in the morning, when she took her mother and Judson to O’Hare. She’d expected to feel liberated by her family’s absence, but Gig’s judgment of Tanner, its echoing of Clem’s, had deflated the romance of the coming week. As she watched Judson run ahead of their mother with his little suitcase, the two of them bound for a city of palm trees and movie stars, she felt desolated.
From the airport, she went straight to the Grove. Gig’s first move as Tanner’s agent had been to pull the plug on his Friday-night shows there, and Becky, having now seen better places in the city, understood why. The Grove’s earth-tone decor and potted trees were tired, not trendy, its lounge acoustics lousy, its patrons tightfisted and Nixonite. By the time her shift ended, she felt so worn down that she called Tanner’s house and left a message with his mother, excusing herself from his gig in Winnetka. Interestingly, Tanner didn’t call her back.
The next morning, however, his van rolled into the parsonage driveway at the usual Sunday hour. For reasons she didn’t immediately understand, she’d not only put on her best spring dress but applied a lot of makeup. The face in the bathroom mirror was not at all a girl’s, and maybe that was it. Maybe she wanted to place herself in a future from which she could look back at herself.
Tanner had dressed up, too. In the misty morning light, wearing the suit he’d bought for his grandmother’s funeral, his hair thick and glistening on his shoulders, his eyelashes batting at the sight of Becky in her finest, he was absurdly gorgeous. Whatever else might be the case, she could never get enough of looking at him, and she was the woman whose mouth he then kissed. The kiss, exciting her nerves in the usual places, made her problem seem less consequential.