As her eyes adjusted to the bar’s dimness, she looked around for someone to appeal to. A neon Budweiser sign flickered; a couple watched a golf game on the big TV; four fan-tailed, multicolored fish swam lazily in a small tank near the lowest row of liquor bottles.
She was about to try her luck elsewhere when a tall, ruddy-cheeked woman came out of the back, a bar towel slung over her tanned, tattooed shoulder. She wore her long blond hair in two fat braids, but her brows were thin and painted almost black. She slid in behind the bar, washed her hands, and then began polishing pint glasses. She didn’t look up at AnnieLee.
“Hi there,” AnnieLee chirped.
The woman’s eyes shifted from her glass to AnnieLee, and then down to the guitar she was carrying. “Hello,” she said warily.
“I was wondering if you’d like to hear some live music tonight,” AnnieLee said. “Performed by me and my new guitar.” She patted the case protectively. When the woman didn’t say anything, AnnieLee added, “I’ve played at the Cat’s Paw a lot. They love me there.”
The woman lifted one of her overplucked eyebrows. “Do they, now?” she said.
“I’d say so,” AnnieLee said. She wondered if she should mention Ruthanna Ryder—how they were practically friends now, even though AnnieLee had snuck out of her house just after the sun came up. But she was pretty sure the woman wouldn’t believe her, for one thing. And for another, she didn’t think Ruthanna would appreciate being name-checked like that. She’d told AnnieLee to go find a real job, after all, not traipse around Nashville looking for a place to perform and using her name as grease for the wheels.
“So why aren’t you singing at the Cat’s Paw tonight?” the woman asked. She wasn’t unfriendly, but she looked like she could snap AnnieLee in half.
“I’m branching out,” AnnieLee said. “Trying new things.” She glanced around her. “I thought this looked like a good place to play. I, um, like your fish.”
The woman looked over at the tank and her expression softened. “They’re pretty, aren’t they? Like a painting that moves.” Then she turned back to AnnieLee. “We have live music Friday and Saturday nights. The rest of the time, we use that.” She gestured toward a giant, old-fashioned jukebox.
AnnieLee walked over to it and peered through the smudged glass. Hank Williams. George Jones. Kitty Wells. “How come the newest song you got in here is at least twenty years older than I am?”
“The jukebox only plays 45s,” the woman said proudly. “It’s an antique.”
AnnieLee scanned farther down the list. It was nothing but classics: “I Walk the Line,” “Crazy,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” “Friends in Low Places” was as close to contemporary country as it got.
Then AnnieLee turned back to the bartender. “I can play all of those songs,” she said.
“Congratulations.” The woman had opened a magazine and was flipping through it.
“What I mean is,” AnnieLee said, “I could be your jukebox.”
The woman flipped another page, squinting at it as though she needed glasses. “I love Rebel Wilson,” she said thoughtfully. “I wish she’d record a country album.” She looked up at AnnieLee. “What?”
AnnieLee talked quickly so the woman wouldn’t go back to her People. “It’d be really fun,” she said. “If someone wants to play any of the songs on the jukebox, they can just ask me to play it instead. They won’t even have to put a quarter in!”
The woman gave AnnieLee a quick up-down. “I’m sure the guys would want to stick more than a quarter in you,” she said.
AnnieLee shuddered but decided to ignore this. “Everyone will get a big kick out of it—I know they will,” she said.
A small, needling voice in the back of her head reminded her that she did not in fact know every single one of the songs. But she’d grown up listening to all of them, and singing most of them, and she hoped she’d be able to fake the rest well enough. Three chords and the truth, right? Or six, maybe seven—plus some decent fingerpicking?
She could see the bartender thinking it over. “Tuesdays are a little slow,” she said, more to herself than to AnnieLee. “And it’s not like I’d die if I went a day without hearing ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ straight from the Man in Black’s mouth.”