She’d pick up her guitar from its storage spot at the Lucky Horseshoe, which started serving its famous Bloody Marys at 8 a.m. If AnnieLee was lucky, Ingrid would be working the opening shift and would give her a free coffee. Then she’d walk down to Lower Broadway to busk on a corner not already staked out by other street musicians. After a few hours of singing to passersby, many of whom hardly seemed to notice her, she’d go looking for a dive bar to play in. Most nights she got lucky enough to earn either a meal or a bit of money, and sometimes she hit the jackpot and got both.
By the sixth night, AnnieLee had made enough that she’d decided to splurge on a cheap motel in East Nashville. Her room was so pink she felt like she’d checked into an oversized Pepto-Bismol bottle, and the lime-green chenille bedspread belonged to 1974 at the latest. But the floors seemed clean, and the air didn’t smell of mildew or cigarettes, and anyway, AnnieLee was too grateful for running water and a mattress to complain about questionable color schemes.
The other upside of being inside was that now when she woke at 2 a.m., heart pounding, from a nightmare about being chased, she could lie in a soft bed and watch the motel sign flicker on and off, and listen to the ice machine going kachunk kachunk kachunk on the sidewalk outside her window.
Things were really looking up.
On a sunny Thursday morning, AnnieLee decided it was time to play tourist and visit Music Row, which was the heart of Nashville’s music business. She wanted to see the Quonset hut that legendary record producer Owen Bradley had built as a studio back in 1954, and RCA Studio B, where so many country stars had recorded so many chart-topping hits.
But as soon as she got to the quiet parallel streets a mile and a half west of the river, she realized that Music Row wasn’t the industry’s heart so much as its brains. Here were the music publishers, recording studios, and organizations that made the city sing. Here were businessmen with briefcases and powerful-looking women with expensive haircuts and soft, manicured hands that couldn’t hold a barre chord if they tried.
AnnieLee couldn’t exactly put her finger on why she felt disappointed. It wasn’t as if she’d expected to see Reba McEntire walking out of the Starstruck Entertainment building. She hadn’t thought she’d be discovered by a BMI exec just because she strolled by on the sidewalk with a guitar in her hand.
Maybe it was because she suddenly understood that even though she might play her heart out every night in bars across the entire city, she was still a little nobody, and these imposing doors would be closed to her for a long time.
Can I fix it? she sang softly.
No I cain’t
She threw her head back and stared up at the glass pyramid at the top of the ASCAP building. “Not yet, anyway,” she yelled. “But just you wait!”
As far as she could tell, not a soul heard her.
Then, to cheer herself up, AnnieLee turned around and headed back toward the café she liked, the one with the antique furniture and the basket of cheaper, day-old pastries.
A bell on the door jingled as she walked in, and AnnieLee’s mouth was already watering. She’d eaten cold beans from a can for breakfast, so she felt as though she deserved an orange-cranberry scone, dusted with sparkling sugar and slathered in butter.
She pointed to the one she wanted. “May I have that big guy right there, please?” she asked.
The girl behind the counter grabbed it with a pair of tongs and set it on a pretty vintage china plate. “Hey,” she said, peering at AnnieLee. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere?”
AnnieLee flushed. “Well, here,” she said. “I mean, I’ve come in once or twice.”
It was four times, actually, and she’d drunk endless free coffee refills and washed goodly portions of her body in the restroom. But she definitely didn’t want to be remembered for these things.
“No, I mean out,” the girl said. She cocked her head. “Do you sing—like, around?”
AnnieLee’s cheeks began to tingle with pleasure. Was it possible she’d actually been recognized? “Sure, I’ve played here and there,” she allowed as she reached for her pastry.
The girl pointed her tongs at AnnieLee. “I saw you in Printers Alley—that’s it. You were great! I loved your song, the one about the girl who imagines that she’s a phoenix?”
“You’re too nice,” AnnieLee said, flustered.
The girl smiled. “The scone’s on me. Coffee, too. I hope I get to see you play again.”
AnnieLee thanked her warmly and then took her coffee and pastry to a cozy window table, where she sank into an antique armchair, feeling very gratified and just a smidge famous.