The Bridge Trilogy Part 126

"Mr. Creedmore?" Tessa asked.

"Buell Creedmore, honey," the woman said. "That's him over there getting ready to do the sound check with the legendary Randy Shoats."

"Is he a musician?"

"He's a singer, honey," the woman said and seemed to look more closely at Tessa. "You A&R?"

"No," Chevette said.

"d.a.m.n," the woman said, and Chevette thought for a second she might take the beers back. "I

thought you might be from an alternative label."

"Alternative to what?" Tessa asked.

The woman brightened. "Buell's singing, honey. It isn't like what you probably think of as

country. Well, actually, it's a 'roots' thing. Buell wants to take it back, back there past Waylon

and Willie, to some kinda dark 'primal kinda heartland.' Kinda. Thing." The woman beamed, eyes slightly unfocused. Chevette got the feeling that all of that had been memorized, and maybe not too well, but that it was her job to get it out.

"Randy, he was teaching Buell one earlier, called 'There Was Whiskey and Blood on the Highway, but I Didn't Hear n.o.body Pray'

That's a hymn, honey. Very traditional. Give me gooseb.u.mps to hear it.

I think it's called that, anyway. But tonight's set is going to be 'more upbeat, electric.'"

"Cheers," Tessa said, "ta for the lager."

The woman looked puzzled. "Oh. You're welcome, honey. Please do stick around for the set. It's

Buell's Northern California debut, and the first time he's actually sung with his Lower Companions."

"His what?" Chevette asked.

"'Buell Creedmore and his Lower Companions.' I think it's a biblical reference, though I can't quote you chapter and verse." The woman

pointed her straining bosom toward the stage and resolutely followed it in that direction.

Chevette didn't really want another beer. "She bought us these because she thought we were A&R."

She knew about that because of Carson. A&R were the people in the music business who found and

developed talent. -

-Tessa took a pull on her beer and watched the woman, who'd stopped to talk to one of the boys from the pool table, one of the ones

who was actually wearing a meshbacked cap. "Do people like her live here?"

"No," Chevette said, "there's clubs in the city for this kind of thing, or sort of like it, but I've never seen a crowd like this out here before."

The sound check consisted of the man with the squashed cowboy hat playing guitar and the man with the belt buckle singing. They

stopped and started a few times, on the one song they did, for various twiddlings of k.n.o.bs, but the guitarist could really play (Chevette got the feeling he wasn't really letting it out yet, what he could do) and the singer could sing. It was a song about being sad and being tired of being sad, The bar, meanwhile, was starting to fill up, with what looked to be

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a bunch of locals, regulars, and a hunch who weren't, who were here to hear the hand. The locals tended to tattoos, facial piercings, and asymmetrical haircuts, while the visitors tended to hats (meshback and cowboy, mostly), jeans, and (on the men, anyway) guts. The guts tended to be the kind that looked as though they had moved in while their owners were unaware and had taken up residence on otherwise fat-free frames. The kind of gut that hangs over the top of a pair of jeans with a reasonably small waistband, swelling the front of a flannel shirt but cinched back in, below, with one of those big buckles.

She'd started on Creedmore's Redback out of boredom, when she spotted the singer himself headed their way. He had borrowed someone's meshbacked cap and pulled it on backward, over his weirdly wet-looking bleach-blonde hair. He was wearing an electric-blue cowboy shirt with the store creases still in it, horizontal across the chest, and the white pearlized snaps open halfway down the front, revealing a pale, white, decidedly concave chest that wasn't at all the color of his face, which she figured was painted on. He had what looked like tomato juice in each hand, in a tall gla.s.s with ice. "How do," he said. "Saw that Maryalice over here. Thought I'd bring the old girl a drink. I'm Buell Creedmore. You ladies enjoyin' your beer?"

"Yes, thanks," said Tessa and looked in the opposite direction. Creedmore did a quick, and to Chevette very obvious, piece of mental calculation, Chevette coming up as the one more likely to be profitably hit on. "You hear about us in the city here or over in Oakland?"

"We're just here for the hot wings," Chevette said, indicating the plate of chicken bones in front of her.

"They any good?"

"They're okay," Chevette said. "But we're just leaving."

"Leaving?" Creedmore took a big swig of his tomato juice. "h.e.l.l, we're on in ten. You oughta stay 'n'hear us." There was some weird-looking, greenish-sandy stuff, Chevette saw, around the rims of the gla.s.ses, and now some of this was stuck on Creedmore's upper lip.

"Vs/hat you doin' with those Caesar's, Buell?" It was the big guitarist. "Now you promised me you wouldn't drink before the set."

"For Maryalice," Creedmore said, gesturing with a gla.s.s, "and this 142.

here's for the pretty lady." He put the one he'd had the swig from down in front of Chevette.

"So how come you got that garlic salt on your mouth?" the big man asked.

Creedmore grinned and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "Nerves, Randy. Big night.

Gonna be okay..

"It better be, Buell. I don't see some evidence you can hold your liquor, be the last gig you ever play with me." The guitarist took the drink out of Creedmore's hand, took a sip, made a face, and walked off, taking the drink with him.

"Sons of b.i.t.c.hes," Creedmore said.

And it was at this point that Chevette saw Carson enter the bar. Recognition, on her part, was instantaneous and one-hundred-percent positive. It was not Carson as dressed for lounges that smelled like aromatherapy, but Carson dressed for the knowing exploration of the lower reaches.

Chevette had actually been with him when he bought this outfit, so she'd had to hear about how the jacket was Alaskan steerhide (Alaskan steers having thicker hides, due to the cold winters), and a museum-grade reproduction of a 1 940s original. The jeans were nearly as expensive, and more complicated in their sourcing, the denim woven in j.a.pan on ancient, lovingly maintained American looms and then finished in Tunisia to the specifications of a team of Dutch designers and garment historians. This was the kind of stuff that Carson cared deeply about, this absolutely authentic fake stuff, and when Chevette saw him step through that entrance, she had absolutely no doubt that it was him.

And also, though she couldn't have said exactly how, she knew that she was in trouble. Maybe, she'd think later, it had been because he hadn't known she was looking, so he hadn't really been bothering to be the guy he had always pretended to be when he was with her, when he'd known she

was looking.

It was like seeing a different guy, a very scary, very cold, very angry guy, and knowing it was Carson. Carson turning to scan the bar- What she did next surpnsed her It must have surprised Creedmore even more The top of the huge silver buckle made a convenient

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handle. She grabbed it, pulled, and brought him down, loose-kneed, to kiss his mouth, throwing her arms around his neck and hoping the back of his head, in the backward meshback hat, was between her face and Carson's.

Creedmore's ready enthusiasm was, unfortunately, about what she'd have expected, had she had the time to think.

33. DURIUS.

RYDELL was midway back, through that lower-level crunch, when his sungla.s.ses rang. He got his back to the nearest wall, took them out, opened them, put them on.

"Rydell?"

"Yeah?"

"Durius, man. How are you?"

"Fine," Rydell said. The gla.s.ses were acting up; weirdly elongated segments of Rio street maps were scrolling down his field of vision.

"How are you?" He heard the whine of a drill or power driver, somewhere in LA. "You at the Dragon?"

Durius said, "we got major construction under way here." What for.

"Don't know," Durius said. "They're putting in a new node, back by the ATM. Where they had the baby food and child care products before, you know? Park won't say what it is; don't think he knows. All the branches gettin' 'em, whatever they are. How's your ride up? How's that ~i Creedmore?"

"I think he's an alcoholic, Durius."

"No s.h.i.t," Durius said. "How's the new job?"

"Well," Rydell said, "I don't think I've figured out much about it yet, but it's getting interesting."