Small Town Girl (38 page)

She forced Kenny from her mind, giving the kiss an honest chance, kissing Burt back the way he wanted to be kissed. But the beard, though soft, somehow no longer appealed. And the taste, though pleasant, was not the one she knew. And his beautiful musical accolade, though touching, was eclipsed by the kind deeds of another for her mother, and even for herself.

Burt ran his hand to Tess's breast and she thought how ideal that the hand played music, like her; that he sang, like her; that he was part of the close Nashville family of musicians, like her. How simple it would be for them to slip into each other's lives, two who understood the performers' lifestyle and all its demands and vagaries.

But nothing happened inside Tess. In that visceral, carnal core where sexual abstinence should have created a quick starburst… nothing happened.

She caught his wrist as it descended toward her stomach, and said, "No, Burt."

He drew back and looked into her eyes. "I thought you wanted it, too."

"I thought I might, but… I'm sorry."

He returned his hand to her ribs and said, "The last time we were together I thought this was where we were headed."

"The last time, maybe. But things happen."

"Things?"

She took his hand from her ribs and held it, dropping her eyes while the two of them remained side by side on the piano bench.

"You met someone," he said.

"Sort of."

He studied her downcast face, then hooked both hands over the edge of the bench and hunched his shoulders.

"So is it serious?"

"No."

"Well, if it's not serious, then what's going on here?"

"It's someone I knew when I was young. Someone from back home. He's sort of a friend of the family."

Burt studied her in silence awhile, thoughtful. Then he raised his hands and let them slap his knees. "Well… how can I compete with that? You and I haven't got a history."

"I enjoyed supper though, and dancing."

Paltry crumbs, her words, and they both knew it.

"Well…" He sighed and pushed himself up. "I know when it's time to make an exit."

She walked him to the door. Their good-byes were stilted until he took her hand and looked down at it while speaking. "You probably think that every struggling musician who comes along is playing you for how you can boost his career. I just want you to know I'm not one of 'em."

And with that he walked out, leaving her to realize that what he'd said was true, and had been for years. Every struggling musician who paid her attention became suspect for exactly the reason he'd cited. Though she'd had a gut feeling Burt's motives were honorable, how in the world could she tell, when she was worth upward of twenty million dollars? When she could spark a career with little more than a word to the right label executive?

But Kenny had no musical career. He didn't want her money or her fame or a home in Nashville. He wanted exactly what he had in Wintergreen. He'd told her so, and that's why she hadn't called him or answered Casey's invitation, afraid that he might be the one to answer the phone and she'd get all soft and mushy about him again.

She put off making that call until it absolutely could not be avoided. Casey would graduate on Friday night. At nine on the preceding Tuesday night, Tess was exhausted. She had just finished another hundred signatures and writer's cramp had set in. She had a bad case of PMS that had given her the disposition of Joan Crawford, and she wasn't too crazy about the haircut the New York stylist had given her. Kelly had had to leave the office early to go to the dentist, and Tess, forced to do her own dialing and waiting, had been put on hold by a new secretary who forgot her on the line. Shortly after that Carla Niles had called with the news that her regular doctor said there was nothing wrong with her throat, but she still had a raspiness in her voice, so she had set up an appointment with a throat specialist. Until she saw him the rehearsals for the concert were in limbo. Then, to top it all off, Tess had run out to grab a sandwich for supper and on her way she caught the handle of her favorite big gray bag in the car door and it had trailed on the blacktop all the way to the restaurant and gotten rubbed in half. Returning to the office, Tess made the mistake of reading a batch of fan mail in which one letter chewed her out for insulting half the women in the world by using the phrase "just a housewife" in one of her songs. Did she think being a housewife was
easy
? If so, she should give it a try and find out what
real
work was!

All in all, it had been a horseshit day when she picked up the phone to dial Casey's house at nine o'clock that night.

As she'd feared, Kenny answered.

"Hello?"

Perhaps she was working too hard, perhaps it was the PMS, but for whatever reason, hearing Kenny's friendly voice unglued her. Without the slightest warning, she began to cry. Trying to disguise the fact, she failed to reply immediately.

"Hello?" Kenny repeated, sharper. Then, growing irritated, he barked, "Hello,
who is this
?"

"Kenny, it's T-Tess," she managed.

"Tess, what's wrong?" he said, the change from irritation to concern immediate in his voice.

"N-nothing," she blubbered, then, "…everything. Hell, I don't know. It's just been an awful day, that's all."

"Tess," he said, the way he might to a child, soothing. "Hey, come on, darlin', nothing's so bad it won't feel better if you talk about it. I'm here, you can talk to me."

She felt better already, so decided to baby herself a little, something she rarely did. "Hey, Kenny, would you call me darlin' one more time? It sounds good tonight."

"Darlin'," he repeated matter-of-factly, "now you go ahead and talk. What was so awful today?"

So she talked. She admitted to Kenny that her empire was getting to be more than she could handle without relinquishing personal control. But there were so many stories about superstars whose dominions had crumbled under mismanagement, whose agents or accountants or business managers had cheated the stars they worked for, undermining them to the point of ruin.

"I'm not going to let that happen to me!" she vowed. "And the surest way to
let
it happen is to give over control to someone else. That's why I watch everything so carefully." Under questioning, she admitted she was keeping tabs on more than any one human being should be expected to, and she'd been doing it for eighteen years while her business concerns grew and grew.

"You've got to learn to delegate," Kenny said. "That's what you pay these people for."

"I know. But look what happened to Willie Nelson. He's probably still putting on concerts to pay off his debts."

"Is there someone you employ whom you don't trust?"

"Well…" She thought for a second. "No."

"There," he said reasonably, "it's you, not them. You know, Tess, it's possible that you think of yourself as omnipotent, and when you come right down to it, that's a pretty egotistical attitude, isn't it? Did you ever think that by
not
trusting them more, you undermine them? By placing your full, unadulterated trust in them you might get more production out of them, more cooperation, certainly a pride in their work that will boost their egos. And you know what happens to output when egos get boosted."

She knew he was right, knew, too, that most people wouldn't have had the temerity to say something like that to Tess McPhail because of who she was. She respected him for his honesty as well as for his sound advice. "How did you get so wise, Mr. Kronek?" she asked, feeling much better, her frustration and weariness dissipating.

He chuckled quietly. "By running a two-person office with such a grinding routine that the last time either one of us surprised the other was when Miriam came out of the bathroom with the hem of her skirt accidentally hooked up on the waistband of her panty hose." Tess burst out laughing while Kenny went on. "She turned her back to me to sit down in her desk chair and I looked through my office door and raised a finger as if to say, 'Hey, Miriam, guess what?' but, hell's afire, you ever tried to tell your secretary that you just got a wide-angle shot of her hind end? Wouldn't have been so bad if it was a shapely one, but you've seen Miriam, haven't you?"

"No, I haven't." Tess was still laughing.

"You haven't! Well, Miriam's the kind of woman that if you ran into her at a bar you'd say, 'Hey, Miriam, pull up a couple o' stools and let me buy you a drink!' "

Tess's laughter billowed once more, igniting his own, and they spent some enjoyable time letting it pour forth across a couple hundred miles of telephone wire. When their mirth wound down, Tess wound right down with it. She released a huge breath, stretched out in her chair and ran a hand up the back of her hair. "Gosh, I feel so much better."

"Well, of course you do," he said smugly. "I'm good for you."

"You really are, Kenny. Too good."

They enjoyed the thought for a few beats before he inquired, "So tell me—where are you right now?"

"Still in my office on Music Row."

"Time for you to call it a day, isn't it?"

"Yes. Actually, I'm really tired tonight, and kind of cranky. At least I was until I talked to you." They were both affected by the significance of what she'd said and sat awhile absorbing it.

"So," she asked, more quietly, "is Faith there tonight?"

It took him a moment to answer. His voice had grown subdued. "No, just Casey and me."

"I really called to talk to Casey. I got her graduation announcement and the invitation to the party on Saturday. Wish I could be there, but… I'm afraid I can't." Her disappointment was unmistakable.

"I wish you could be here, too."

Tess knew she should end the conversation and ask him to put Casey on the line, but she simply could not let him go yet. Outside, in the distance, a siren crescendoed and faded, and down the hall a fax beeped and started printing while she imagined the sound of crickets in the backyards in Wintergreen, and him on the kitchen phone, and Casey in her room playing her guitar, and the soft summer evening settling blue upon the gardens. She pictured the houses with their backs to each other, and the aged, narrow sidewalks that had carried them toward one another during their many encounters in the alley. She wanted with incredible intensity to be there, to step out onto her mother's stoop and see him walking toward her through the warm May night. She wanted to glide into his embrace and feel and smell and taste him once again. Instead, she could only imagine him and wonder if he'd detected the slight tremor in her voice, if he understood how valiantly she was trying not to be jealous, to be realistic about what could and could not happen between them.

"I suppose Faith is doing the party for Casey."

"Yes. She's been making grocery lists, and ordering party trays, and the two of them have been digging through old photo albums and putting together a bulletin board of old pictures."

Tess had never longed to be a mother, but at that moment she would cheerfully have traded places with Faith Oxbury. On Tess's desk were pictures of her nieces and nephews, the only "children" she would probably ever have. Her eyes lingered on them, then she drove another thorn into her own flesh with a question that had been hovering in her mind for some time.

"Kenny, may I ask you something?"

"Sure." Funny how a single syllable with sandpaper edges could give away how a man feels.

"When Casey moves away, will Faith be moving in with you?"

He took some time answering, time while Tess discov-ered she was holding her breath and cataloguing each beat of her heart.

"I don't think so, Tess. This is a small town. Living arrangements like that are frowned upon."

She released the breath slowly and closed her eyes while they clung to their phones and listened to the clanging silence of things unsaid. It was torment and bliss reading between the lines, learning that each of them had missed and been missed, wondering how far to go in this conversation, which was getting dangerously intimate. Finally, when the ache in Tess's throat became too great to disregard, she clamped a hand across her forehead and uttered, "Jesus, I miss you, Kenny."

Like the rests in music, the silences in the conversation had become as vital as the spoken words. This one held them both by the throats. When he spoke at last, his voice held a note of frustration.

"I've already told you, I miss you, too, but what do you
want
from me, Tess? I can't stop my life for you!"

"I know. I
know
! I don't expect you to. But what if… what if…"

Silence.

A great, groaning, silence reaching across the distance.

"What if what?" he finally said.

"I don't know," she admitted haltingly. "I want… I want… to… to be with you… sometime… that's all. Just to be with you, do you understand?"

"To do what? Have an affair?"

"No!" Then more honestly, "I don't know, but a piece of my heart stayed in Wintergreen when I left, and I feel as if I left it there with you for safekeeping. Nothing's the same since I came back to Nashville, but I'd die without this, Kenny. I'd just die. This is my
life
! Yet I'm dying without you, too. I'm just so mixed up."

They thought for a while, groping for a solution, finding none.

Finally he spoke. "Maybe you love me, Tess. You ever think of that?"

"Yes, I have."

"But you wouldn't allow yourself to say it to me before you left, and you wouldn't let me say it to you."

"It's too scary. It would bring too many complications."

"For who? You or me?"

"Both of us."

"And you won't say it now."

"Because I'm not sure!"

"But you want me to end it with Faith—why?"

"I didn't say that!"

"No, but you hinted at it. You don't seem to understand that while Nashville and your career are your life, I've got one, too, and Faith is a big part of it."

"All right, all right! I don't want to argue, and anyway, it's silly, because we're arguing about something that's not even logical. I mean, I'm here, you're there, you have your business, I have my career and I'm gone a hundred and twenty days a year! Anybody with half a brain can see that what we've got here is a logistical stalemate, so I don't even know why we're on the subject!"