Chapter 4

The house was quiet once Seth and Lyla went home, leaving me to go back inside and sit sullenly on my couch, worrying. Warren had left shortly after dropping the news, wanting to make it down to Asheville to talk to some people in person. He had seemed hopeful, but considering most of these people had agreed to have us play and then canceled, I was feeling less so.

I’d stayed confident for Seth and Lyla, offering to help cover their expenses, but I knew they were right. I had a cushion from my settlements, but I wasn’t rich. The money was only going to go so far, and most of it would be needed to keep Warren working, trying to find us gigs.

My wallowing was interrupted when the front door banged open and Kat came bouncing in, hair still wet from the pool. She must have had a good practice because she was practically bouncing off the walls. I sat up and tried to smooth my features, to keep the worry off my face.

Either she knows me well enough to see past it, or I wasn’t very good at hiding what I was thinking, because she stopped cold as she passed the couch, looking at me.

“What’s going on?” she said, her face transforming into an expression of concern.

I forced a smile and said, “Nothing. I’m just thinking.”

“Come on, Charlie,” Kat said, crossing her arms and staring at me expectantly. “I know that look. Something’s bothering you. Talk to me.”

“It’s just band stuff,” I said.

“And?” She asked, moving to sit next to me on the couch, tucking her feet under her. “I’ve been with you every step of the way. I’ve helped out at your shows. I’ve gone on tour with you. I may not be part of the band, but I’m part of the team. Spill it.”

I relented with a sigh, “Warren came by practice to let us know, face to face, that we have no gigs. Everything he sets up is almost immediately canceled. Every single gig.”

“What? Why?”

“We don’t know for sure,” I said. “Warren’s working on it. What matters is we have nothing on the calendar, and no shows means no income. We also don’t have any word on new distribution for the album yet, which means nothing from that either. Lyla and Seth are already struggling since the Blue Ridge shows alone are not enough to pay their bills. I’d hoped we’d have something by now, but even tiny places are canceling on us. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

Kat chewed her bottom lip as she mulled this over, finally saying, “Have you thought about talking to Willie? He knows just about every club and bar in the area. If anyone can figure this out, he can.”

I shook my head, “No way. I just found out Willie’s too sick for me to be bothering him about stuff like this. Did you know he has cancer?”

“Yes,” she said, looking away from me. “Hanna and I found out when she was home for the funeral. I’ve been out to see him a few times. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything. He made us promise not to.”

“I know. He told me. I don’t love you all keeping secrets from me, but I get it. Then you know how he is. He could barely sit up in bed when I saw him on Sunday. He doesn’t need our problems on top of his.”

“He’s practically family, Charlie. You two spent so much time working together. If you’re having problems, he’ll want to know, and he’ll want to help. If he can.”

“Which is why I don’t want to tell him. He needs to focus on his health and not have my problems dumped on top of it. Hell, it’s the exact same reason he gave you all for not telling me about his health in the first place.”

“Don’t you think he’d be more upset finding out later, if you keep it from him? If you don’t do anything and just keep hoping that whatever’s causing your shows to be canceled goes away, it’s only going to get worse. You’re smart enough to know that. He’s always been your biggest supporter, and he really wants you to succeed. Right now, while things haven’t gone too far, he might be able to do something, figure out some way to get you out of this mess. What if he finds out once it’s too late, once the band has to break up because you can’t afford to keep things going? How will that make him feel, knowing he might have been able to help, but you didn’t let him? How will that help his health?”

“How’s he going to find out?” I said. “There’s no reason for him to know about any of this.”

“Come on, Charlie. You have Warren reaching out to every club in a hundred-mile radius, trying to find you something. Do you think there’s a single club in the region that Willie doesn’t know? Word is going to get back to him.”

I couldn’t understand why she kept pushing this. Willie needed to rest. He wasn’t going to be calling around asking about my career, and there was no reason for any of the owners of the clubs who canceled on us to call him. Chef wasn’t going to say anything. The absolute last thing he needed was my problems dumped in his lap.

“I’m not telling him,” I said stubbornly. “End of discussion.”

Kat threw her hands up in exasperation, “You’re impossible sometimes, you know that? If you don’t tell him, I’m going to!”

“You can’t,” I said.

“I can, and I will,” she replied, just as vehement.

“Kat, you are not to talk to Willie about this! Do you understand? I forbid it.”

It had been a while since I’d given Kat any direct commands. When we’d set up our deal, it had been a way for me to help her deal with her anxiety whenever she had a decision to make that she couldn’t deal with, or someone pressing her that she couldn’t say no to. As she’d made progress on her recovery, Dr. Rothstein had me slowly stop giving orders so she could wean herself off me as a security blanket for her anxiety. I’d purposely avoided anything that even sounded like a command most of the time, just in case I accidentally did it. Except for one of our tour stops last year, where she’d gotten a crazy idea in her head that she needed to set me up with a girl, it had been a year since I’d felt the need to give her a command.

I was a little worried this might set her recovery back. I’d have to talk to Dr. Rothstein when this situation was all over, so he could see what kind of problems I just caused. What I couldn’t do was allow her to talk to Willie.

Or at least, I thought I would, as I gave the order. Kat threw all of that on its head with what she said next.

“I don’t care what you forbid,” she said, standing up. “If you don’t talk to him, I will.”

I rocked back into the couch as she turned and stormed upstairs. I was shocked. She’d never been able to say no to me before, especially when I made it an order. This was as specific and forceful of a command as I’d ever given her, and she said no. More than that, she didn’t even look worried or nervous when doing it. If anything, she looked even more determined and angry that I wasn’t listening to her.

I just sat there, stunned. I was worried about what she might say to Willie, but my surprise over her reaction had completely pushed that to the side. Part of me wanted to rejoice. This was the clearest sign of her recovery I’d ever seen. I felt a weird mix of emotions, proud that she was doing so well and angry that she wasn’t listening to me, all at the same time.

I was also unsure of how to deal with the situation now, since Kat and I had never been in this position. From the sounds of her stomping around upstairs, I didn’t think going up to continue pressing her was going to do any good. If I did manage to talk her out of going to Willie, I could also be undoing the breakthrough that she just had.

It was a no-win scenario. I was left with a choice of bothering Willie or hurting her recovery, neither of which I wanted. After several minutes, I ended up taking the coward’s way out. I’d wait and see what happened, hoping that she might realize I was right and leave it alone.

Not that I thought that was likely.

Tuesday, we still had no gigs, and things had started getting tense. Tabitha had shown up near the end of practice and practically ripped me a new one, accusing me of lying to Lyla about the prospects for the band when I ‘convinced’ her to stay after losing the MAC contract. I understood her frustration. Lyla had been forced to move in unexpectedly when she lost her spot at the house the band was sharing, and now Tabitha was working to support them both. She hadn’t signed up for that, and I was an easy target for her frustration.

Of course, understanding the frustration didn’t make me enjoy the lecture I got, but Lyla managed to defuse the situation before anything got seriously out of hand. It did, however, put me in a shit mood. Kat was late getting home, so I didn’t even have her to talk to once the others left. We’d gotten over our fight the previous week, although she refused to talk about her plan to go see Willie, or even to acknowledge if she was still planning on doing it or not. I hoped that meant that she wasn’t, but I honestly had no way of knowing, and she wasn’t budging.

Being home alone, with nothing to do and in a bad mood meant I needed to find something to do. Since I’d found that working on music usually did a good job of getting me focused, or at least distracted, I pulled out my notebook and got back to work on “Ashes and Sand”. I hadn’t really worked on it since the previous week, letting what I’d already done sit in my head and cook for a little bit, which meant I’d had a few thoughts that were ready for a more direct approach.

Taking my guitar into the living room, I hooked it up to a small amp I kept in there so I could hear the tones correctly. I turned the sound down so no one outside would hear it, think the band was practicing, and complain. Then I started working. First, I went through the intro and first verse I’d worked out the previous week, making a few adjustments. I picked up the tempo of the intro and the verse slightly, with the intro still planned as a solo guitar, and a bit slower than the first verse. It still had a melancholy sound, but it moved from being a pure ballad into something a bit more in between it and something up-tempo.