A new tune

Cass liked her life just fine. The entire purpose of it, actually. She was twenty-eight, a vet at a small clinic on the east side, and her evenings looked about the same every night. Come home, feed the cat, eat something she cooked too much of on Sunday, watch half a show, fall asleep before the end. Some people would call that boring. Cass called it peace.

Her friend Clarissa did not call it peace.

"Cass. Cassie. Light of my life. Come out with me Friday."

Clarissa had shown up at the clinic unannounced, holding two coffees and wearing the face she wore when she wanted something. Cass was elbow deep in a golden retriever's ear and did not look up.

"I have a dog with an ear infection."

"The dog will be fine. I'm inviting you to a show. The Rusty Nail. My coworker's boyfriend's band is playing."

"That's three layers of strangers away from me."

"Exactly. No stakes. You can't be embarrassed in front of people you'll never see again." Clarissa set the coffee down like a bribe. "You haven't left your apartment for anything but work in two months. I counted."

Cass finally looked at her. Clarissa was twenty-nine and treated fun like a job she was very good at. She would not stop until Cass said yes. Cass knew this because it had happened eleven times before, and she had won exactly twice.

"Fine. One show. One drink."

"One drink," Clarissa agreed, already texting someone, which should have been a warning.

* * *

The Rusty Nail was everything Cass expected and a little worse. Dim lights. Sticky floor. A ceiling that had not been painted since sometime in the nineties. The opening act was loud in a way that made her fillings ache, and Clarissa was already three sheets to the wind on something pink.

"Clarissa, you said one drink."

"This is my one drink. It refills."

Cass nursed a beer and leaned on the wall near the back, which was her natural habitat at parties anyway. Then the headliner came on. Clarissa's coworker's boyfriend's band. They were actually good, which annoyed her. The guitarist especially. He played like he had somewhere better to be and was trying to leave anyway, fast fingers, head down, no showing off. The singer hogged the mic and the guitarist just did his job in the corner.

By the last song Clarissa had vanished into the crowd like a gum wrapper in a drain. Cass found her near the stage, screaming the chorus wrong.

"I'm getting air," Cass shouted, and got a thumbs up in return, which meant nothing.

Outside, the air was cool and the street was quiet. There was a stray dog sniffing along the curb by the club door, a scruffy brown thing with a limp. Cass crouched down without thinking about it. Ten years of habit. The dog came over and put its head under her hand.

"Hey, buddy. You got a collar? No, of course not."

"Careful, he bites."

Cass looked up. It was the guitarist. Black skin, close-cropped hair, a guitar case leaning against the wall next to him. He was holding half a burrito from somewhere.

"He won't bite me," Cass said. "He's telling me he's got a sore on his left paw. See how he keeps it off the ground?"

The guitarist squatted down next to her, keeping a respectful distance from the dog. "You a vet or something?"

"Or something. I'm a vet. Cass." She wiped her hand on her jeans before offering it. His handshake was warm and his fingers were rough, calloused in a way that said guitar, lots of it, years of it.

"Oscar. I'm the something."

"The something?"

"The boyfriend of your coworker's bandmate, is how I think you know me. I'm the guy in the corner."

"I noticed you were the guy carrying the whole sound while the singer posed."

Oscar laughed, a real one, surprised out of him. "Don't tell Ramon that. He's sensitive. You want a beer? We've got a rider. It's mostly warm beer and a bag of chips someone already opened, but it's free."

"Free is my favorite price."

The rider was exactly as advertised. They sat on the curb by the back door and drank warm beer and watched the dog eat the end of Oscar's burrito, which he claimed was on purpose.

"So what kind of vet?" he asked. "Cats and dogs? Exotic animals? Horses?"

"Small animal, mostly. Dogs, cats, the occasional angry rabbit. Rabbits are meaner than people think."

"Everyone says that and I refuse to believe it."

"You will believe it the first time one draws blood on you."

He asked about her job and actually listened to the answers, which was rarer than it should have been. He asked what the weirdest thing she'd ever pulled out of a dog was, and she made him guess, and he guessed wrong four times, delighted each time.

"A sock? No. Wait. A whole corn cob?"

"Close. That was number three."

"There's ranking? There's a leaderboard?"

"There's a leaderboard."

* * *

The club emptied out around one. Cass went back in to find Clarissa and found her instead being walked out by the coworker, who was steering her toward a rideshare like a man herding a happy drunk sheep.

"I've got her!" the coworker called. "You're good, right?"

Clarissa waved. "Go home, Cassie! Be boring! I love you."

So much for Clarissa's ride home.

Cass stood on the curb with her car keys in her hand, wondering how long to wait for a text that wasn't coming, when Oscar came out with his gear. He looked at the empty street, then at her, then at his phone.

"So Ramon just texted me. He's gone. He left with a girl who I think was in the front row, and he took my blessing and my half of the cab money."

"You need a ride?"

"Only if you're going that way. I'm over on Maple, by the laundromat with the broken sign."

"That's ten minutes out of my way at most. Come on. I'm not leaving a man with a guitar case on a curb at one in the morning."

"You're a saint," he said, loading his amp into her backseat like he'd done it a hundred times in a hundred strangers' cars. Probably had.

The drive was easy. She noticed that. He told her about the band, three years of it, small rooms and bad payers and one legendary night in a basement where the ceiling leaked on the drummer. He complained about Ramon without venom. He asked about her clinic again, remembered the rabbit thing, made her laugh twice on a dark stretch of road with a joke about parrot innuendo that she refused to repeat to anyone ever.

And he never once did the thing guys did, the thing where the conversation was an audition tape. No mention of how musicians were misunderstood. No humble-bragging about the label interest that was definitely about to happen. He talked about music like it was work he loved, which somehow made it more interesting, not less.

"What?" he said, catching her glance at him at a red light.

"Nothing. You're not what I expected."

"Because I fixed your expectations, or because I failed them?"

"Because you didn't try to pass the test."

Oscar shrugged. "My drummer told me once, nobody falls in love with a guy trying hard. I don't know if that's true but it saves energy."

She pulled up outside the laundromat with the dead sign. He got his amp out, then leaned back in the window.

"Hey. Thanks. Seriously. And hey, you fixed the dog's paw, right?"

"I wrapped it. He'll be fine."

"See, we both fixed something tonight. Goodnight, Cass the vet."

* * *

Cass slept in until eight, which was late for her, and was making coffee when the doorbell rang. Nobody rang her doorbell. Her heart did a little jump of pure confusion.

Oscar was on her front step, holding her bicycle chain in one hand like a trophy. His hair was flattened on one side. There was gray cat hair on his jacket, which she took to mean he owned a cat.

"How did you. Why do you have my bike chain."

"Your bike was on the rack on the back of your car. When I got my amp out last night I saw the chain hanging off, snapped clean, so I took it home. I used to work at a bike shop in college. Fixed it this morning, tested it, and your address was on the registration sticker on the frame." He held it out. "It was either this or mail it to you, and mailing a bike chain felt insane."

Cass took the chain. It was clean and oiled and solid. She stood there in her slippers with her coffee going cold, looking at this twenty-four-year-old man on her doorstep who had carried her bike chain home like it mattered.

"Thank you," she said, and it came out strange and sincere and bigger than the moment called for, and she didn't understand why her chest felt like that about a bicycle chain.

"You're welcome," Oscar said. "Also, question. Is that coffee I smell, or do I need to leave immediately?"

Cass made a second cup of coffee. It was eight in the morning and she was making coffee for a guitarist on her doorstep.

They sat at her kitchen table. Her cat circled his chair twice and then sat on his shoe, which was basically an endorsement.

"I should go," Oscar said, after the second cup. "You have animals to save."

"I do. Six appointments."

"See you around, Cass the vet."

And then he was gone, and she stood in her kitchen wondering why the apartment felt bigger with him out of it.

* * *

A week passed. Cass didn't text him, because she didn't know what she'd say, and then she spent three days drafting what she'd say anyway. Ridiculous. She was twenty-eight years old. She spayed dogs for a living. She could text a man.

She finally sent: I owe you coffee. Or food. The bike works great.

He answered in four minutes. You don't owe me. But I know a taco truck.

So that was how she ended up at El Fuego on a Thursday night, standing under a buzzing neon sign that hummed like a fly in a jar, watching Oscar talk to the truck guy like they were old friends. Maybe they were. The floor was asphalt and grease and she was already half in love with the smell of the grill.

Wait. Half in love was an exaggeration. She took it back.

They got two folding chairs at a plastic table. His tacos had everything on them. Hers had exactly three things, because she was a person with principles.

"You're a food minimalist," Oscar said.

"I'm a person who knows what she likes."

"Sure. Okay. Tell me about your week. Vet stuff. I want the gross one."

So she told him about the beagle who'd eaten an entire sock, and the Great Dane named Hobbs who was scared of the scale, and he laughed at the right places, real laughs, not polite ones. Somewhere in the middle of the sock story she realized her face hurt from smiling.

"I have a show next weekend," he said, wiping his fingers on a napkin. "The Rusty Nail again. You