Last Call at the Lake

Joe backed the truck up the gravel drive as far as it would go, which was not far, because the driveway ended at a pine stump and a wall of rhododendron. He cut the engine and sat there a second, hands on the wheel, looking at the cottage through the windshield. Raw pine, big windows, gray water behind it. Off-season lake houses always looked like they were holding their breath.

His drum kit was in the bed, wrapped in two sleeping bags and a tarp that had stopped being waterproof sometime around his thirtieth birthday. He was thirty-four. He'd been hauling this kit to bars and fire halls and one memorable funeral reception since he was twenty-two, and every time some band called him last minute, he said yes. Every time. He was still working out why.

Cold dusk was coming down through the trees. The air smelled of damp leaves and cold metal, that specific mountain-lake smell he never got used to even though he'd lived in these foothills his whole life. He got out, pulled his flannel tight, and opened the tailgate.

"Of course the one gig in October is at a lake," he said, to nobody.

Hauling the kick drum up the steps took two trips and most of his patience. He had a shift at the bakery at four in the morning, croissants do not care how your night went, and here he was, forty minutes from town, playing dress rehearsal for a cover band he'd met exactly once. Jacques had paid him fifty bucks and a promise of gas money, which he'd taken before Jacques could change his mind. Money settled first, that was his rule. It kept the rest of a gig simple.

Inside, the place was all pine and echo. Somebody had already set up amps along one wall. A bass drum case sat open. Two beers were sweating on the counter, which meant two people were here and the third was late, and the third was him.

"Hey! Drummer's here!" That came from the back room. A head popped around the corner, curly hair, big grin. Elliott. Lead singer, apparently. He was thirty-something and had the energy of a man who'd had three cups of coffee and considered that a lifestyle. "Joe, right? Man, thank you. Seriously. Our drummer quit like three weeks ago, moved to Phoenix for a woman, and we've got this corporate party Saturday and Jacques said you were the best in the county."

"Jacques said that?" Joe set down the floor tom. "Jacques has never heard me play."

"Jacques exaggerates. It's fine. We need somebody who can count to four and not cry during the guitar solo."

"Low bar. I love it already."

He was pulling the heads out of the case when the front door opened behind him. Not a knock. Just opened.

He turned and there was a woman in the doorway. Tall, dark hair cut sharp at the jaw, arms crossed, wearing a city coat that cost more than Joe's truck payment. She was maybe thirty-two. She had the posture of somebody who read other people's sentences for a living and found most of them wanting.

"Oh," the woman said. She looked at Joe, then past him, at the amps. "This is tonight."

"Can I help you?" Joe said.

"Elliott invited me." She said it like that settled everything. "I'm Carolyn. I copy edit for a paper in the city, and I used to do setlist notes for these guys before I moved away. I'm up for the weekend. He asked me to come fix the setlist. Apparently nobody here can spell transition."

From the back room, Elliott yelled, "Carolyn! You found it. Awesome."

Carolyn did not uncross her arms. Her eyes went over Joe again, and he felt it happen. The worn-out jeans. The flannel with the bakery logo half scratched off. The shirt underneath, a black T-shirt he'd had since his last birthday, which fit the way he liked and which he had not thought about on a stranger's behalf in years.

"You're the drummer," Carolyn said. It was not a question.

"Last-minute fill-in. The real one went to Phoenix for a woman, which, honestly, respect."

Carolyn's mouth did something that was almost a smile and then decided against it. "Well. Try to keep up. Elliott writes the tempos down wrong half the time."

"Good to meet you too."

* * *

By seven they had the kit set up in front of the big window, gray water going black behind it, one lamp on, three musicians and a guest. Jacques plugged in his guitar and tuned forever, the way guitarists do. He was thirty-eight, quiet, owned the place, kept apologizing for the draft.

Joe counted them in on the first song and it went fine. Second song, fine. Third song had a bridge that went to half time, and the chart Elliott had given him had a coffee ring over the exact measure where it happened.

He fumbled it. Filled wrong, came in a beat early, whole thing hiccuped like a truck hitting a pothole.

"Stop." Carolyn's voice from the couch, not loud, exactly, but carrying. "That's the spot. Every time. The bridge drops to half time on the four, not after it. He's rushing it."

"I'm not rushing it, your chart's got a coffee ring on the transition," Joe said. He kept his sticks in his hand and his voice level, mostly. "It's the first run-through. Everybody gets one."

"It's not the chart, it's the fill. You're doing a sixteenth-note roll into a downbeat that doesn't exist. Listen to the recording, it's a straight quarter hit, then the drop."

"I've heard the recording. I played it in the truck on the way up."

"Then you heard it wrong."

Elliott, from the mic, doing the thing where he tried to be peacekeeper and made it worse. "Okay, okay, we'll take it from the bridge. Joe, Carolyn's actually pretty good at this stuff, she used to keep me on tempo too."

"Somebody had to," Carolyn said.

Joe hit his hi-hat once, a flat little clang that meant move on, and they took it from the bridge. And it went better. He'd admit that much, later, to nobody. The half time landed. Jacques grinned at him over his guitar, first real grin of the night.

What Joe did not know, because he was facing his kit and the window, was that when he counted in, he sat up and reached across to the tom, and the T-shirt rode up in the back. Not a lot. A couple inches of skin above the waistband of the jeans, the little tattoo of a snare drum he'd gotten at twenty-five still visible under the lamplight.

He did know, when the song ended, that the room went quiet a half second too long. He turned around. Carolyn was on the couch with a notebook and a pen, and the pen was not moving, and her eyes came up from Joe's midsection maybe a beat later than they should have. Maybe two beats. She didn't apologize and she didn't look away fast, which Joe had to respect, in a horrible way.

"Notes?" Elliott said.

"Yeah." Carolyn clicked the pen. "The bridge works now. And, Joe, you might want to tuck your shirt, the heat's off in this place and I don't want you to get cold."

Joe looked at her. Carolyn looked back, face perfectly even, one eyebrow up about a millimeter, and Joe understood two things at once. One, that was a shot. Two, it was a shot with the safety off and Carolyn's ears going faintly pink, which the lamplight did not hide well enough.

"Heat's off because Jacques is cheap," Joe said. "But thanks for the concern."

"Anytime." Carolyn wrote something in the notebook. Her ears were still pink.

Elliott looked between them as a man watches weather come in over water, and Jacques quietly reached for another beer.

They took a break after the fourth song. Elliott wanted to run the set front to back before anyone touched a beer, which meant everyone wanted a beer, which meant an argument about it, which Jacques settled by saying there was a twelve-pack in the fridge and he was going to stand near it.

So there was ten minutes of nothing. Joe went down the hall to the bathroom, shut the door, and looked at himself in the mirror over the sink.

He was flushed. That was the annoying part. Not tired-flushed, not cold-flushed. Cheeks pink, jaw tight, the look of a man who had been needled for an hour and had needled back and was now standing in a stranger's bathroom admitting he'd enjoyed the needle. Thirty-four years old and his face was doing this.

"Get a grip," he told the mirror.

He ran the water and wet his wrists. Behind his own eyes he ran the bridge again, the correct fill this time, quarter hit, then the drop, and he hated that Carolyn had been right and hated more that he'd say so only if Carolyn never found out.

When he opened the door, Carolyn was in the hallway. Leaning on the wall opposite, arms crossed, city coat still on, like she hadn't moved since the song ended.