Page 67 of Night Songs

One morning Tate and I woke to find a rare snow had fallen. A layer of pure, cold sparkle covered everything. No sound but the cardinals in the trees and our panting. Drugs would have ruined it, painted pink and paisley over its crystal simplicity.

We spent hours sliding down the hill on metal sheet pans and wrestling in the snow. When I couldn’t feel my fingers, Tate warmed them in his mouth.

On Christmas day, he blindfolded me with a silk scarf and pulled me out to the driveway. When he yanked off the scarf, I saw a black Ford Gran Torino sitting there shiny and sinister on the concrete.

“Tate, you damn fool, you know I don’t drive.”

He smiled at me. “I think we can fix that.”

He spent the rest of the day teaching me in an empty supermarket parking lot. Once I got the hang of it, I took the car out on the snow-slushed road. There was hardly anyone out; everyone was home for Christmas. When the sun went down, I drove us around neighborhoods all over Nashville ogling the lights on the houses. I imagined what the families were doing inside, but I didn’t envy them. Freedom vibrated beneath my hands. I could go anywhere at any time, and no one could stop me.

That evening, we went to dinner at Mom’s house with Martha, Phoebe, and Tima. It was our yearly tradition, and I tried not to stare at the empty chair at the end of the table.

Christmas was a sad time for me as a kid; my aunt and uncle would always “forget” to get me a present, and I learned to sit quietly while my cousins opened their packages around the tree.

I remember waking my first Christmas morning with Hess and finding a pile of beautifully wrapped presents under a tree she’d set up in thecorner of my suite at Clayton’s. Each one was something she’d picked out just for me, and I finally understood why people liked Christmas so much. It wasn’t about getting a pile of junk; it was about feeling that someone truly saw you.

Even with Tate by my side and all of my friends around the table that night, even with all of the blessings I’d been given, it didn’t feel like Christmas without Hess there.

New Year’s came and went, and my head was still empty. There was no new music.

When I finally confessed this to Tate one night under the covers, he said I just needed to get back out there. Get some new experiences. That’s what always unblocked him.

I’d been invited to play a small tour in England. Neither of us had ever left the country, and Tate convinced me this was exactly what I needed to find my music again. And this time, I needed to watch. Observe. Look for that next little spark.

I was surprised to find England wasn’t so different from where I’d grown up. The Brits had a real sense of humor that was dry and self-deprecating. Life was pretty simple and gray there, but they got a laugh out of it.

Martha and I played small clubs out in the countryside, and then afterward Tate and I got pissed on pints with the locals. There wasn’t much to do but drink.

Tate knew a band who’d rented a house nearby, and he, Martha, and I went to visit them. No one answered the door when we rang the bell, so after a while we just walked in.

It was this big manor house, and it was covered in trash and cigarette butts and splintered furniture. It looked like a nuclear bomb had gone off, so when we stumbled upon a bedroom with men strewn about it, I thought they’d truly gone and died.

Tate shook the shoulder of one with messy black hair, and he stirred abit and finally opened his eyes. He shrieked at the sight of Tate, and at the noise, the others rose from the floor like zombies.

That afternoon a group of old women came in and cleaned away the filth. An Indian feast appeared, and we ate it with our fingers and drank red wine out of crystal goblets around a massive molding table.

They told us charming stories about Tate and their escapades, leaving out key details. They treated Martha like a fellow musician, but they were giving me the pretty-little-wife treatment. It was like watching animals pretend to be humans. It was really quite funny. They hadn’t even asked my name.

Tate eventually got around to telling them who I was, and only then did they finally see me. One of them prowled over to a stack of records in the corner and pulledThe Cursed Womanfrom the top.

I was on the cover, but you couldn’t see my face very well. I was more of a haunting figure looming there, watchingyouas opposed to being watched.

“I thought you’d be, like, a witch.”

“How you know I ain’t?”

He studied me. “Too… pretty.” He brought a finger to his lips. “Although… there is somethingferalabout you. I can see it in the way you watch everything. Me, the food, Tate. Like a big wild cat.” He curled his fingers into claws and lashed out at the air.

I laughed, and we understood each other then. There was no more of the gentleman routine.

Shortly before midnight, hordes of people descended upon the mansion. Young and old, glamorous and plain. I doubt they knew very many of them, but it didn’t seem to matter. As long as you werecool.

Martha warned me to be careful. She’d heard bad things about these guys. I pretended to heed her warning and left her in a corner talking music theory with a long-haired professor, eager to escape her watchful eye.

In the upstairs balcony, one of the boys gave me a piece of tin foil with a black bead in the center and put a straw between my lips. He lit the bottomof it with a lighter while I inhaled from the straw and chased the bead around, watching it create a tar-black design with its trail.

For a few seconds there was nothing.