14 - J. T. Ellison [35]
He was an apprentice.
Nine
Nashville, Tennessee
Tuesday, December 16
10:30 p.m.
“Can I get you another Corona, Jane?”
Jane Macias looked at the clear bottle, the lime shoved through the neck. Maybe another sip left. “Yes, please, Jerry.”
“Sure thing, kid.”
The bartender moved toward the cooler situated to his right, plunged his hand into the ice and pulled another beer free. He snapped the lid off and placed the bottle in front of Jane, then slipped a thinly cut lime wedge into the neck for her.
“Voilà.”
“Who knew you were so worldly, Jerry? Thanks.” She smiled warmly at the older man. He’d been nice to her, not prying, not hitting on her, just serving her beer and leaving her alone, which was what she wanted.
Jane went back to her book. There was something horrifying about sitting alone in a bar reading, but she needed the break and the beer was half price tonight. Her roommate’s gargantuan linebacker boyfriend had come over—a benchwarmer for the Tennessee Titans, and Jane knew there would be no rest in their cramped apartment tonight. So she’d grabbed a novel off the bookshelf and headed down here, two blocks and a lifetime away from her normal haunts.
She’d been slipping into the bar next door to the VIBE strip club more and more often lately. Called Control, it was quiet, usually empty, and there was something homey in the atmosphere. Granted, next door the music throbbed and the lights flashed while not-so-beautiful women slid up and down the stage in five-inch Lucite platforms, but hey, it could be worse. She could be the one up on the stage. Instead, Jane sat in the semi-darkness of the anonymous R-rated bar next door, feeling warm and fuzzy as she sipped cool beer and forced the noise from her mind. The clientele was good for the mental novel she was writing, anyway—she needed a fictional population and she certainly was exposed to it here.
Control gave her the added advantage of anonymity. People from work and from her apartment building wouldn’t be likely to frequent this place. It was nice to know she could be alone. Though Jerry knew her first name, the place turned over so many times during the course of an evening that there were rarely faces present for an entire night. People peeked in after leaving VIBE next door to see if anything was hopping, but not a lot decided it was worth their time to stay. She should have found a nice coffee shop to hang out in; there was a Starbucks right around the corner, but Skip would find her there. He’d never in a million years venture anywhere near this bar, housed in the same building as the sin factory.
Skip Barber. Poor sap. A struggling songwriter, he followed Jane around Nashville thinking she was going to make it big time. When she professed the desire to just go to work, not land a recording contract, Skip thought she was kidding.
He’d seen her in a weak moment, down at Tootsie’s, tipsy and singing karaoke like her life depended on it. Jane’s voice was sweet and true, built for the microphone. She’d been told several times since she made her way to Nashville that she should pay her dues and become the next Julie Roberts or Faith Hill. Jane just smiled and nodded. She didn’t want to be a singer, she wanted to be a writer. She had no desire to be on the stage, was more than content to have her words on the page, read by others. A singer? Hell, no. She was a writer. She aspired to a Pulitzer. She wanted to win a George Polk. She wanted to turn the world upside down with her insights.
She didn’t care that the printed word was supposed to be dead. That the Internet had blown traditional journalism, that people went to their computers for news instead of the paper. That didn’t matter. She could always find a way to present