Page 1 of Torch Songs

Long Long Time….

“OH MYGod,” Roberta practically squealed. “Really? You want me to go as your plus-one?”

Guthrie Arlo Woodson tried to keep the melancholy out of his smile and mostly succeeded. “Yep, darlin’. The invite said I could bring someone, and I choose you!”

Roberta Querling sat across from him at the Washoe House, on the bar side, as the joint closed down, and now she lowered her voice even below the closing-time babble and murmured, “They, uh, know I’m just a friend, right?”

Guthrie worked hard to keep his laugh from being bitter. “Babydoll,” he drawled, “these guys knew I was gay before I did.” He shuddered. “I kept saying I was bi, and then I’d go home with a pretty girl and have a truly shitty time.”

Roberta groaned. “I don’t even want to know,” she said—and she was right. There were things a man did to fake an orgasm that were a lie for the woman and not fantastic for a man’s self-esteem. The taint of those days gave Guthrie a case of the cringes even two years after he came out to himself completely.

“And I don’t want to tell you,” he said, managing to make it roguish instead of ashamed, “but this is a bit of short notice. I appreciate it.”

“What about the hotel room?” she asked. “Should we go halfsies?”

He shook his head and laughed a little. “No. Uhm, Seth is renting two houses next to each other, side by side. I told you he and Kelly are adopting Kelly’s niece and nephew, right?”

She nodded, clearly as enthralled now as she had been two years ago when they’d auditioned for each other to form their little dive-bar band. Roberta was a violinist—and a good one—and she had better-paying gigs during the week, but she’d been a fan of rock and pop music her entire life. Since that’s what Guthrie had been born playing, pretty much, she’d been happy to help him reassemble a band that had been torn apart by time and, well, his father’s bigotry, so he could continue to do his favorite thing in the world.

There hadn’t been a time in their acquaintance that Roberta hadn’t appeared starstruck by Guthrie’s friendship with Seth Arnold.

Of course, Seth Arnold wasliterallyan international superstar, a young phenom who had taken the music world by storm in his first years in the conservatory by releasing a series of innovative videos featuring him performing multiple instruments and his own compositions or arrangements. Guthrie was pretty sure that now Seth had the hang of monetizing his channel (or more likely somebody had stepped in and started doing it for him and was being generously paid for their time), he was making roughly twice what Guthrie made in his day jobjustfrom YouTube, but that wasn’t the sort of thing Seth paid attention to.

Guthrie had known Seth for six years, four of them playing together in Guthrie’s dad’s little honky-tonk band, Fiddler and the Crabs—with Seth as the Fiddler. During that time, Guthrie had learned Seth had two things that really caught his attention. One was music, and the other was his family, starring the love of his life, the boy he’d worshipped in high school and on through adulthood, Kelly Cruz. Kelly wasn’t theonlymember of the family; Seth’s dad was in his sights, Kelly’s mom and sisters, and Kelly’s late brother’s two children, both of them suffering the effects of a mother who used narcotics during her pregnancy.

Seth adored the children like his own. Watching him play with them over Zoom calls was one of the things that gave Guthrie hope for the world, and he couldn’t imagine a world in which his Fiddler didn’t get a happy ending with Kelly as his husband and the two children living with them, cared for and beloved, in their happy home.

So hearing that Seth was renting two houses for his wedding in Monterey during the frigid-cold off-season didn’t surprise Guthrie in the least. Being invited—and invited to bring a date—to stay in one of the houses and to attend the wedding and play with the family for a week—thatwas one of the proudest things in Guthrie’s life.

What wasn’t to be proud of by maintaining that friendship? Seth was a violin virtuoso who had brought the house down in Italy and New York and probably had a thousand other venues where he’d be invited as a soloist, and once he and Kelly were married and the adoption finalized, Seth would be bringing his husband and their children with him.

Guthrie loved that Roberta had a celebrity crush on his old friend, who had subsidized Kelly’s struggling family with his income from Guthrie’s father’s band.

What he didn’t love so much was that his feelings for Seth went way beyond crush, and he’d had them for six long goddamned years.

“So,” Roberta said now, completely oblivious to the turmoil in Guthrie’s heart, “we get to stay with the family in one of the houses?”

Guthrie shrugged. “Fiddler—erm, Seth and I go way back,” he said. “He and Kelly had to overcome alotof obstacles to have this moment in the sun. I’m proud that he invited me. But yeah. We’re in with the family.”

Roberta was a pretty young woman with long, straight brown hair that she pulled back from a long oval of a facewith a band at her nape. She was a few years younger than Guthrie, right out of school, and still had some of the spots and the awkwardness that went with spending all her attention on her studies and very little on her fellow students. In a way she reminded Guthrie quite a bit of Seth, but Roberta had never had to hide in her own mind like Seth had. She still had some brain power left to observe other humans.

“You must bereallygood friends,” she said softly, “for him to invite you like family.”

Guthrie swallowed and looked out into the thinning crowd. He, Roberta, and two of her friends from her own conservatory/music days all performed at Washoe House three nights a week. They spent two other nights at a slightly more upscale place closer to San Francisco, and another night practicing, because they liked to play. During the day, Neil Chase, Owen Cuthbert, and Roberta all worked recording and teaching gigs in San Francisco, commuting from San Rafael, where Guthrie kept a small apartment as well. Playing with The Crabs was their happy place. It was fun music, with a lively, enthusiastic crowd, and while Neil, Owen, and Roberta were all top-notch musicians who could probably dowaybetter, it was nice, Guthrie thought, for the three of them to play with an organization that didn’t have reviews posted in the national press or frothing-at-the-mouth conductors who went on power trips designed to deconstruct even the strongest psyche.

Guthrie was under no illusions that The Crabs wasn’t a step down for all three of them, just as he knew that for himself, it was the only thing that gave meaning to his life.

He hated to burden Roberta with the stupid, painful details of that life—but she was taking a week off from playing, practicing, and spending time with her family to be his plus-one so he didn’t have to go in alone, and he thought maybe… just maybe… he could let her in a fraction.

But apparently she’d already seen a crack and shined her own light into it.

“Oh,” she said softly.

“Oh what?” he asked, but he was watching Owen and Neil break down the instruments. The drum set was provided by the venue, thank God, because hauling around his own set was a colossal pain in the ass. He knew because he had to provide it for Scorpio, their other steady gig.

Her hand on his sleeve called him back to her, but he went reluctantly.

“Oh. You were in love with him,” she said, like she knew for certain.

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