Page 119 of Torch Songs

Oh God. She and Elton, probably working at a sleep loss. A three-hour trip was nothing… unless you had a newborn baby at home.

“Livvy, don’t be dense,” he said. “You guys need your sleep and your gas money and your peace. You’re not coming down here to get me?”

“How much do you need for the down payment?” she asked brusquely.

He was so surprised he blurted the amount, but he added, “But I haven’t even seen the truck!”

“Is this your friend from the dealership? You think he’s being square?”

Guthrie grimaced because he’d hit Speaker since they were in the auto bay, and it was hard to hear, and Martin had heard that, but the kid rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, Livvy. I trust him, but I don’t know if the truck is going to last me—”

“Well, it doesn’t have to go for ten years, does it?” she asked acerbically. “It just has to get you here and jockey you around until you get your feet under you. You worked there. Is it a good price?”

“It’s a steal,” he said frankly. “Hell, it’d be a steal for my dead truck, but if this thing runs?”

“Purrs like a kitten,” Martin confirmed. “I was in the service bay when they did the checkup.” He gave a sweet little smile. “I know it’s hard to believe this at a new-and-used car lot, but I wouldn’t do you wrong. You, uh….” His abashed look was 100 percent genuine. “You, uh, gave me the confidence to ask Tracy out, you know? I owe you, brother.”

“You’re dating?” Guthrie asked, honestly pleased. “That’s sweet to hear.”

“Guthrie!” Olivia snapped on the other end of the phone, and Guthrie remembered what he was doing. “Go check out the truck. Me and Elton have some leftover funds from the insurance settlement on the Kia?”

Oh shit. “Livvy, I can’t take that—”

“Three days?” she said, and with a cold shiver he saw all those zeroes heading into his bank account. All those promises.

“What if something goes wrong?” he babbled, suddenly afraid. “What if the banks go belly up, or Seth’s studio suddenly hates the album? What if Seth’s agent rethinks this entire thing and decides I should be paid like a studio musician? What if the album flops and they want all the money back—”

“Guthrie,” Olivia said softly, “stop. You signed a contract. The money is being transferred. That’s what you said, right?”

“Yeah,” Guthrie said through a dry throat. Until all that had come bursting out of him, he hadn’t realized how terrified he was of havingeverything, Tad included, yanked away from him, the goalposts moved one more time, his life locked in flux like some living ghost’s as he moved from gig to gig without a home.

He’d never realized how much more he wanted than that untilright now.

Suddenly “just enduring,” his signature move, was not enough.

“Honey,” she said, “even if it all got bolluxed up, you still need a vehicle to get up here and fix it. Go take a test drive and let me talk to your moneyman, and we’ll see what we can do.”

“Here,” Martin said, taking the new phone from him carefully. “I heard that. Olivia?”

“Hiya!”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, darlin’,” he said, and Guthrie dimly realized Martin had gotten that word from Guthrie himself. “How’s that baby?”

“Chowing away,” came Olivia’s voice, tinny now with the little bit of distance. “Let’s discuss how I’m about to throw away my money on a friend.”

Martin winked at Guthrie. “You and I both know he’s good for it,” he said. “You at a computer?”

“Yup!”

“Well send me your info, let me get Guthrie set up for a test drive, and let’s see what we can do.”

GUTHRIE WASnever sure what sort of magic Martin worked to make that deal happen. He had his test drive with a clueless recent college graduate who had babbled about T-bills and investment portfolios as Guthrie took the truck through its paces around San Rafael. He was pleasantly surprised at what he found.

The vehicle was more than decent—steering, suspension, engine noises, body. So clean. There were dings in the bed that meant it had been used, but it had obviously been cared for. The 100,000 miles on the odometer wasn’t a lot for a truck like this—they were used for hauling, and this one would be good for another 200,000 more, Guthrie guessed. The truck that had just died—why hadn’t he named her again? Had he been that afraid of connections when he was eighteen?—had garnered nearly 500,000 miles before coasting into the service bay, and Guthrie figured it had earned its rest. Hell, it was almost a dignified way to go.

Maybe this new one could even match the old one and—the thought still filled him with wonder—if it didn’t, Guthrie might not be forced to drive it into an early grave from sheer desperation.

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