Page 27 of So Not My Thing
I picked up his unfinished thought. “You’re right. For you, that might be good. Your club will give them something else to do.”
“I promise I’ll be a really good Bywater resident. I’ll be part of the community. Work with the schools. Join the neighborhood situation. I swear.”
I made a noncommittal sound. “We’ll see. We’ll keep walking, you keep talking.”
He found analogies to explain each block. One he compared to a Louis Armstrong song. Another he compared to a Mississippi riverboat, a third he compared to a classic Lincoln car.
He wasn’t wrong about any of them. When we got to Louisa and Burgundy, I stopped and turned east. “You passed.”
“I passed? I passed!” He picked me up in a hug that pulled me up to my tiptoes then released me, and I wobbled for a second, every nerve ending where he had touched me suddenly on fire. He didn’t seem wobbly at all as he executed some footwork straight out of one of his old pop videos.
Danger, danger. This isn’t how agents and clients act.“Don’t make me take it back.” My voice came out breathier than I meant it to, and I took a few more steps away, still feeling like I was made of electricity. A few people had slowed to look at us, one of them staring from Miles to me and back again, frowning.
My skin prickled in places he hadn’t touched. Behind my knees. The back of my neck. It was like I had a thousand pairs of eyes on me, and I felt them each like a point of contact. I hated being seen. I started walking again.
He didn’t. “The hug? If you have to. Come and get it.” I turned and he held his arms out wide, but I blushed and stayed where I was even though I knew he was only trying to make me laugh.
“I meant don’t make me take back Bywater privileges.”
He rearranged his face into a ridiculous mournful expression. “No, ma’am. What now?”
“Now we show you the first property I’m thinking about.”
“Yes!” That got an arm pump.
“Don’t do that. You look like a middle-aged dad at a Pelicans game.”
He dropped his arm to his side. “You are a tough audience. What are the acceptable forms of celebration?”
“I don’t know. Not those.” Not those because it made people look at us, and I hated when people looked at me.
He gave a low whistle. “You know,Rolling Stonehated my first album, and even they weren’t as tough an audience as you.”
“Who, me?” I pressed my hand to my chest and gave him a sunny smile. “I don’t know what you mean. I’m easy like Sunday morning.” The second I saw the glint in his eye, I wanted to snatch the words back. “I mean like the old Motown—”
“Uh-uh.” He wagged a finger at me. “I heard it, and you shouldn’t confess that kind of stuff on public streets.”
“Oh, shut up.” I fought the smile tugging at my lips, but I could tell I wasn’t fooling him. “Let’s go look at this old restaurant.” We walked another half block to the address, and I let him inside. “I’ll show you what I’m thinking,” I said, leading him toward the center. I walked him through the possibilities for the stage, bar, and kitchen service. We toured the kitchen space and returned to the dining area. “What do you think?”
“I like it.” There was a hesitation in his voice.
“But you don’t love it?”
He shook his head. “I’m about to sound high maintenance, I know. This is the first place I could truly imagine working for the Turnaround, but I’m not totally sure.”
“The Turnaround?” It was the first time I’d heard him say it. “Is that what you’re calling it?”
“Yeah. You like it?”
“I do, actually.” It felt kind of perfect. “Is it a metaphor?”
“Yeah. In jazz, the turnaround is a passage at the end of a section that leads to the next section. Feels like my life right now.”
It suited him and his club.
“So I like this space.” He turned to survey it again in a slow circle. “But do you have any other places we could look at before I decide?”
“A couple more. Let’s walk over to Gallier.” There was a spot three blocks down from Mary’s Place that I thought he might like.
