Bad Influence

He’d gotten a guitar for his tenth birthday. By eleven he’d blasted through every songbook he could lay his hands on, learned all that his teachers could pass on to him and found his home in the blues.

By thirteen he’d joined his first band. He still remembered how it had felt walking into the audition held by a group of guys in their twenties. “What the hell is a kid doing here?” one of them had demanded. “Great, a refugee from Musical Youth,” another had muttered.

Zach had just ignored them and plugged in his guitar. Let them talk, he’d figured—all he’d wanted to do was play. And when he’d begun to solo to the backing riff in his head, they’d first quieted, then stared, then one by one picked up their instruments and begun to play with him.

Five years later he’d released his first album. It had been put out by a small indie label, one without wide distribution. It hadn’t done much to make him money, but with the pittance of an advance, he’d bought his first beat-up van and gone on the road. When that label had gone under, he’d switched to another. By then, he was touring as the Zach Reed Band. By the time he’d switched labels yet again he’d amassed a critical success and a small, rabid fan base.

Unfortunately small, rabid fan bases didn’t pay the bills. He didn’t care, for years he hadn’t cared, content as long as he was playing. So what if he was in a different city every night? So what if he was piling into his van with the guys to go from club to club on the giant Pacific Northwest blues circuit that ran from Chicago to San Francisco to Portland and Seattle? So what if they ate in diners and slept in fleabag hotels or the back room of a club if they were lucky and in the van if they weren’t?

He hadn’t cared. But this time his label hadn’t gone under—it had dumped him. This time Rory, his bass player, and Angel, his guitarist, had begged off for local gigs. Good reviews weren’t enough. They wanted—needed—successful albums to keep their heads above water. And it wasn’t happening.

Zach was damned if he knew why. He’d always figured that talent would prove out. He’d always assumed all he had to do was play and make the best albums possible and sooner or later it would come together. Only it hadn’t. It hadn’t at twenty, twenty-five, thirty or thirty-five. He had a treasure trove of amazing memories, but he’d never quite broken through, no matter how well respected he was. He was thirty-six going on thirty-seven and he didn’t have a clue what came next.

Sure, some of the legendary bluesmen had stayed on the road until they’d wound up being broken-down old guys with nowhere to go. He’d played more than one fund-raiser for their cause.

He didn’t want to become a beneficiary.

Part of him said to keep pushing until he made it, but in some small, disillusioned corner of his brain he was starting to wonder if maybe that would never happen.

So he’d come to visit Gloria. Here, he could suck up a shot of her feisty energy and have a home base for a couple of weeks while he figured out what to do.

But then she’d gotten into the accident with the tight-assed antique next door. The antique with the entirely too tasty morsel of a granddaughter.

Thoughtfully Zach set his guitar aside. Paige Favreau, so neat and proper, so calm and controlled. She might tell him that she didn’t want any part of him; he knew better.

He saw it in her eyes.

It was enough to make him think.

He didn’t know what to do about his career, but he did know one thing. Gloria wanted the museum, and that was enough for him. On his twelfth birthday she’d given him a vintage Les Paul. His parents had objected on the grounds that no kid needed a guitar worth a few thousand dollars. What was money for, Gloria had countered, if not to enjoy? She’d believed he was going to go somewhere with his music, and with the Les Paul in hand, he had.

So if Gloria wanted a burlesque museum, a burlesque museum she would get, and Paige Favreau could just be the way to make that happen. She had Lyndon’s ear and she looked like the type who could change his mind. And if, in the process of getting her to loosen up and get behind the museum, Zach could get her to loosen up and spend some time with him, well, so much the better.

Yeah, he could do worse than stick around to look after things for a few weeks. And he could put off figuring out what the hell he was going to do with his life.

After all, figuring out how to convince Paige Favreau she wanted him in her bed was bound to be a lot more fun.

Shaking his head, he rose to go to the main house to check on Gloria. They’d always been a likely pair, with the same irreverent sense of the world and exasperation with the rules.

He walked in to find her at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and doing the crossword puzzle.

“You’re up and around bright and early,” he observed.

“I figured I had to make my move while you weren’t here giving me the hairy eyeball.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Not bad,” she allowed. “I think I’ll live.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” He walked past her, squeezing her shoulder before going after coffee.

“Nona can get that for you,” Gloria said.

“I can get it myself.” Zach got out a mug and filled it.

“How about a little car shopping today?” Gloria suggested. “I feel like doing a few test-drives.”

“Don’t see why we couldn’t. I like the idea of you in one of those Mini Coopers.”

She snorted.

“A pink Ferrari?” he suggested.

“Better, but I’m still going to pass.”

“Just a Bentley gal at heart, eh?”

“You know me well.”

“That I do.” He took a drink of coffee and came back over to sit down. “You know, I’m the last person to tell you to blend in, but have you really thought through this museum thing?”

“What do you mean? You know I’m committed to pulling this off. It’s not just for jollies. There are people out there from the business, old people who don’t have a pot to piss in. This museum can help.”

“Not if you keep going out of your way to rile people up. Right now you’ve got a whole lot of really excited folks on your hands, and I don’t mean in a good way. Maybe it’s time to rethink things.”

She eyed him. “You’ve been talking to that stiff-necked old coot next door, haven’t you.”

“His granddaughter, actually, but I was thinking about this anyway. If you want this thing to come off, you’ll be better off playing nice. Why set it up in a way that’s calculated to piss people off? Do it somewhere else.”

“I locate it somewhere else and I have to pay rent, which cuts into profit. I’ve got so much room here I’d never even notice.”

“You’re going to have a fight on your hands to get that variance.”

“I don’t mind a fight.”

The corners of his mouth tugged into a grin. “I know you don’t.”

“And I like twisting their tails.”

“I know that about you, too.”

She laughed. “You know it because that’s how you are.”

One thing he’d come to grudgingly accept over the years, though, was that sometimes you had to give a little to get a little. “Come on, you’re smart enough to know that you’ll probably have an easier time getting it through if you play it soft.”

“I know, but I can’t stand that superior look Favreau next door gets on his face. He turned me in for not having my trees trimmed to the exact right height under the power lines on the property frontage. The city came in and practically shaved my jacarandas. And his fool gardener is always chopping on my bougainvillea.” She glared out the window at the long, low wall between the two properties, covered on her side with a profusion of greenery and blooms that ended abruptly at the top of the fence as though shaved off with a chain saw.

“Maybe he needs a hobby.”