Rain Gods by James Lee Burke Page A

five-piece mariachi band, one complete with sombreros and brocaded vaquero costumes, beer-bellied, mustached guys with brass horns that could crack the tiles on the roof, and he had no need of an Anglo folksinger. As he and the girl walked out of the sun’s glare into the air-conditioned coolness of the restaurant, the girl swinging her guitar case against her hip, he knew that an adulterer had always lived inside him.
     
    She wore white shorts and a pale blue blouse and sandals, and when she sat down in front of his desk, she leaned over a little too far and he wondered if he wasn’t being played.
     
    “You sing Spanish songs?” he said.
     
    “No, I do a lot of the Carter Family pieces. Their music made a comeback when Johnny Cash married June. Then the interest died again. They created a style of picking that’s called ‘hammering on and pulling off.’”
     
    Nick was clueless, his mouth hanging open in a half-smile. “You sing like Johnny Cash?”
     
    “No, the Carters were a big influence on other people, like Woody Guthrie. Here, I’ll show you,” she said. She unsnapped her guitar case and removed a sunburst Gibson from it. The case was lined with purplish-pink velvet, and it glowed with a virginal light that only added to Nick’s confused thoughts about both the girl and the web of desire and need he was walking into.
     
    She fitted a pick on her thumb and began singing a song about flowers covered with emerald dew and a lover betrayed and left to pine in a place that was older than time. When she chorded the guitar, the whiteness of her palm curved around the neck, and she depressed a bass string just before striking it, then released it, creating a sliding note that resonated inside the sound hole. Nick was mesmerized by her voice, the way she lifted her chin when she sang, the muscles working in her throat.
     
    “That’s beautiful,” he said. “You say these Carter guys were an influence on Woody Herman?”
     
    “Not exactly,” she replied.
     
    “I already got a band, but maybe come back in a couple of weeks. If it doesn’t work out with them—”
     
    “You have an opening for a food server?” she asked, putting away her guitar.
     
    “I got two more than I need. I had to hire the cook’s sisters, or she was gonna walk on me.”
     
    The girl snapped the locks on her case and raised her eyes to his. “Thanks, you’ve been real nice,” she said.
     
    An image was forming in his mind that turned his loins to water. “Look, I got a place next door. Slap my face if you want. The money’s good, the girls working for me don’t have to do anything they don’t want to, I throw drunks and profane guys out. I try to keep it a gentlemen’s club even if some bums get in sometimes. I could use a—”
     
    “What are you saying?”
     
    “That I got an opening or two. That maybe you’re in a tight spot and I can help you out till you find a singing job.”
     
    “I’m not a dancer,” she said.
     
    “Yeah, I knew that,” he said, his face small and tight and burning. “I was just letting you know my situation. I only got so many resources. I got kids of my own.” He was stuttering, and his hands were shaking under the desk, his words nonsensical even to himself.
     
    She was getting up, reaching for the handle on her guitar case, the back of one gold thigh streaked with a band of light.
     
    “Ms. Gaddis—”
     
    “Just call me Vikki.”
     
    “I thought maybe I was doing a good deed. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
     
    “I think you’re a nice man. I enjoyed meeting you,” she said. She smiled at him, and in that moment, in order to be twenty-five again, Nick would have run his fingers one at a time through a Skilsaw.
     
    Now, as he sat amid trellises and latticework that were green and thick with grapevine grown by his grandfather, an honest and decent man who had sold shoestrings from door to door, he tried to convince himself the girl in the photo was not Vikki Gaddis. But it was, and he knew it, and he knew her face would