It was all an accident, you know from the Get-Go. I wasn't even invited, but at the last minute Stevie said, "I know you've always wanted to meet him."
He grinned at me as if he knew he was my bestie even if only guys were invited to those late nights at the Lake House on LBJ.
Of course, I was not a guy, not even a boy. "Will, I have to come in disguise?"
Naturally, Stevie laughed. "I don't think so." He said it would be obvious, no matter how I dressed that I was not a guy. So we went with it.
Oh, what a crowd. Such a busy place, inside and out. A pool to boot. Some might have been naked for all I knew. Maybe I took a peek. God, did it scare me. Were musicians really like this?
So I was trying to find the bathroom. But there he was in a room, all alone.
"Anxieties?" I asked.
"You too?" Oh, that blank look on his face. All I wanted was to chug down some water.
"I know I shouldn't have come," I nodded, hoping I hadn't walked in on anything. Of course, he was a beautiful man, and I always thought secretly, he was using all those actresses to hide his real feelings.
"I don't know why I'm here, either," he shook his head as if no one seemed to take him seriously.
He poured me a glass of water. Asked my name. Of course, I knew who he was. We sat on the couch, pretending we were waiting for the inevitable.
"You didn't dress up for the occasion?" He looked me over.
"Oh, I didn't know I was coming," I told him giving him back the glass that he set on the coffee table. "My friend Stevie knows this place. He's..he's between boys, and well, he knew I often wondered about these parties." I told him it was Steve Martin who started these weekend getaways in early May, here in the hill country which wasn't all that far from the Austin City Limits.
"Steve Martin? Really?"
"Well, or so Stevie said his uncle used to come here then. I guess Mr. Martin sold the place. He's from Waco, you know."
"Waco?" Again he gave me a serious look with a lopsided smirk. "Truly, you know your towns around here, missy."
He talked about being a serious musician now. Said he'd started a band just after making it in choir in high school.
"You do have a soulful voice," as I recalled when he was in the Darling somethings so long ago, or so my mother told me.
He chuckled with an open smile. His hair was as messy as it ever was. But he wasn't boy anymore. Hadn't been a boy for a very long time now.
