was no time to waste—but I couldn’t bring myself to click the button. Ripley had said I sounded like a robot, which meant my voice was doing its flat-affect thing. It happened when I was low, and I usually didn’t notice it. But Ripley had. What if Higgins did, too? What if it weirded it him out, and he just hung up?
I decided it was better to wait. It would take at least three days to get to Vegas; that was plenty of time. Besides, we needed to prepare for tonight’s show.
I went up front and dropped into the passenger seat.
“Where are we?” I asked.
Dad didn’t answer right away, so I looked over at him. He was completely zoned out. I felt a moment of panic.
“Dad? Did you hear me?”
To my relief, he seemed to come out of his trance at once. “What? Yes, I’m fine. Well, actually, I’m a bit tired. Maybe some coffee.”
I frowned. How was he tired already? He’d only been driving for ninety minutes. Plus we’d just had an entire day off, which he’d spent relaxing. Whereas I’d been busting my ass all day trying to save my grades and make ends meet. Sometimes I wondered how he would survive without me.
“Pull over,” I said. “I’ll drive.”
Sunny’s Roadhouse squatted on the south side of I-20. It was a one-story brick rectangle with a detached, ramshackle smokehouse. I could smell the ribs before I killed the engine in the field behind the lot. Only a few Harleys and F-150s were parked in front; it was barely five o’clock.
Dad was passed out on the couch, looking pale and waxy. I sat down across from him and watched him sleep, his chest rising and falling, his lips puffing up and releasing air like a cartoon character’s. It was a symptom of his apnea, which contributed to his heart problems. I felt guilty for being annoyed with him. Of course he was tired—he was sixty-four. Life on the road was getting harder for him, too.
I thought of the guys he’d come up with in the magic world: Mac Regent, Eric Starr, David Standard. They all had cushy gigs at casinos in Las Vegas or Atlantic City. It wasn’t the high life, but it was a stable one, doing what they loved six nights a week for a steady paycheck. Dad’s epic fuckup on live TV had killed that dream for him. For us.
Just then, a fire truck shot past on I-20, the siren so piercing that I had to cover my ears.
Dad opened his eyes. “What’s wrong? Are we there already?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why don’t you splash some water on your face before we go in?”
The owner of Sunny’s, Caroline, was pulling pints behind the bar. She was big and redheaded, with thick glasses and a wide smile, and she looked up at Dad as we approached.
“Sumbitch! What’s it been, five years? How you been?”
“Six,” Dad said, and kissed her hand.
Caroline laughed. “And you,” she said, turning to me. “You were a knobby-kneed little foal last time I saw you. Ain’t you something now. Those brown eyes.” She stroked my head like an old aunt, then looked at Dad. “Better get this one on the pill.”
I tried to smile instead of vomiting on the bar. Dad turned pink.
Caroline’s smile widened. “Are you hungry?”
I ate a pulled-pork sandwich the size of a car battery and drank a root beer in a frosty pint glass. I barely tasted either as I glanced around the roadhouse. It was a converted barn with a horseshoe-shaped bar at one end and an elevated stage at the other. The stage was big, and a cluster of lights clung to a truss overhead. I felt the first few butterflies begin to spread their wings in my stomach. I wouldn’t be performing tonight—but for a moment, I pictured myself up there, and my nerves began to hum.
The song on the jukebox ended, and in the momentary silence, “Umbrella” started up again in my head. Ella, ella, eh, eh, eh . . . It was for the best that I wouldn’t be performing. Maybe I would just curl up in the RV and try to sleep.
Caroline grabbed a remote from behind the bar and clicked it, and the lights on the truss came on, bathing the stage in a deep blue. I saw a drum set and two amplifiers sitting upstage.
“Looks like this place is more of a rock bar now,” I said. “Are people really going to be