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“So you’re a fan too?”
I picked up my quesadilla again, thinking about it as I took a bite. The Nighthawks had always just been the soundtrack in our home. I would know the second I stepped into the house or got into the car what kind of mood my dad was in based on which song was playing.
He played me other stuff besides the Nighthawks, of course—we always had music on, our system connected so that you could go from room to room and not lose a note. But the Nighthawks were his favorite, the thing he always came back to the most, his touchstone.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly, realizing I’d never had to put this into words before. “They were basically the sound of my whole childhood. Like I knew the songs before I remembered ever learning them. They were just part of me—the way you don’t remember learning your name.”
“He played you Nighthawks songs when you were a kid?” I nodded, and Russell frowned. “Even ‘South of the Border’?”
I laughed, impressed that he could pull that one out, when it seemed like he hadn’t even been familiar with “Darcy.” “That’s a deep cut.”
“I just can’t imagine playing it for a little kid. I don’t think I even heard it until I was thirteen or something.”
“My dad didn’t believe in the concept of kid music. He played me everything, so I learned these songs while having no idea what they were about. I sang ‘Ecstasy Nights’ for a first-grade talent show.”
Russell stared at me, taco forgotten, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You did not.”
“My dad got called into a meeting with my teacher about it. But I think secretly he was proud.” Russell laughed. “But… I actually don’t know if I would have liked them if I’d just heard them on my own, you know? Like, the Nighthawks are my dad. Do I love them because of the music? Or because I love my dad, and he loves them?” I shook my head and ran my hand over the fake grass. “I’ll never know, I guess.”
“I can see that.”
“Did you see their set?” I flashed back to it—the way that when Wylie Sanders had run out onstage, everything that had gone wrong with Romy and the festival had melted away. I’d heard the first notes of “Saturday Night Falls” and been transported.
“Just the beginning.”
“Oh man, you missed out. It was so great. He’s so fantastic, and to just be there with all those other people… and he played ‘Darcy,’ which he usually doesn’t do in concert anymore, and there was a moment in ‘Fair Weather’ where he held the mic out to the crowd, and we all sang the chorus, and…” I shook my head, the words spilling out fast. “And I know this isn’t an original thought at all. But at one point I looked around, at this moment we were all experiencing, this magic that was happening for just the people right then. And you could listen to a recording of it, but the experience was only if you were there. The one we were all sharing.” I stopped and took a breath, knowing that I wasn’t even getting close to capturing how it had felt.
Russell smiled at me in the slowly falling darkness. “That sounds—really amazing. It’s too bad your dad couldn’t see it.”
“Oh, I recorded the whole thing for him. Which is basically why my phone is dead.”
“He’ll appreciate it when you get home, though.”
“I hope so. He’s practically Wylie’s biggest fan.” I paused, considering. “Of the music, at any rate.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know.”
Russell just shook his head. But even if he wasn’t a huge fan, he had to know about Wylie Sanders’s personal life. It was just… out there, in the supermarket aisle on the cover of People, fodder for late-night hosts’ jokes, memes on social media.
“Just… how it’s kind of a train wreck. He’s been married a million times, he has all these kids with different women, and his last wife was basically a teenager, right? And he and Candace Young are always in court.…” This was the most prominent of his breakups, mostly because it involved a movie star, someone as famous as him. They’d never gotten married, but had a son and, judging by the articles in Us Weekly, hadn’t stopped fighting since. This was the only one of Wylie’s kids who was in the press—the rest were pretty much out of public view, unless one of them behaved badly on social media. I seemed to remember a few years ago, his daughter—was it Dakota?—had been photographed skinny-dipping off a yacht. A yacht she’d borrowed without permission.
Russell shrugged. “I don’t really know.”
“Really? There was just a thing in DitesMoi. He and his child bride fighting over custody of their twins…” I reached for my bag to show him on my phone.
“Dead Ameche,” Russell reminded me.
“Right. That is hard to remember.”
“You like DitesMoi?” There wasn’t judgment in Russell’s tone, exactly—more like surprise.
“I mean, it’s not like I read it a lot. Just for entertainment, you know?”
Russell nodded, his head bent as he stuffed his trash in the paper bag. I was about to ask him if he ever read it—when I looked up and caught my breath. And what was happening in front of me drove away all thoughts of Instagram gossip sites. There was a glorious sunset streaked across the horizon—apparently, while we’d been eating tacos, we’d missed the sky turning into a Van Gogh painting, purple and pink and orange mixing together across the huge canvas of the desert sky. The mountains were silhouetted and huge, and the whole thing was just breathtaking.
Needing to get a better view, I lay back, tipping my chin up, trying to take it all in. More than anything, I wanted to freeze this moment. So that when I needed to, I could call it back—the Technicolor sunset, the AstroTurf under my bare legs, the faint breeze blowing, Russell’s profile as he finished his Jarritos. The feeling of pieces snapping, at long last, into place.
