And we’ll be even now when I bring him his phone and do a nice thing for him.
Squaring my shoulders, I head down the street, turn onto the block where Pour Decisions is located, and weave through evening crowds. I didn’t realize Duck Falls was so busy on a Thursday night, but this is the place to be it seems. My gaze swings from one side of the block to the next, counting the bistros, and wine bars, and a pottery studio with an evening class.
I come up to Pour Decisions and it’s a…dive bar. He’s doing a yappy hour at this den of iniquity? With red brick, dark windows, and a smudged beige door, this looks like the place where you order a whiskey straight up after your wife leaves you. The bartender slides it your way and starts a tab for a long night.
With some trepidation, I pull the door open, and I’m standing in a small, dark entryway, its walls draped in black curtains. Music plays from inside the bar, but I can’t quite make out the song or see the bar from here. A bored, burly man with a shaved white head and a long gray beard glances up from a podium and grunts out, “ID.”
I’m not usually asked unless I’m ordering a drink. “Here you go,” I say, tugging my wallet out of my purse and showing it off. “Is this a twenty-one-and-up night?”
He scans it with bored eyes. “Always is.”
“Okay then,” I say, all chipper since apparently that’s my lot in life—to try to make grumpy fuckers smile.
It doesn’t work, but I soldier on with my mission. With Sawyer’s phone in hand, I push open a creaky door at the end of the entryway that takes me into a dimly lit bar.
Huh. This is going to be an interesting spot for a yappy hour, that’s for sure. I figured dog toys and weave poles with wine and craft beer, but it’s all peanut shells and dart boards.
It’s packed though. Stuffed with people who are drinking, laughing, toasting their beers.
Then cheering to…a karaoke machine. It’s sitting on a low stage, the wood baseboard stained with Budweiser and Jack Daniels over the years. The opening notes of the song it plays are familiar. The audience is already pumped, even though no one’s singing yet.
I scan for Sawyer in the crowd when an older guy—maybe in his fifties—in skinny leather pants and a T-shirt that saysI Love Facts, bounds onto the stage. His salt-and-pepper hair is buzzed to a fade, and his dark-brown arms are covered in colorful snake and skull tattoos. He brings the mic to his mouth and booms into it a raspy voice. “And now…the one you’ve been coming to see every Thursday night. The one you count down the days for. The one, the only…Sam Silversmith.”
Okay. So that’s the guy Sawyer’s meeting with. Which meansSawyer has to be somewhere in this crowd. I spin around, hunting for him one more time, right as a rich, melodic voice croons one of the most familiar opening lyrics ever written…about a small-town girl living in a lonely world.
As the voice carries, the hair on my arms stands on end.
There’s no way.
That can’t be.
In slow-mo, I turn around, my jaw coming unhinged as my gaze lands on the man onstage. He’s wearing mirrored aviator shades, jeans, and a gray T-shirt that saysI’m with the Band.Leather wristbands slide down his strong arms. A temporary tattoo of a red rose on top of an old-fashioned microphone covers one forearm. His hair’s not neat. It’s a wild mess. He’s singing one of the most famous karaoke tunes ever.
Sawyer is Sam Silversmith.
And he’s belting out the lyrics to “Don’t Stop Believin’” at a seedy dive bar as the crowd goes wild for his pipes.
It’s official. Sawyer does not have a hot date. He has something even juicier—a secret identity as a karaoke star in a dive bar a few towns over.
Talk about payback.
22
KARAOKE BOSS
SAWYER
The crowd is amped up as I sing about a city boy who was born and raised in South Detroit who’s now taking a midnight train. Like they do nearly every Thursday, the crowd cheers, some of them singing along too, beer sloshing over cups, fists raised in the air in rocker salutes.
It’s infectious, their enthusiasm. It emboldens me as I prowl across the stage, microphone in hand, letting go, letting loose, doing one of my favorite things. When we reach the part about strangers waiting in the night, I can feel the weight of the day sliding off my shoulders—the worries about the shoot and the business and pleasing everyone, including the bottom line, just slink away. Here, with the microphone and the crowd, I’m no longer Mister Responsible. I’m just a guy who likes to blow off steam with a little bit of rock ’n’ roll.
I’m Sam Silversmith. A man who likes to rock out with strangers.
Some women in the front—who come every week—are dancing. They wear T-shirts and short skirts, and it’s their girls’ night out. Nurses, I’ve learned from Duke, the guy who owns the place. A couple of older dudes are always here too, looking like they just got off work from a construction job.
As the beat pounds through me, I reach the chorus and the famous words that everyone loves to sing along to. As I hit those title words, I hold the mic out to the audience so they can sing along with me too—and they do. Holy hell, do they.
I’m nodding, swaying my hips, enjoying the moment with fifty to one hundred people I don’t know when…
