“Don’t be insulting. I could get it from Mattie.”

“No!” Taylor cries.

“Well, Christ, keep your fingernails on. Mattie wouldn’t mind.”

“I mind,” she says. “I’m going to make this work here. I have to. I’m not stupid, and I’m not lazy. I’m working so hard, Jax, but we never quite get caught up.”

“It’s not your fault, Taylor.”

“Well, whose is it? I should be able to keep a roof over my own head. If I work at it.”

“That’s just a story. You’re judging yourself by the great American cultural myth, but Horatio Alger is compost, honey. That standard no longer applies to reality.”

“Right. Tell that to my landlord.”

“What you need is a nice musician to take care of you.”

“Now, there’s a myth. Who did a musician ever take care of?”

“Not even his most beloved M1 synthesizer, at the moment.

I just poured a beer down her front and left her gargling her final breaths on stage. We’re on break right now.”

“Well, guess what, I did meet this air traffic controller.”

“Damn, I knew it. You’re in love.”

“No. But Turtle and I got to see the control room yesterday. It’s this dark room full of little radar screens, with somebody in charge of each one. They sit there all day hunched over watching yellow blinking dots and drinking coffee and talking the pilots out of crashing into each other.

What a life, huh? It looks kind of like a submarine.”

“Is that what submarines look like? I always wondered.”

“Well, I don’t know. It seemed like it. It’s called the Terminal Radar Approach Control. Turtle kept calling it the Terminal Roach Control. I’m not sure she had a real good understanding of the concepts.”

“Don’t be surprised if she did. Not much passes her by.”

“That’s true. It was kind of reassuring to see. At least somebody is in control of something in this world.”

“Sounds like true love to me,” Jax says miserably.

“Jax, I’m not in love with Steven Kant.”

“Well, just make sure Steven Doesn’t.”

“That’s great. You’re telling me to be a nun, while you’re finally getting the landlady interested in the plumbing.”

Jax laughs, in spite of himself. “She’s lost interest again, I promise you. Our toilet still defies the laws of hydrodynam-ics.”

“Well, I’m sure glad to hear that. I wouldn’t want to think she was showing you any special favors.”

“You know what? I’m glad you’re jealous. It makes me feel less remorseful about what I’m going to do to this Steven Can’t when I locate his control tower.”

“I’m not in love, Jax. He’s nice, but he doesn’t laugh at my jokes the way you do.” She stops, but Jax knows from the quality of her silence to keep listening. She goes on. “I hate to say this, after what I just told you about making my own way, but he took Turtle and me to this nice restaurant in the airport, and I sat there thinking: everything on this menu costs more than our whole week’s food budget. It was such a relief just to eat. Sometimes it’s hard to separate that from love.”

Jax can see through the bar to the stage, where his band is beginning to accumulate once again. Rucker and the drummer are standing over his synthesizer like forlorn relatives at a wake. The bobbing woman is still bobbing in a slow circle. Suddenly, as Jax watches, she keels like a mannequin and hits the floor with a somewhat frightening sound. Jax understands that he despises her because she is pitiful.

“I’m sending you two plane tickets home. Just tell me your address.”

Taylor says nothing.

“I’m having trouble reading your lips.”

“No. Don’t send plane tickets. I can’t just ditch the car here.”

“This is not about your car.”

“Jax, no.”

“You damn proud little hillbilly.”

She says nothing, and Jax holds his breath, afraid she’ll hang up. Then her voice comes. “If that’s what you want to call me, I don’t care. I’ve hardly ever had a dime’s worth of nickels but I always knew I could count on myself. If I bail out here, I won’t even have that.”

“You’re breaking my heart,” he tells Taylor.

“I’m breaking mine, Jax. I don’t believe this is my life. I look in the mirror and I see a screwup.”