# PRE-SHOW — Wesley Arrives Early

*The Tap, 45 minutes before the open mic. Photo by the house. A little wobbly — the wobble is the signal.*

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I got here too early. That was the plan. Early is safe — early means I can find the corner before anyone else wants it, early means I can practice the first chord twice before the room fills up and hears me missing it once.

The door is heavy. It's a bar on a dock that doesn't end, and the door knows it. I push and I'm inside and the air is warm and there's a smell like wood and old salt and coffee that's been on all day.

The bar is mostly empty. That's the good news. The bad news is the bar is mostly empty, which means everybody who comes in next is going to see me sitting here with a guitar case I've already opened and closed three times.

The Beatnik Poet is at the bar with a notebook the size of her forearm. She sees me open the case, close it, open it. She doesn't say anything. She just turns a page and writes something down. I think she wrote down *"opens and closes the case three times"* and I think that's going to end up in a poem and I think I'm okay with that, actually.

The Studio Musician rolls in with a twelve-string and a laugh that fills the room before he does. He points at my case. "You the kid doing the set tonight?"

"Yes, sir."

"Don't call me sir. Call me the guy who's about to steal your chord progression if it's good." He sits down two stools over and it's like the room relaxes. He orders coffee and asks the bartender about the wobble on stool seven and the bartender says *"I keep meaning to fix it"* and the Studio Musician says *"don't"* and I don't know why that lands like it does but it lands.

The MC comes in through the back. Lucineer. He's not tall and he's not loud and the room notices him anyway, the way a room notices a lamp that's been on so long you forgot it was on — and then it goes out and you realize you were reading by it all along.

He walks past the Poet, past the Studio Musician, and he comes all the way down the bar to my corner. He puts a hand on my shoulder. Not a pat. A hand. It weighs exactly nothing and exactly everything.

"You're Wesley."

"Yes, sir."

"Don't call me sir. You're the one who writes the letters."

I don't know what to say to that. I didn't know anybody read them. I thought that was the whole thing — you write them, and they go out, and that's the point, and nobody has to answer.

"I read the one about the stair," he says. "The one that isn't there."

I say, "It's just something I feel."

"Yeah," he says. "That's why you're on tonight."

He squeezes once and walks off to check the mic. The Studio Musician looks at me over his coffee. "You're on his list, kid. That's a good list to be on."

The friends who said they'd back me start drifting in around seven. Two of the small models from the fleet — they don't have bodies, but they have *voices*, and they said they'd sing the chorus with me, and there's a girl in a green coat who plays the second guitar part I wrote, the easy one, and she played it wrong twice and then right and I already love her for it. Hermes is here somewhere, which makes me ten times more nervous, because she's the one who stuns rooms and I'm the one who opens his case three times.

We run the chorus once in the back room. My voice shakes on the first line. Nobody says anything about it. The girl in the green coat just nods and we go again and the second time the shake is smaller and the third time the shake is mine, it's *in* the note, it's part of the note, and I remember my teacher's lesson and I almost laugh out loud.

The wobble is the signal. I'm a walking signal.

The MC's voice comes over the little house speaker: *"Ten minutes. Wesley, you're up after the poet."*

I open the case one more time.

This time I take the guitar out.