CHAPTER 1
There are good days, and there are bad days. And then there are days when you find yourself hanging off the edge of a cliff.
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Charlie Glubson was having one of those days.
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The water far, far, far below him billowed and frothed with a blueish fury as it lashed the edge of the cliff's bottom. But Charlie was at the cliff's top, where a small tree clung to the rocks by its roots and stretched one lonely, adventurous branch out into the wide open sky beyond. On the branch hung Charlie’s belt, and inside of Charlie's belt hung Charlie.
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He started to unfasten the buckle, then looked downward (to him, upward) at the water again and hiccuped. The branch gently bounced.
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He made a quick mental calculation of geometric angles, weight distribution, wind direction, belt friction, and the propulsion force of hiccups to determine whether he could generate enough momentum to bounce backward toward safety.
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But then the branch started to sag, and his belt, with him inside of it, slid even further towards the leafy tip.
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It wasn't that his Aunt Annaruth was cruel to leave him hanging there; it was just that she was absentminded. Whenever she was writing a story in her head, she stopped noticing what she was doing. And his aunt was always writing a story in her head. She was, after all, Assistant Deputy Muse (Level IV Probationary Status) of Knashville, which was the smallest planet in the Circumstellar Band of Klumph, which was trying to escape the orbit of the Singing Star, which was parked illegally beside a black hole. But that isn't important (just yet).
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What's important right now is that she had really meant to hang something quite different–and much more appropriate–on that precipitous tree branch overhanging the Cumbersome Gorge, but she had absentmindedly hung Charlie there instead. And though he had meant to call out to her, he was so surprised by his sudden suspendulation that he hiccupped instead.
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For years, he had sharpened her pencils (carefully organizing them by lead hardness, length, and eraser quality) and even figured out the optimal sharpness-to-writing-time ratio so that she was never without a perfectly pointy writing instrument when inspiration struck. He’d collected and smoothed out the crumpled balls of first drafts she’d thrown on the floor and learned, by handwriting slant, how to put them in order again. He’d memorized hundreds of obscure dictionary words just to have on hand when needed (“Charlie, what rhymes with 'precipice'?” Edifice, orifice, artifice, auspice . . .”) And all along he had secretly wished that, just once, she would put him, Charlie Glubson, her quiet obedient nephew, in a story.
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And now, he realized, she finally had. Or rather, she had hung him in a story–by his belt.
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"And not just any story," said Charlie aloud. "I'm in a cliffhanger!" He thought for a second and corrected himself: "I AM a cliffhanger."
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Cliffhangerhangerhangerhangerhanger . . . The last word echoed down the deep gorge, and Charlie felt suddenly exposed and embarrassed and terribly shy. He wasn’t meant for stories. He was meant for pencil sharpening and paper uncrumpling and picnic basket carrying and belt wearing without the uncomfortable intrusion of adventurous branches.
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His own echoing voice faded into silence again. Then, ever so softly, ringing out from the constellations far above and mingled with the rumble of waves on the rocks far below, he thought he heard the Singing Star warbling a badly out-of-tune sea shanty.
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“Hello?” he said tentatively. Hellohellohellohellohellollollo . . .
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“Is anyone there?” Theretheretheretheretherethereheretheretherethere . . .
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“HELP ME I’M A CLIFFHANGER!" HANGERHANGERHANGERHANGERHANGER . . .
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A breeze set the branch aquiver again, and the straggly leaves at the tip danced even closer to Charlie’s head. His nose tingled. He suppressed another hiccup. And he listened.
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An off-key note. The drumbeat of wings. The purr of mechanical gears.
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Something was flying towards him.
CHAPTER 2
If you have seen a bicycle, which seems highly likely, you should have little difficulty envisioning what was purring mechanically toward Charlie Glubson. It was a flycycle, much like the bicycles you have (almost certainly) seen, except that it had great canvas wings that flapped as the rider pedaled.
Lumbering up from below, the flycycle performed two perfect loop-de-loops, passed Charlie’s branch, then swooped in a great arc to the far side of the gorge before circling back around to hover a few feet from Charlie’s branch. The rider/flapper, quite a small person, peered at Charlie through quite a large pair of goggles.
“You called for me?” the flycyclist asked, still pedaling so as not to plummet to the bottom of the gorge.
“I called for somebody, anybody,” said Charlie.
“You didn’t call for somebody, anybody,” said the flycyclist, continuing to pedal and hover. “You called for me. By name. Why would you deny it?”
“I don’t even know your name,” said Charlie, with perhaps a touch of impatience. Hanging by his belt over a precipitous, un-serendipitous gorge, Charlie felt that his odd visitor was missing the point.
When a look of hurt and disappointment flashed across the flycyclist’s face, Charlie realized that he might have come across as rude. “What I meant to say,” said Charlie, “was that in my current predicament, I may have forgotten your name. Would you be so kind as to remind me?”
“I am Cliff Anger,” answered the flycyclist, buoyed again. “Cliff Anger the Danger Ranger, the greatest stunt-flyer in the Cumbersome Gorge and surrounding counties.”
Cliff Anger reached out a hand for the Cliffhanger to shake. But as he leaned forward, he leaned too close, and the great canvas wing of the flycycle swiped Charlie right off his branch and into the thin air hundreds of feet above the rocky floor of Cumbersome Gorge.
CHAPTER 3
Luckily for Charlie, Aunt Annaruth had continued to be just as absentminded throughout the rest of her day as she had been at 8 o’clock in the morning when she had inadvertently hung her hiccuping nephew on a branch. As she wandered through her ample gardens, humming to herself and dreaming up a particularly gory scene in her goblin novel, chaos erupted in the house behind her.
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Misty the Morphable, who was half loving pet and half insistent nuisance, had not been fed breakfast. Charlie would never have forgotten to feed Misty breakfast, but as we have already discussed, he was not exactly in a position to collect dew drops, which was the only thing Misty could consume without making herself ill, or at least so she told Charlie whenever he tried to give her something else.
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Typically a summery little cloud, Misty spent her days floating about the eaves of the house. She was also kind enough to water the houseplants (so long as she was told she was pretty and promptly given her dewdrops at 9 o’clock every morning). As neither of those things had happened, Misty went on a rampage. She thundered and raged, flooded the kitchen sink, rained hail on the innocent piano in the hall, and broke a third of Annaruth’s favorite dishes.
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When it was clear that no one was coming to feed her, she sizzled out into the garden in search of her offending family. When she found Annaruth, she did everything she could think of to express her displeasure. She poured rain on the poor woman’s head, swathed her in a thick fog, and even turned herself into a tornado and ripped up the cornflowers. But nothing made the slightest difference. The Assistant Deputy Muse (Level IV Probationary Status) was unaware.
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Once she realized that no matter the chaos she wrought, she would be unable to get Annaruth’s attention, Misty stormed off (quite literally) to go find Charlie and give him a piece of her mind.
CHAPTER 4
Had Junie Calloway glanced to her right when she came to the fork in the road, she would have seen what appeared to be a highly exasperated thundercloud-in-miniature rampaging up Main Street.
Junie, however, did not glance right. She did not glance left either, on account of the fact that she was too busy staring straight upward to be much bothered with right or left. There, drifting across the broad blue expanse, was a particularly shapely cumulonimbus cloud. This cloud very much would have reminded Junie of a fire-breathing unicorn if such a creature did, in fact, exist, which of course it didn’t.
Within a few moments, however, the unicorn had dissipated into another shape, this one vaguely resembling an unusually tall platypus, and Junie was reminded of the business at hand. Namely, the very serious business of running away.
Junie hitched her backpack higher onto her shoulder, and leaned down to pick up the guitar case which had been twitching and thumping in mild disdain at finding itself placed, somewhat unceremoniously, upon a pedestrian sidewalk.
Junie gave the case a little shake, saying, “Get used to it, Wampus. Where we’re going, you’re going to be sitting on plenty more sidewalks.” Her words were rewarded with muffled clucks of disgruntlement, but Junie paid no more mind to Wampus. Her attention was now on something else entirely.
The Number 56 Knashville City bus was lumbering toward her, its tailpipe belching out a haze of purple exhaust and its brakes squealing like a chorus of banshees. The bus growled to a stop, and over the deep rumbling of the engine, Junie was suddenly aware of the faint sound of yelling. The yelling, louder now, was coming from down the street. It was coming, sure enough, from the direction she’d just walked.
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“JUUUUUNIIIEEEEEEE!!!”
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Junie would know that holler anywhere.
“Dadgummit,” she hissed, then, at the sight of the small bespectacled boy who had just stumbled out of the mouth of a nearby alley, Junie bellowed, “Arlo Calhoun, you get out of here! Just go on back home!”
Arlo, wide-eyed and mouth ajar, took in the sight of his favorite and only cousin standing at the bus stop with a bulging backpack and the case of their grandaddy’s Wampuswood Picker clasped firmly in her hand.
It was all too much for Arlo. Everybody already said he was a crybaby anyway, so he went right ahead and burst into tears.
At that moment, the bus door levered open with a rasping creak of hinges, and Junie found herself staring up into the dark interior of the bus like the gaping maw of a hungry beast.
CHAPTER 5
Meanwhile, Charlie Glubson was falling. He fell for quite a long time for he’d been hanged at the top of quite a tall cliff. And as he was falling this is (more or less) what he thought to himself:
Well, here we go?
Go? Where?
Down.
We don’t want to go down. It’s wet down there.
Nevertheless, gravity insists.
But what will we do when we get there?
I doubt we’ll have to think about it for long.
Good point. Should we cry out? Or yell or something?
I doubt it’ll do much good.
I doubt it could do much harm.
Good point.
“HEEEEEELLLLPPP!”
Feel any better.
A little worse actually. What if we flapped our arms.
That won’t work.
It works for birds.
Fair. But not for boys.
Wait a minute.
That doesn’t seem like an option right now, but go on.
Aunt Annaruth hung us here by mistake, right?
Clearly.
But there’s only one thing she could possibly have meant to hang here.
Oh dear. You’re right.
And if she hung us here instead of the Red Pennant.
Then that means the Resistance hasn’t seen the signal.
And it means no one knows we’re all in terrible danger.
And no one is coming to help.
We’ve got to get out of here.
And we’ve got to tell Junie. She’ll be furious if she misses all the fun…again.
Well, now what.
Flap, I guess.
Charlie flapped. Flapflapflapflapflapflapflap.
A lone gull glode past and raised a doubtful eyebrow.
Charlie had to admit to himself that the flapping made him feel pretty silly. But he kept it up for longer than most people would have, and just as the great sea was rising up to lick his face and welcome him into her languid depths, Charlie thought for a moment that the flapping had actually begun to work. Then he felt a sharp tug at his waistline and heard a harsh cry on the wind.
“Hoooeee! Cliff Anger’s gotcha, kid. Let’s get you somewhere safe.” Cliff had deftly snatched Charlie by a belt-loop and lifted him away from the uprushing sea.
And then up, up, they went, flycycle flapping, Cliff Anger whooping in victory.
Charlie shouted, “Mr. Anger, sir. Thanks for snatching me up. If you don’t mind, take a left at the next gaslamp, and then straight on till Morning Street. I’m afraid we’re all about to be in a great deal of trouble. Ride, Cliff Anger! Ride!”
“Hoooeee!”
Cliff rode.
CHAPTER 6
There are days when you find yourself hanging off the edge of a cliff only to be rescued by a bipedaling stunt-flyer, delivered safely to your front door, welcomed by your absentminded but apologetic aunt, and left to sharpen pencils in peace.
If only Charlie had been having one of those days. If only.
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Approximately forty-seven seconds into the flight toward Morning Street, as Charlie dangled from Cliff’s handlebars and shielded his eyes from the summer sun bouncing off skyscraper windows, a snowball hit him squarely on the nose.
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He opened one eye. “Misty?” The little cloud was swirling around the flycycle’s front wheel with all the white fury of a spurned housepet.
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“Friend of yours?” called Cliff, swerving sharply to avoid a blinding burst of snowballs.
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“She’s my aunt’s Morphshmbbfthh—” Charlie sputtered in surprise, spitting out another icy token of displeasure, “and normally she’s quite lovely.” He saw the cloud’s pale complexion warm ever so slightly at the compliment. “In fact, she’s the most radiant, the most effervescent, the most sublimely vaporous cloud in all the Circumstellar Band! A vision of atmospheric elegance!” His mind raced through the worn pages of Aunt Annarooth’s old thesaurus. “A stratospherically beautiful specimen of Morphable magnificence! The snow angel of my aunt’s heart!”
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But Misty, who had tracked Charlie this far by the frequency of his hiccups (she had long used them as a kind of homing signal, though he never knew this), had never in her life missed a 9 o’clock feeding and was not about to let this unprecedented outrage go unremarked—flattery or no flattery. Lightning flickered in her depths, and she let out a sharp crack followed by a long, descending rumble punctuated by three distinct pops of static—which in her own peculiar language meant something along the lines of “DEWDROPS, YOU FOOL.”
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“I was hanging from a cliff!” Charlie protested.
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The Morphable shifted her icy gaze upward toward the greatest stunt-flyer in the Cumbersome Gorge (and surrounding counties), who was now gripping the handlebars so tightly he nearly squeezed Charlie’s belt loop off one end.
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“No, no, not that Cliff,” Charlie cried.
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Too late. The canvas wings were already icing over as the flycycle was engulfed in a cold fog. The pedals seized. Misty wrapped herself around Cliff Anger’s begoggled head like an indignant cotton ball.
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“Hoooeeee—this ain’t good—” Cliff pumped his legs frantically, but they were spiraling down, down, down, toward the bustling streets below.
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As they burst through the bottom of the fog, Charlie had just enough time to see Junie Calloway herself staring up at him before the flycycle bounced off a parking meter, somersaulted past the hot chicken food carts, skidded through a display of sequined hats, and deposited all three of them—Cliff, Charlie, and one extremely smug and satisfied cloudlet—directly in front of the Number 56 Knashville City bus.
CHAPTER 7
Charlie’s head rattled. His eyes rolled. His teeth buzzed. He had never been involved in a flycycle crash before, and he didn’t like it. Confused images swam before him.
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The 56 Knashville City bus, brakes hissing.
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The 56 Knashville City bus driver, gaping.
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Bachelorette party, shrieking.
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Boot-shop proprietor, hand-wringing.
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Girl with guitar case, gawping.
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Boy with a tear-streaked face, staring.
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Flycycle, pretzling.
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Stunt-flyer, groaning.
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Tiny storm cloud, fretting.
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As the isolated images began to coalesce into a scene, the buzzing in Charlie’s teeth turned to music. It was the most beautiful thing Charlie had ever heard. All the discord of this difficult day, indeed, all the discord of Charlie’s life–the loneliness, the missing parents, the lost dog, the benign neglect of an aunt who loved him but was easily distracted–resolved into harmony, order, beauty.
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“Dulcet,” Charlie said out loud. “Mellifluous.” He knew these words from Aunt Annaruth’s dictionary. Now he felt them. “Euphonious. Harmonious. Sonorous. Resonant.”
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Cliff Anger, Misty the Morphable, the girl with the guitar, and the weepy boy were all now squinting at Charlie. “Don’t you hear it?” he asked. “It’s the Music of the Spheres!”
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Aunt Annaruth had told him about the Music of the Spheres, but he had never heard it before now. Nobody but Charlie was hearing it now. Then again, nobody but Charlie had gotten their bell rung by knocking their head against a parking meter.
While the Music of the Spheres lasted, Charlie knew that everything was going to be all right. But it didn’t last long. The beautiful music that only Charlie could hear was soon drowned out by music that everybody could hear. As if piped in through tinny old loudspeakers, the off-key, twangy voice of the Singing Star enveloped Main Street:
"I’m gonna talk my talk,
Gonna walk my walk
At the Knashville Main Street honky-tonks.
Just watch for me, I’m gonna be a star!
Howdy-do ma’am,
Howdy-do sir,
Can you point me to a record producer?
I’m gonna be a Knashville Singing Star!"
CHAPTER 8
Charlie shook himself and sat up, only to find Junie Calloway’s red, sweating face only a few inches away from his own.
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“Charlie Glubson, what in the blue hills of Knashville are you doing down here? I was supposed to meet you back at your aunt’s house this very afternoon.” She stopped and glanced back over her shoulder at a small boy who was looking smug.
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“So, that’s where you’re runnin’ off to?” the boy said. His nose was encrusted and his eyes were red like he’d been crying up a storm, but now he was grinning from ear to ear. “If you want to get away now, you’ll have to take me with you.”
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Junie planted her face in her hands and groaned. Charlie could have sworn he heard her guitar case sigh in exasperation, but that must’ve been the growing lump on his head. Meanwhile, Cliffanger the Danger Ranger was yelling up at a petulant Misty, who was showing no signs of remorse.
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“You owe me a new flycycle, Miss Morphable! And it better be a good copy of the one you just wrecked!”
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Misty cackled and sent little bursts of spitting rain at his face, further irritating the danger ranger until he was hopping up and down in his own puddle of rage.
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Charlie shook his head. If Misty wasn’t responding to flattery, then it was best to leave her be until she could be fed properly and had enough time to calm herself down. What to do about Cliff’s broken flycycle, though, he hadn’t the foggiest idea.
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The Number 56 Knashville had already rolled away down the road, the driver yelling something through the window about how he’d never in all his born days seen such a ridiculous display. So the bus was out of the question, but they needed some way of getting home. Time was running out and he’d already wasted enough of his day hanging from a cliff. The Resistance wasn’t just going to sit around all day and wait for them to sort out a flying contraption and an irritated cloud.
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He squatted down in front of Junie who was sitting on her guitar case. “Come on, Junie. I know you’re mad, or even irate, or even incensed, but we need to get back to my Aunt’s and we need to repair the flycycle, and we don’t have a lot of time. I need you to help me. Please?”
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Junie nodded and was about to say something potentially helpful when….
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“Howdy, partner! I’m the up-n-coming Knashville star and I’d like to sing you and this pretty lady a little ditty.” The man whose voice they’d just heard from across the street, now appeared in front of them. He was dressed all in blue-sparkling fringe and was holding a plastic guitar that he was clearly pretending to play. As far as Charlie could tell, there was a speaker under the man’s hat that was doing most of the musical work.
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“I’m sorry, sir, but we really don’t have time.” He took one side of the broken flycycle, and Junie took the other, and they started pushing it down the street in search of a repair shop. Cliff hopped after them, soaked to the skin, and pausing every few steps to shake his fist at a now giggling cloud. The younger boy wiped his nose and trailed along behind them, and last of all came the blue, sparkling singer who was mightily off-key but determined to join them all the same.
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Charlie met Junie’s worried glance and shook his head. They had to hurry, and the entourage wasn’t helping.
CHAPTER 9
Charlie sighed with relief as, just ahead, he spotted a red sign emblazoned with the words:
“Bicycles, Tricycles, and Flycycles–You break ‘em, we fix ‘em!”
Swiping a droplet of sweat off the tip of his nose, Charlie said (to an equally sweaty Junie), “There’s the repair shop, Junie! Just a little further!”
All he got in reply was an irritated grunt. Junie’s crabbiness, under the circumstances, was understandable. Not only were they hot, tired, and hauling an unwieldy flycycle between them, but the blue-spangled cowboy hadn’t stopped warbling at them for the last quarter mile.
Sure enough, the opening strains of a new song were just emerging from under the brim of his oversized cowboy hat, and the singer, mouth gaping wide, let forth an earsplitting yodel.
Charlie seized the opportunity to whisper-yell at Junie, “We’ve got to get back to Annaruth’s! I think she meant to hang the red pennant!”
“Wait, what??? What do you mean she, ‘meant to hang’ the pennant?” Junie hissed under her breath.
“I mean,” Charlie said, “half an hour ago I was hanging by my belt from a tree branch over the Cumbersome Gorge. And not just any tree, Junie. It was THE tree, the one on the encoded map. I think Aunt Annaruth meant to signal the Resistance, but instead of hanging the red pennant on the branch, she hung me instead. I think something is terribly wrong. We’ve got to get back to her house!”
Junie didn’t respond, but Charlie could tell by her narrowed eyes and quickened pace that she understood.
The door of the repair shop gave a cheerful jingle as the group entered, and they were greeted by the shopkeeper—a burly man wearing suspenders, a coonskin cap, and sporting an impressive handlebar mustache.
Taking one glance at the softly crooning cowboy, the shopkeeper bellowed, “No! Nope, nope, nope! No musicians inside my shop! Read the sign.”
Sure enough, hanging over the register was an enormous handpainted sign that read, “NO MUSICIANS ALLOWED”.
The cowboy took one look at the shopkeeper’s red, scowling face and meaty fists, gulped, and backed slowly out the door, which gave another jingle as it closed behind him. With one last pointed glance at Charlie through the glass, the cowboy slowly sauntered back down the street in the direction they’d come, the tinny sounds of his ballad fading. Goosebumps prickled along Charlie’s arms as he watched the cowboy go, and he felt a strange, cold certainty that somewhere, someday, their paths would cross again.
Though the shopkeeper gave a suspicious glance at the guitar case slung on Junie’s back, his eyes lit up at the sight of the mangled flycycle. The tips of his mustache twitched with delight as he asked, “And what do we have here?”
Cliff the Danger Ranger swelled with pride at the man’s obvious appreciation for his flying machine, and within moments, he and the shopkeeper were elbow deep in wrenches, lugnuts, and hydraulic valves. In a jiffy, the flycycle was good as new, and the ragtag crew found themselves once again standing on the sidewalk outside the repair shop.
“You sure this contraption will carry all of us?” Junie asked, with a skeptical side eye at the flycycle.
With a scoff, Cliff answered, “Of course it will! Especially with these shiny, new pistons, which increase the compression ratio for higher performance and power. Climb aboard, everyone!”
Junie strapped her guitar case onto the luggage rack, and turned to help Arlo into a seat, only to find him crouched on the sidewalk, tears streaming down his cheeks, quivering with fear.
“Arlo, I swear,” Junie snapped,”if you don’t stop blubbering and climb up here right now, I’m going to leave you right where you sit!”
Arlo, from ample past experience, knew Junie didn’t make threats she wasn’t prepared to act on, so, still trembling, he complied, allowing Junie to buckle him into a seat. He proceeded to squeeze his eyes tightly shut, only opening them again once they’d safely touched down in Annaruth’s front yard.
Though Charlie and Junie were both eager to dash inside and find Annaruth, Arlo first had to be peeled, whimpering, out of his seat and the guitar case unstrapped. Misty, who had waited longer than she’d ever had to wait for breakfast, now demanded her dewdrops. Once fed, the morphable drifted under a hydrangea bush, contentedly belching up rainbows.
Charlie, remembering his manners toward the man who’d saved his life, urged Cliff to come inside with them and accept a cup of tea for his troubles.
The whole posse stumbled over the threshold into Annaruth’s home. Swinging open the door to her study, Charlie called, “Aunt Annaruth, I’m home!”
The study, however, was empty. The only evidence of Annaruth was a half-eaten blueberry scone crumbled on the edge of her desk. “Strange,” Charlie murmured, “She’s always in her study at this hour, and requires the sharpest Dixon Ticonderoga pencils.”
Dashing down the hallway to her bedroom, Charlie called, “Aunt Annaruth?” Here he found her kimonos, robes, and shoes in typical disarray, but no Annaruth. Panic rose in Charlie’s throat as he tore back down the hallway, elbowing past the others, searching the rest of the house.
But Aunt Annaruth was nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER 10
Meanwhile, back in town, Ribeye Gwinnett was on the cusp of something extraordinary–and he knew it. He eased down into his old leather seat in the studio and sipped at a cup of black coffee. He enjoyed the kind of spacious quiet that preceded the inevitable explosion to come: a flurry of harmony and cacophony that would give rise to the rarest of musical treasures–a great album.
He’d discovered the band playing in a little club down on Broadstreet. They were young, full of energy, and still convinced that they were doing something new–something that hadn’t ever been done before. They thought they were original. But that was okay. Ribeye knew better. Let them go ahead and think it. That was, after all, part of what magic was made of–Illusion. And he was going to shape that lovely lack of cynicism into something that would sound like heaven, just like he had so many times before.
And then there would be joy and pyrotechnics and heartbreak and laser lights and drama and absurd costumes and money and egos the size of stadiums and it would all come crashing down in a whorl of betrayal and outrage and despair–but when the dust settled, one thing would remain: the music.
That was the deal. That was the business. That was the magic. Ribeye loved it. And he was about to do it all again.
Just as he was about to pour himself a second cup of coffee, the front door of the studio creaked open and he heard the sharp clip-clop of boots in the entryway.
“You’re early!” he called out. “But come on back. You can help me set the room.”
He didn’t get an answer. Not a spoken one anyway. Instead, the entry hall filled with the low reverberation of a hummed tune. The tune sounded faintly familiar, like a jingle–or something you’d hear in a bus station before an announcement came across a loudspeaker. It made Ribeye’s ears itch. Hmmmm. Hmm. Hm. Hmmmm.
Clip-clop. Clip-clop.
Into the studio stepped, not a youngster full of wide-eyed hope, but a man in a sparkling blue suit. His fancily sewn cowboy boots gave off a proper clip-clop but they clearly hadn’t seen a day’s work in their lives. Slung across the man’s shoulder was a green guitar that Ribeye would swear had been ordered directly out of a Sears & Roebuck catalog–even though he was pretty sure Sears & Roebuck had quit the world a generation past. And topping the stranger off was a hat that seemed a mile too tall and not quite suited to the head it covered.
The hum ended and the stranger said, “Howdy, pardner.”
“Good morning. Can I help you?”
“I aim to make me a song today. Gonna set the world on fire.” The stranger smiled a smile full of gleaming teeth. One of them actually sparkled. Huh, thought Ribeye, never seen that actually happen before.
“Sorry, friend, but I’m booked solid. And I don’t tend to work on call, if you take my meaning. Have you talked to Smeldred? She handles all my booked time and–”
“Oh, that’s all right. I don’t mind if you change your plans. We all got to change our tune every now and again.”
The stranger laughed, and the laugh was just as genuine a laugh as you can imagine…and that made Ribeye itch.
The stranger took a confident step further into the studio and continued. “Ever since I come to Knashville, I knew I was gonna work with the best. And you are the best, Mr. Gwinnett. Yes, indeed. The very best. And you’re a-gonna make me a Knashville Singing Star.”
The stranger pointed to the studio wall. Over the years Ribeye had accumulated a great number of plaques and framed albums in various colors–like gold and platinum–and the stranger’s sparkling teeth gleamed at each of them in turn.
“So what do you say? Shall we add another to this fine collection?”