Yeah, for a couple weeks there, he could see it, but then the house started closing in on him again and those dreams went dark when he pictured growing old in some house on Detroit Avenue, surrounded by people like Aunt Marta and her ilk, going to church, laying off the liquor and the billiards and the fun until one day he woke up and his hair was speckled white and his speed was gone and he’d never done nothing with his life but chase someone else’s version of it.

So he went down to the Goose to keep the itching in his head from coming out through his eyes and when Jessie came in, that itch spread into a warm smile in his head because, boy, he’d missed their days together—just two weeks ago, but it felt like a couple years—when they’d all poured over the tracks from White Town and had them some play, had them some times.

“I went by your house,” Jessie said, pulling off his mask.

“Fuck you taking that thing off for?” Luther said.

Jessie looked over at Calvin, then at Luther. “You both wearing yours, so what’s I got to worry about?”

Luther just stared at him because for once Jessie made a bit of sense and it annoyed him that he hadn’t thought of it first.

Jessie said, “Lila told me you might be here. I ’spect that woman don’t like me, Country.”

“You keep your mask on?”

“What?”

“With my wife? You keep your mask on when you talked to her?”

“Hell, yeah. ’Course, boy.”

“All right then.”

Jessie took a sip from his hip flask. “Deacon needs to see us.”

“Us?”

Jessie nodded.

“What for?”

Jessie shrugged.

“When?”

“’Bout half an hour ago.”

“Shit,” Luther said. “Whyn’t you get here sooner?”

“’Cause I went to your house first.”

Luther placed his cue in the rack. “We in trouble?”

“Nah, nah. Ain’t like that. He just want to see us.”

“What for?”

“I told you,” Jessie said, “I don’t know.”

“Then how you know it ain’t bad?” Luther said as they walked out of the place.

Jessie looked back at him as he tied the mask off behind his head. “Tighten your corset, woman. Show some grit.”

“Put some grit up your ass.”

“Talking it ain’t walking it, Negro,” Jessie said and shook his big ass at him as they ran up the empty street.

Ya’ll take a seat over here by me now,” the Deacon Broscious said when they entered the Club Almighty. “Right over here now, boys. Come on.”

He wore a broad smile and a white suit over a white shirt and a red tie the same color as his velvet hat. He sat at a round table at the back of the club near the stage and he waved them over through the dim light as Smoke snapped the lock on the door behind them. Luther felt that snap vibrate in his Adam’s apple. He’d never been in the club when it wasn’t open for business, and its tan leather booths and red walls and cherrywood banquettes felt less sinful but more threatening at noon.