This is nothing, I tell myself. I’ve played in bigger places. I’ve played on the street and gotten crowds to gather. This is just a little restaurant in a little city and the stakes aren’t high. I’m not really going to stay. Even if Robert wants me to, even if Ethan does, I’ll probably still go back to Florida. I’m singing for my supper. I’m leaving in the morning. That’s all.

But when the clock over the door says it’s six fifty-seven and I’m supposed to start playing at seven and there are only two tables of people, and one of them has just paid their bill and is getting up to leave, I have to breathe really deep a few times to get my hands to stop shaking.

I start with a cover of Wild World. Because as much as I’d prefer to play my own stuff all the time, people like covers. They like to know the songs you’re singing. I always change something—sing it at a different tempo or do a new arrangement—but hold on to the heart of the song so it’s just familiar enough. The audience listens harder then, like it’s a quiz. Can they figure out the song before I sing the chorus? And then they’re invested, so I can slip in a few of my own songs too. I can only get away with playing a solid set of originals at places like Arnie’s where the crowd knows me. Even then, I’ll throw in a couple of covers, just to fuck with them. Something silly we can all sing together, like Girls Just Want to Have Fun or the theme song to Mannequin, because we’re all drunk and in it together at that point.

Here, I’ll stick to classics. The couple who stay are boomers: the man wears a really big shiny watch, and his wife has her hair cut into a sleek silvery bob. So I play the stuff they would have heard on the radio when they were in college. When they wore daisies in their hair and made vees with their fingers.

They don’t applaud after Wild World, but when I play the opening chords of Like a Rolling Stone, the man nods his balding head in approval. And by the time I play You’re So Vain, they’re singing along. They don’t leave, even after they finish eating. They order more coffee and turn their chairs to watch me play. But no one else is coming in, and there’s nothing I can do about it.