Ginger felt a little numb around the ears and neck. She was completely flabbergasted. “What in the name of God do you want from me?” she asked, keeping her voice level.

“Tell me what I did wrong because I know my sound is good. I know my performance is at the top of my game—people follow me, just to hear me play. They stand in line! I know a hundred singer/songwriters in the business who aren’t as good as I am who are getting more breaks!”

“This isn’t happening to me,” she said, her fingers on her temples, slowly massaging.

“You’ve always leveled with me, Ginger. What the hell could he mean? I think if I figure it out, I’ll get one more shot with him because he liked me. If I give the right impression, he’ll listen to me once more. I won’t rush back—I’ll make sure he thinks I really put some time and thought into it, but I know he’s wrong. I have presence. I’ve been told I could be number one. Probably I didn’t take the right music, didn’t choose the right songs. I should probably include some more Lynyrd Skynyrd. And believe it or not, Neil Diamond works pretty well in auditions. Maybe I should beef up my own music, some of the stuff I sold, but that stuff didn’t really score on the charts. Still, I think it was the way it was performed, not the music...”

“Oh. My. God,” she said. She stood up and turned to walk away. She was about three feet from the table when he cried out for her.

“Ginger! Please! I know you can tell me what to do! This could be the chance of a lifetime.”

She stopped walking and just stood there for a second. “I really am too nice,” she said softly. “Maybe Matt is too angry and I’m too nice.”

“Ginger, come on, baby...”

She whirled on him. How dare he call her baby!

Her eyes must have flashed in rage. “Whoa, Ginger,” he said. “Just want your thoughts. I mean, who else would I ask? I want to give him what he wants. He says I don’t bring enough emotion to the music.”

She’d driven an hour. She had her pregnant boss covering for her. There was very little hope that she could get anywhere with Mick, but...

She went back to the table and sat down. She looked into her cup for a moment and when she looked up, he was staring at her expectantly, his eyes huge, waiting for some magic formula that would change everything.

“It’s not your sound. It’s not your choice of music. It’s you.”

“Huh?” he asked, thrown back in his seat.

“It’s just you.”

He was silent for a long moment. “You’re still really pissed, I guess,” he finally said. “Thanks for nothing.”

“No, I’m not pissed,” she said. “It’s the truth. It’s you. You have nothing to give. You have a lovely voice and you’re very entertaining. I bet you’ll play for people your whole life. In fact, you’ll always work, always. But you don’t have that incredible, indescribable ecstasy when you play, just pulling the wonder out of the music, because the music is less important to you than being a star. You don’t create relationships with the people you play for, you play at them. You get ecstasy from schmoozing with stars, from your big dreams. You don’t work at getting better—”

“I practice all the time,” he argued, cutting her off.

She held up a hand, her eyes closing gently. “You perform all the time. You run in a crowd of fans who live to hear you play, hear your stories, praise you, worship you. You name-drop. You’ve sent out so many CDs to superstars begging for help to make you a superstar, the number is probably too high to count. Every time you hear of a new producer, you shoot off your CD before you even find out if it’s a good match. You carry them with you everywhere you go. You don’t ask people how they are, you tell them all about how great you are. I mean, here you called me all the way to North Bend and you don’t even care how I am!”

“Course I do...I just...”

“You don’t feel the music in your bones. I bet The Boss has a closet full of your CDs and has never listened to one. You never ask how you can make your music better. And let me guess—when you were at dinner with this Buster character—I bet you mentioned every famous musician you’ve ever known even if you just ran into them once in the men’s room.”

“Hell, a lot of that is résumé material, you know... I’ve played with some of those famous musicians, you know!”

“Not with, Mick! You opened for a few! You don’t get happiness from your art, you want money and fame. The agent is probably looking for someone who’s pouring love out, not sucking it in. A singer who gets so much satisfaction from his music he doesn’t care if he ever gets paid. All you want is to be a star. Instead of telling this Buster guy how grateful you were for an opportunity to play for him, you tried to show off.”

He was speechless for a moment. “It’s important, you know, who in the business you’ve met, who you’ve jammed with. And if I’m a star won’t that mean I’m memorable and satisfying?”

“You have your cart before your horse. Your priorities are all wrong. You can’t infuse your music with love until you’ve loved, deeply and unselfishly. You can’t bring joy to the music until you’ve poured it into life. Same with grief, agony, ecstasy, fierce desire, loss...It’s like method acting—drawing on your own life experience to relate as closely as possible to the music, to the lyrics. You have to have those feelings in your life before you can have them in your music. Instead of sacrificing for the sake of a good life, life you can bring to your art, you’ve been sacrificing for the sake of fame. As you get older you get more desperate, more arrogant. You’re looking for your break, not your insight. There’s no question in my mind you would do anything to be number one. You’d sell your soul for it. I think you have! And from all I hear, fame isn’t that much fun.”

“Yeah,” he said with a hollow laugh. “Right.”

“Well, I promise you money and fame won’t hug you on cold, lonely winter nights... Buster saw it. Your passion is for notoriety, not for art. It’s empty, Mick. It’s not real. But great music and feeling joy from creating it, conveying authentic feelings, that’s real. You should learn to pull up the emotions of an experience, like meeting or losing the love of your life, and it should be so real you cry! The best sound, the most unique voice, the beauty of your instrument. Emotions you’ve experienced. That’s real.” She shook her head. “If you start with your life and your art you won’t have to talk about all the great singers you met in the men’s room or how many stars have your CDs because it won’t matter. Hard, hard work, focus on real living and real emotion, not on the stature you want. It’s not just marketing, it’s talent. You’re not authentic, Mick, that’s the problem. You have a good voice and a lot of arrogance. And you’re selfish. That doesn’t translate well.”

He was silent, mouth open slightly. He mulled this over. “You have a great strategy there, Ginger. If he thinks I don’t care about success but just want to share my great music...”

She rolled her eyes.

“I think you’re really onto something there, Ginger. I think Buster will go for it.”