“He said you used to be a doper.”

“Yes,” I said. No point denying it.

“He said it was Big H.”

“Yes.”

“But now you’re clean?”

“Yes.”

I thought he’d ask me for how long, but he didn’t. “Sit down, for God’s sake. You want a Coke? A beer? Lemonade? Iced tea, maybe?”

I sat, but couldn’t seem to relax against the back of my seat. “Iced tea sounds good.”

He used the intercom on his desk. “Georgia? Two iced teas, honey.” Then, to me: “This is a working ranch, Jamie, but the livestock I care about are the animals who show up with instruments.”

I tried a smile, but it made me feel moronic and I gave up on it.

He seemed not to notice. “Rock bands, country bands, solo artists. They’re our bread and butter, but we also do commercial jingles for the Denver radio stations and twenty or thirty recorded books each year. Michael Douglas recorded a Faulkner novel at Wolfjaw, and Georgia ’bout peed her pants. He’s got that easygoing public persona, but whoo, what a perfectionist in the studio.”

I couldn’t think of a reply to this, so kept silent and rooted for the iced tea. My mouth was as dry as a desert.

He leaned forward. “Do you know what every working ranch needs more than anything else?”

I shook my head, but before he could elucidate further, a pretty young black woman came in with two tall, ice-choked glasses of iced tea on a silver tray. There was a sprig of mint in each. I squeezed two lemon slices into my tea, but left the sugar bowl alone. During my heroin years I had been a bear for sugar, but since that day with the headphones in the auto body shop, any sweetness seemed cloying to me. I had bought a Hershey bar in the dining car shortly after leaving Tulsa, and found I couldn’t eat it. Just smelling it made me feel like gagging.

“Thank you, Georgia,” Yates said.

“Very welcome. Don’t forget visiting hours. They start at two and Les will be expecting you.”

“I’ll remember.” She went out, closing the door softly behind her, and he turned back to me. “What every working ranch needs is a foreman. The one who takes care of the ranching and farming side here at Wolfjaw is Rupert Hall. He’s fine and well, but my music foreman is recuperating in Boulder Community Hospital. Les Calloway. Don’t suppose the name means anything to you.”

I shook my head.

“What about the Excellent Board Brothers?”

That rang a bell. “Instrumental group, weren’t they? Surf sound, kind of like Dick Dale and His Del-Tones?”

“Yeah, that was them. Kind of weird, seeing as how they all hailed from Colorado, which is about as far from both oceans as you can get. Had one top forty hit—‘Aloona Ana Kaya.’ Which is very bad Hawaiian for ‘Let’s have sex.’”

“Sure, I remember that.” Of course I did; my sister played it about a billion times. “It’s the one with the girl laughing all the way through it.”

Yates grinned. “That laugh was their ticket to one-hit-wonderdom, and I’m the daddy-o who put it on the record. No more than an afterthought, really. This was when my father ran the place. And the girl who’s laughing her ass off also works here. Hillary Katz, although these days she calls herself Pagan Starshine. She’s sober now, but on that day she was so stoned on nitrous she couldn’t stop laughing. I recorded her right there in the booth—she had no idea. It made that record, and they cut her in for seven grand.”

I nodded. The annals of rock are full of similar lucky accidents.

“Anyway, the Excellent Board Brothers had one tour, then did the two brokes. You know those?”

I certainly did, and from personal experience. “Went broke and broke up.”

“Uh-huh. Les came home and went to work for me. He produces better than he ever played, and he’s been my chief ramrod on the music side for going on fifteen years now. When Charlie Jacobs called me, my idea was to make you Les’s understudy, thinking you could earn while you learn, play some gigs on the side, all the usual shit. That’s still the idea, but your learning curve better be goddam steep, son, because Les had a heart attack last week. He’s gonna be okay—so I’m told—but he’s got to lose a bunch of weight and take a bunch of pills and he’s talking about retiring in a year or so. Which will give me plenty of time to see if you’re gonna work out.”

I felt something close to panic. “Mr. Yates—”

“Hugh.”

“Hugh, I know next to nothing about A&R. The only recording studios I’ve ever been in are the ones where the group I was playing with paid for time by the hour.”

“Mostly with the lead guitarist’s doting parents footing the bill,” he said. “Or the drummer’s wife, waitressing eight hours a day and hustling tips on sore feet.”

Yes, that was pretty much how it went. Until wifey wised up, that was, and put him out of doors.

He leaned forward, hands clasped. “You’ll either learn or you won’t. The Rev says you will. That’s good enough for me. Got to be. I owe him. For now, all you have to do is light up the studios, keep track of AH—you know what that is, don’t you?”

“Artists’ hours.”

“Uh-huh, and lock up at night. I’ve got a guy who can show you the ropes until Les gets back. Mookie McDonald’s his name. If you pay as much attention to what Mookie does wrong as to what he does right, you’ll learn a lot. Don’t let him keep the log, whatever you do. And one more thing. If you smoke some rope, that’s your business as long as you show up for work on time and don’t start a grassfire. But if I hear you’re riding the pink horse again . . .”

I made myself look him in the eye. “I’m not going back to that.”

“A brave statement, and one I’ve heard many times, in a few cases from people who are now dead. Sometimes, though, it turns out to be true. I hope it will be in your case. But just so we’re clear: you use and you’re gone, favor owed or no favor owed. Are we clear on that?”

We were. Crystal.

 • • •

Georgia Donlin was just as beautiful in 2008 as in 1992, but she’d put on a few pounds, there were streaks of silver in her dark hair, and she was wearing bifocals. “You don’t happen to know what’s got him all fired up this morning, do you?” she asked me.

“No clue.”

“He started cussing, then he laughed a little, then he started cussing again. Said he fucking knew it, said that son of a bitch, then threw something, it sounded like. All I want to know is if somebody’s gonna get fired. If that’s the case, I’m taking a sick day. I can’t deal with confrontation.”

“Says the woman who threw a pot at the meat delivery man last winter.”

“That was different. That four-oh-four son of a bitch tried to caress my butt.”

“A four-oh-four with good taste,” I remarked, and when she gave me the stinkeye: “Just sayin.”

“Huh. Last few minutes it’s been all quiet in there. I hope he didn’t give himself a heart attack.”

“Maybe it was something he saw on TV. Or read in the paper?”

“TV went off fifteen minutes after I came in, and as for the Camera and the Post, he stopped takin em two months ago. Says he gets everything from the Internet. I tell him, ‘Hugh, all that Internet news is written by boys not old enough to shave and girls hardly out of their training bras. It’s not to be trusted.’ He thinks I’m just a clueless old lady. He doesn’t say it, but I can see it in his eyes. Like I don’t have a daughter who’s taking computer courses at CU. Bree’s the one who told me not to trust that bloggish crap. Go on, now. But if he’s sittin in his chair dead of vapor lock, don’t call me to give him CPR.”

She moved away, tall and regal, the gliding walk no different from that of the young woman who had brought the iced tea into Hugh’s office sixteen years before.

I tapped a knuckle on the door. Hugh wasn’t dead, but he was slumped behind his oversize desk, rubbing his temples like a man with a migraine. His laptop was open in front of him.