He had called himself Curly •Bill, but after checking for many months, Sue decided that he was either dead or had changed his name. She didn't have a picture of him, but her mother had described him enough. Usually when she did talk about him, she was so drunk that sometimes her faded past was more dreamlike than real, and Sue didn't know where or at what point fact gave way to fiction. She did know she had inherited her father's talent for singing, and she did know that she was in love with the image of the dream-man her mother had pictured for her so many times. It would be a man like her daddy who would get to pop her cherry. She had said this over and over to herself for the past few years, but now, broke, hungry, and without a bed, she knew she couldn't hold out. She would have to give in so she could continue to live.

She stepped inside Deeman's doorway. Standing for a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dimness, Sue Belle was aware of the only other two customers inside. One was probably a cook, by the looks of his white pants and shirt, who was having a cold beer before going to work, but he could have been a painter, Sue realized. She couldn't decide which. She liked to look at people and imagine what they did or who they were. Back in Atlanta she could sit by the hour in a busy shopping center and study people. Maybe, too, down deep, she just hoped she might find her daddy.

She pushed the painter or cook, whatever, out of her mind and studied the other customer. He was a country music picker.

Even though she had been in Nashville only two weeks, she could already spot pickers. This one was young, older than she, but young, maybe twenty-two or three. He would be wearing, in addition to the black felt cowboy hat, faded jeans and an equally faded print, long-sleeve shirt. Sue Belle couldn't make it out in the dimness, but she knew she was right in her appraisal.