Two Hundred and Seventeen Thousand to One
“It’s not very euphonic,” my brother Calvin said in the silence after the last chord. His eyes
were fixed on his computer screen, his lenses glowing blue. He might have been talking to his
crossword puzzle-making software rather than to Margot and me.
“Euphonic?” I asked from across the living room.
“Canorous. Resonant. Fluid,” he said to his monitor.
Margot raised her penciled eyebrows and touched her throat the way she does after she sings,
as though giving attention to a sore muscle. I rested my guitar against the side of the couch, pick
between my lips as I reached back to pull my hair into a ponytail. I thanked Calvin for his opinion, my
sarcasm lost on him as always. He was right. Our song – the one Margot and I had co-written about,
of all things, a cheating man – was not particularly euphonic. We needed to forget it and sing a cover
for our audition. Judges love a good cover.
Eighteen months ago, I had moved to Nashville for the same reason as everyone else. With the
ink hardly dry on my bachelor’s degree in Music Theory, I spent what little money I had on a used
Taylor Dreadnought guitar and called to ask Calvin if I could live in his spare bedroom. He said no. I
showed up anyway; we both knew it would be good for him. I would like to say I arrived on a
Greyhound bus or a midnight train – something appropriately lyrical – but the truth is that my
mother drove me to Nashville in the same old Ford Explorer that she had used to shuttle me to and
from swim practice and guitar lessons throughout my youth. The headrest of the passenger seat still
smelled vaguely of chlorine.
My mother had wanted to know my plan. I didn’t have much of one. Calvin’s apartment was on
the Cumberland River only three blocks from Broadway. I would start there. I would elbow my way
through the tourists at the honky-tonks and maybe even join the pickers playing outside until I could
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get gigs of my own. I would spend my nights at Robert’s and The Stage, among the ghosts of legends,
with my own Ariats treading on their very footsteps until my fingers twitched with the urge to make
music. My mother pursed her lips and cursed herself for naming me Jolene. Then she cursed Dolly
Parton, as if my melodic aspirations might somehow be her fault. And how could I have known you’d
have red hair to boot? Damn that song.
“Hey, Calvin?” Margot began, “What if… you worked in your bedroom while we practice?”
“No,” he said, turning towards her but looking at the wall above her head, “This is where my
desk is. This is where I work.”
I would have suggested we stop for a while, but we couldn’t, not with our Big Break! audition
the next day. Margot and I would be allowed to sing one song for a panel of judges, according to Theo,
the man who had approached us at Tootsie’s and given us a card indicating an audition slot for the
reality show, which was soon to start its second season. Big Break! wasn’t American Idol, but it was a
major network show, airing on primetime, and if we made it through this round, we’d be guaranteed
two weeks in L.A and maybe even a record deal.
I had spent my first few months in Nashville roaming the same bars and stages at night before
I met Margot. Thanks in part to a brief tryst with a skinny sound manager named Kyle, I secured an
hour-long shift playing only for tips at Second Fiddle every other Tuesday. I didn’t hear from Kyle
much after the morning Calvin caught him using my brother’s whitening toothpaste instead of my
store brand and went completely ballistic. But I got to keep my shift, and Margot played after me. Her
voice was something to notice – low and raspy at first, then surprisingly soft and high when she
wanted it to be – but she couldn’t do much more than strum her guitar. By that point, I had realized
that I had a backup voice, a voice for Tuesday afternoons. But I had weekend fingers. Margot and I
needed each other. Duos were hot on Music Row, so we started playing covers together until we got
the early slot at Tootsie’s on Thursdays. We sang to audiences who weren’t yet drunk enough to
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dance or sing along. But it was Tootsie’s. We stood there tapping our boots beneath caricatures of
Johnny Cash and George Jones and Loretta Lynn, their bulbous features looming, taunting us with
stardom.
Margot didn’t argue further with my brother about working in his bedroom. It was a losing
battle for her anyway. We tossed the song we had written and decided to sing a cover for our
audition, a Dixie Chicks classic that we knew frontwards and backwards, one that highlighted
Margot’s vocal range and called for adequate backup and guitar. It would showcase our skills and still
be hard to botch.
After the first couple of run-throughs, I slid into the kitchen and filled two plastic cups with
water from the tap. “A few more times?” I asked. Margot nodded silently, as if trying to save her
voice, and took a careful sip before stretching her neck.
“How many more exactly is a few?” Calvin said from across the room.
“Cal–” I started.
“I’m wondering about an exact number,” he looked out the window behind me, where a crane
hung over the river, its massive metallic arm reflecting the last remnants of daylight. “A few could be
two or ten,” he said, “and I want to know how many more it’s going to be.”
“I’m sorry our music is so painful for you,” Margot said, forgetting to save her voice. She
shifted her weight to one side and stood there with her mouth open, not used to being ignored. She
was the one who got people’s attention – not so much beautiful as striking, with her tall, lean body
comprised of all sharp features and angles, except for the puffy breasts and lips. Platinum hair
halfway down her back. She made people look twice. Certainly Theo had.
“It’s not painful,” said Calvin, “it’s just not that good.”
“Coming from a crossword puzzle writer–” Margot said. It was the sort of thing that was only
okay if I said it myself.
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“Cruciverbalist,” said Calvin.
“Oh, is that the–”
“The correct term, yes.”
Margot laughed. I had not told her about how Calvin had come to Nashville three years before
me, not for the honky-tonk stages but for the nation’s premiere crossword puzzle publisher. How he
had, while still an undergrad, invented the software for making crossword puzzles electronically.
Until then, puzzle makers had to chart out their grids on graph paper, filling in the little boxes by
hand. I imagined those past puzzle-writers tearing paper out of pads, shooting crumpled balls at their
wastebaskets all day. Calvin’s not famous outside of his field, but he’s made enough that all he’ll ever
have to do for the rest of his life is write crossword puzzles, which pays a lot less than you might
think, considering the time it takes to compose one. I didn’t tell Margot because I knew I would never
be able to stand the way she would act around him if she knew, the way she would tilt her head to
one side, white hair dripping over her shoulder. The way she would graze his forearm with her
delicately gel-manicured nails or slip a hand into her back pocket and lean down to adjust her boot.
These things were good at The Stage, working to our advantage at The Wheel or at Rippy’s, but not
with Calvin.
My brother was always an easy target, the way he rambled about the gravitational pulls of
space-time regions, and how he lost his mind if someone forgot to roll down the plastic cereal bag
before closing the cardboard box. When we were young, the other children at Sunday school used to
tell Calvin he looked like the burning bush. They would shout, Moses, Moses, here I am! My hair was
just as red, but they always left me alone.
Margot and I ran through the song enough that Calvin gave in and went for a walk. I knew he’d
come back smelling like the hotdog stand in Printer’s Alley, his happy place. He would finish eating
his chili cheese dog before he reached our building, and he’d be squinting as he approached the glass
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doors to the lobby, trying to see if anyone was waiting for the elevator, in which case he would have
to either keep walking or take the stairs. Nevermind that we lived on the seventh floor. By the time
Margot left, the crane outside looked like a carnival ride, alit with spotlights to deter low-flying
planes.
The little audition slip from Theo instructed us to check in at the Convention Center the next
day at two. I awoke early, not knowing what I would do until then. Calvin was at his desk again when
I came out of my room with my pajamas twisted, squinting in the brightness of the living room. I got
out the carton of eggs and asked my brother if he wanted breakfast. He said he had already eaten. It
could have been true. He never left any evidence after using the kitchen.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I said. “It’s just that you know we have our audition today. It’s a
big one. And we can’t practice at Margot’s because–”
“Because of her neighbor. I know,” he said.
I cracked an egg, and it landed soundlessly in the frying pan that had not had enough time to
heat up. “How’s the puzzle coming?”
“I’m just trying to make these last clues fit,” Calvin said. I walked around the kitchen bar and
perched on the side of his desk, next to a stack of dictionaries and thesauruses whose purpose in this
technological age eluded me.
“Formicarian?” I asked.
“It means pertaining to ants.” He pointed to where the A-N-T would go. “But this last clue
doesn’t fit. I’m off by a letter, so I have to rework it.”
I read the clue: Where love means nothing. I knew this one. It was lengthy and ended in the T
from ANT. “Tennis court!” I said.
“Yes, but there are only ten squares. I have to rework it.”
“Can’t you just add another column?”
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“A crossword puzzle has to be a perfect square,” Calvin said. I realized my mistake as he took a
deep breath, “It has to have an equal number of characters going across and down. And that number
must be odd.”
“Oh.”
“This one is a twenty-one by twenty-one,” he swept a long finger from side to side, “But that’s
the great thing about CrossBuilder: you can make your puzzle any size. As long as it’s a square. With
an equal and odd number of characters going up and down each side. Then it will work. It’s a simple
formula, really.” My egg was likely burning. Calvin went on, “Every letter has to be used twice: once
going across and once going down. See these black squares? The placeholders?”
“Mh-hm,” I said, making my way back to the stove.
“They have to be symmetrical. If you turn a crossword puzzle upside down, it should look the
same. See? It has to be symmetrical. And each answer must contain a minimum of three letters. A
minimum. This collection is of the highest difficulty.”
“Hey,” I said, mouth full of egg straight from the pan. “You want to take a break? Walk
Broadway with me?”
“Why aren’t you using a plate?”
“Fewer dishes. Want to walk?”
“Only if we stop by Printer’s Alley,” Calvin kept looking at the pan in my hand.
“Definitely,” I said. “And we’ll get extra relish on your dog.”
“That was a joke,” Calvin said, without smiling. “Because I hate relish.”
…
On the street outside of the Convention Center sat two tour busses with blacked-out windows,
their sides emblazoned with the Big Break! logo. The exclamation point was a microphone shooting
out music notes like sparks. The first bus boasted a massive picture of Jax Flint’s face, his dimpled
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chin fading into the tires, his tousled hair floating up between sets of windows. He had been the
victor of last season, the show’s hit premiere, and had won a record deal. His name was Jacky
Flintfield when he was like me, trolling honky-tonks and dives. They changed it once he made it
through the first round of auditions, setting him up for better success as the pop/country sensation
he would become. I looked at the face on the bus, gleaming in false colors – teeth too white, eyes too
green, skin impossibly smooth. I wondered what they might change my name to.
The handle of my Dreadnought case was slippery in my hand. People were everywhere, but as
usual, Margot was easy to spot. She wore a cobalt hippy dress, my navy and white stripes a nice
compliment. The lobby had a few scattered clumps of chairs – the boxy kind you find at the doctor’s
office – all of them full. People lounged around on the floor as if waiting for delayed flights, their
backs against walls or massive pots holding plastic trees. I couldn’t tell who were the singers and
who were their families. I saw a middle-aged man in nothing but a pair of too-short American flag
shorts, his skin sagging over the waistline. There were twin teenaged boys in fitted dark green suits,
thumbs flying over the surfaces of the little screens in their hands. Their hair was combed and slick,
their jaws had the look of being newly square. A toddler shrieked and made a bee-line for the
escalator, her mother scooping her up just as she tripped. We might have been at Disney World.
Margot and I followed the cardboard signs directing auditioners to the check-in desk where
two overweight women were wielding highlighters with a little too much authority. One scanned her
list for our names, the other checked our IDs and gave us neon wrist bands.
“Y’all don’t waste any time, do you?” she said. “Looks like you’re next for the holding room.” It
sounded like somewhere you went to prep for surgery, but really it was just a conference room with
a white board on which someone had written: if your dreams don’t scare you, they’re not big enough!
Some others had done a little doodling. In one corner I saw a rough drawing of a penis. I thought
about the teenaged boys sitting out there like mini pop stars in their tailored green suits. My phone
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buzzed in the back pocket of my jeans and I pulled it out to see Calvin calling. He knew where I was. I
silenced the call just as Theo came in. Still wearing sunglasses and a fitted grey t-shirt, he did not
appear to have changed clothes since we had met him at Tootsies.
“My girls!” He looked smaller than I remembered, and in the florescent conference room I
could see acne scars and greasy hair that the bar’s dim lights had concealed. He reached his arms out
to each of us in an awkward embrace that smelled like sweat and sandalwood cologne. It was as if we
had seen him more than once in our lives. “Look at you two, man! You look ready to kill it! You’re like
fire and ice.” His face relaxed as if in shock, “That should be your band name,” Theo waved his hand
abstractly in front of his face, “Fire and Ice.” He was almost certainly intoxicated.
“You don’t think it’s a little too…” Margot started.
“Too Robert Frost?” I said.
“Ladies, you can never be too Frost,” Theo said. Margot furrowed her brow. I bit the inside of
my cheek until Theo had gone and I could laugh.
The audition room was not much larger than the holding room, decorated in the same simple
business-like greys. The cameramen were more intimidating than the actual judges. They moved
silently around the sides of the room as if affixed to the walls, motioning to each other, keeping their
lenses trained always on our faces. The panel consisted of two men and two women, a combination
of managers and producers who had lots of big names on their resumes but were not actually big
names themselves. We would sing in front of the big names if we made it to L.A.
“Whenever you’re ready,” said a stout, balding man at the end of the table.
Margo cleared her throat. I lifted the strap of my Dreadnought over my head and strummed
twice before we looked at each other briefly.
Just as I had done so many times, I started with the opening notes, putting the strings down a
half step from the standard to make the well-known song sound more like our own. We tapped our
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booted toes and bobbed our heads in turn. I could feel the eyes and the cameras on me, making my
cheeks burn to match my hair.
“I said I wanna touch the earth,” Margot began. “I wanna break it in my hands/ I wanna grow
something wild and unruly,” I glanced up at the judges whose expressions were impossible to read.
Something about Margot seemed to have grabbed their attention, and I hoped it was her guttural
range. I echoed her when she got to the bridge, my voice coming out softly and picking up speed.
“Fly this girl as high as you can/ Into the wild blue,” she belted, eyes closed, hands clasped
against her chest.
I slowed the notes for the final lines, humming as Margot brought the song to a close, her
voice still echoing with the magnitude of the chorus as she ended, “Cowboy take me away/ Closer to
you/ Closer to you.” She finished with her fingertips brushing her throat.
When you watch shows like Big Break! on TV, you rarely see these preliminary auditions,
although the networks always film them just in case they get a tear-jerker or a major doozy. In real
life, there was no instant vote, no real commentary from the panel before us.
“Thank you,” said the same judge who had told us to begin. His companions were busy
writing, nodding their heads. “If you’ll wait in the lobby with the others,” he said, “someone will be
out with results before too long.” And that was it.
Theo was standing outside the door. He ushered us back the way we had come. “It sounded
like you nailed it,” he said, “absolutely nailed it…” he trailed off when he caught sight of a woman in a
neon wrist band like ours, heading for the holding room. She was young, dressed simply in jeans and
toting a stickered guitar case. I recognized her as the mother of the reckless toddler. “Jenna, my girl!”
he yelled over to her, clapping my shoulder before he hurried away.
“Is he drunk?” Margot asked.
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I could feel eyes on us as we walked back through the lobby. New kids looking for a cafeteria
table.
“Seat’s open,” said a man nearby, moving his satchel off of the squatty chair next to him.
“You take it,” Margot said, “I’m going out for a smoke. You want?” I shook my head.
The seat was more comfortable than it looked. I sank into it and leaned my Dreadnought
against the side. The same toddler came bounding around our cluster of chairs, her arms stretched
out, a crazed look in her eye. I wondered who was supposed to be watching her. Everyone around me
smiled at the child. I moved my guitar under my seat.
“Come and sit, Coco,” the man next to me said to the little girl, answering my question. She
ignored him. He held out a bag of crackers and at once she sank down by his feet like a puppy, both
hands in the bag.
“My granddaughter,” he said to me. I gave a polite smile.
He had his newspaper folded to the back of the social section, where the pages were filled
with comics. At the bottom was a crossword puzzle – one of Calvin’s, I was sure. The man had nearly
completed it. He chewed the end of his pen. “Five letters,” he mumbled to himself. He gave a long
hmm and sighed. I looked at the screen of my phone, alit and notifying me of a seventh missed call
from my brother in the last three minutes. I could only imagine his apparent catastrophe. Perhaps a
piece of mail that wasn’t ours had shown up in our mailbox, or the orange juice was going to expire
tomorrow and needed to be consumed before midnight.
The man beside me monopolized the armrest with his elbow. He pulled the chewed end of the
plastic pen from his mouth and huffed. “What could this be…”
I gave in. “What’s the clue?” I asked. He pretended to be surprised by my presence.
“Oh,” he said, “I need a five letter word that means ‘euphonic.’ Something that maybe starts
with... well, I don’t know what it starts with. Definitely has an I…” My phone lit up again and I stood,
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dragging my guitar case out from beneath the chair.
“Fluid,” I said, and walked away as he scratched the letters into place.
Calvin was pacing the concrete patio outside the Convention Center. “I tried to call you,
Jolene.”
“I noticed.” I turned and kept walking East toward our apartment. Calvin stuttered in
confusion but then joined me. I could see our building only a few blocks ahead.
“Did you know that the winner of last season’s Big Break! is a guy named–”
“Jax Flint,” I said.
“–yes and he’s from Nashville.”
“I’m aware,” I said as we stopped for the blinking orange hand at the crosswalk at 4th Street,
both of us looking quickly before crossing anyway.
“It means,” Calvin said, “That you aren’t going to win. The chance that the next winner, too,
will be from here, another country singer, is infinitesimally small. By my calculations – some simple
math considering genres and cities – the odds are less than two hundred and seventeen thousand to
one.”
“Doesn’t sound too good.”
“Not good at all, Jolene.”
I opened the door to the lobby of our building. Seeing two women waiting by the elevator, I
turned left and we took the stairs.
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