One day, at Jim Wesson Jr.’s encouragement, Paul and a couple of the agents on his team set up a booth at a community fundraiser at a racquet club. It was vaguely environmental in purpose, raising money for wetland and mangrove preservation while being sponsored by several of the companies responsible for their impending extinction.

“Well, if all else fails I can just become a realtor,” Maya chirped. He stopped wheeling the cart.

“Sorry?” he said.

“I’m kidding. I mean, maybe I will become a realtor, married with two kids in my twenties,” Maya said. “I can see it.”

“No, you will not,” Priscilla said. “You’re too talented for that.”

Both of Maya’s nose piercings glistened in the fluorescent light of the frigid grocery. She looked like an artist, Paul thought.

He was quiet the rest of their time in Publix. Afterward, politely enough, he parted ways with the women and got into his car.

He braked at the parking lot topiary, the automated sprinklers wetting his sedan. Maya was right, he should feel ashamed⁠—⁠not of his hopes and fantasies, but of the self he had developed to deal with their ruinous state.

He decided to write to Steven, whose email he had from the cast list.

“Hey Steven, it’s Gitman from Chalk Circle here, long time. Just wanted to say that I’m really happy you made it. We had something going in Santa Fe, glad one of us got a break. Saw the show in Fort Myers and laughed my ass off, superb work as our repertory director used to say.” When the email didn’t bounce back, he imagined how Steven might reply: “Hey, if I did it, you definitely can,” or “What, you were there? You should’ve emailed me, I would’ve got you backstage,” while also recognizing, in the hope of warding off one more disappointment, that the comedian probably wouldn’t respond.

Paul subdued one of his standard bilious answers.

“I wrote this,” Paul said with the pick in his hand, and proceeded to strum the guitar. He felt deeply moved by this song, “Mother Dear,” the introductory track to his self-titled album. “Mother dear, how I wish, you were here, how I wish, how I wish,” he sang, his voice acrobatic and trembling. Where once he’d felt it was too maudlin, and his crooked label had suggested he move it to mid-album, now this song seemed to him a masterpiece of alternating hesitation and emotion. As he watched his pick move up and down, he could feel how important music still was to him, how he could use chords and lyrics to summon moments of his life that had passed and briefly relive them.

“Thank you very much,” he said at the end, as if he were back at that club in the Keys with his mother approaching the plywood stage. The others applauded. Priscilla said, “That was so great, Paul,” more careful these days not to call him sweet. “Nice job,” Maya added. Then they went on with their evening.