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a hateful tour. The musicians hated the music they were playing, and they loathed the venues they were playing in. A sourness descended on the whole enterprise before the end of the first week. Dave, who began the tour as the technical director, soon realized he was presiding over the rock-and-roll equivalent of a Ford Pinto. He could count on something going wrong every day. He kept waiting for the explosion. The onlysalvation was the most hated moment of all—the last number of every show—when Bobby Goldsboro sang “Honey.”
    About two weeks into the tour, one of the Mysterians bought a battery-operated megaphone, and every night a group of musicians would huddle offstage, trying to distract Bobby Goldsboro by singing alternate lyrics during his song. They would sing just loud enough so he could hear them and the audience couldn’t. In Saratoga Springs they rigged up a microphone behind the stage. The plan was to feed their version of “Honey” through Goldsboro’s monitor. Somehow the feed got rerouted—it was never clear how—and their lyrics, which involved Honey doing unspeakable things with a shaved, greased goat, got routed through the arena PA.
    To the audience, this unbelievable rewrite appeared to be coming out of Goldsboro’s mouth. Goldsboro, who was dimly aware that something was horribly wrong, gamely finished the song while the crowd watched in disbelief. When the tune came to an end, there was a moment of pure silence. Then Goldsboro looked around in confusion as the audience rose as one and gave him the only standing ovation he got on the tour. After the show, he kicked up such a fuss that the Mysterians had to stop their evening antics. Instead, every night when it was time for “Honey,” they would slip into the audience, where Goldsboro could see them, and put on oversize construction ear protectors, waving, smiling, and making rude gestures at him while he sang.
    Things got so bad that Dave left the tour and began to advance the show. This meant arriving in each town a few days ahead of everyone to prepare the arena and then, thankfully, leaving before anyone else got there. He spent the entire summer arguing with arena managers about concession rights and electrical boards. And that was how he came to meet Morley in those last days of summer.

    When he first saw her, Dave was leaning on the arena boards, waiting for the free skate to end so his crew could start laying a temporary floor over the ice. The lights were dim, and there were waltzes playing over the arena PA. Everyone was paired up, holding hands as they skated around and around. Dave suddenly felt alone. He bought a coffee in a cardboard cup and watched the skaters, and as he watched, he was transported back to the arena in his hometown of Cape Breton—to the annual Valentine Weekend Ice Waltz. They used to put lights in the arena ceiling. The lights would twinkle like stars. There was the big face of a moon, which would wink its eye every so often, and a live orchestra suspended on a plywood platform over center ice. At the beginning of the night, the musicians would have to climb up a ladder with their instruments. Dave’s mother made him promise he wouldn’t skate under the platform during the polkas, because when the orchestra played polkas, the platform swung back and forth. Whenever that happened, Margaret would stand by the boards, light a Sweet Caporal, and say she didn’t mind if the cigarettes got her, but she was damned if she was going to become an item on the TV news because she was the only woman in the history of Cape Breton to be squashed to death by a polka band.

    That was what Dave was thinking about when Morley skated into his life. She had long chestnut hair with bangs that were at least an inch below her eyebrows. She was wearing a hand-woven poncho over a blue army-surplus turtleneck sweater, and bell-bottom jeans with embroidered cuffs. And granny glasses. Dave was bewitched.
    She was the only person