Red-Head Polka

Excerpt from The Comb (A Novel, Coming 2014)

Anne-Marie Fowler
Fiction Excerpts

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The look on Dr. T’s face was priceless.

It both thrilled and frightened me. I suppose it disgusted me as well.

It was a look of a man of well-established position, who felt it his divine, or at least establishment-accorded right, was to judge a young woman having no position at all. On his very own subjective terms.

That was what had happened.

He’d never met me before. He met me today. And he’d decided who I was and what I was, for all of rational time.

Now I was thrilled to have been noticed. I was also thrilled that I’d irritated him entirely. I was thrilled to be a potential threat, in a way that a small buzzing thing is a threat. Not because of size or wealth, but because of special capacities to disrupt, sting and escape rapidly after doing either or both.

**

Dr. T, despite his woeful inability to read faces or emotions in other people, still was known to sense things strongly. Wanting all of his conclusions to appear scientific and above all doubt, he called them “observations.”

He had observed just enough to know this.

His boss, Minister Adam Ash, had not chosen an advance girl from the legions of resumes he’d received, mostly from the pretty daughters of fabulously wealthy people, some of whom had gone to very fine schools. Some had two or three advanced degrees by age 25, the privilege of those whose family fortunes removed the necessity of having to work at that age, or any other after it.

Yet he had brought in a hotel girl. Because he’d seen something in her.

Dr. T. had heard that the hotel girl had in fact attended an Ivy League institution, and had in fact graduated with honors in less than the usual time assigned. She had shown exceptional promise in her political economics curriculum, being elevated into graduate level classes by age 19 and presenting her ideas in forums designed for those working on dissertations.

She followed currencies as a hobby, and could regularly quote the exact reported quantity of US petroleum reserves. Those being related, she had said, almost with a wink.

But she was a hotel girl. She was part of upper management, but in the event her help was needed, she made beds and poured coffee. Without hesitation or complaint.

There was something about her that made him uncomfortable. It was as if she had no obvious social class.

He simply couldn't place her. Usually, he could smell poverty or wealth on someone. Or, in the case of young Zane Leonard (who was so often described with that promising introductory adjective, one which spoke more to his appearance and mental energy than actual physical age, since he’d already passed thirty) a man who was neither rich nor poor but had been accustomed since birth to spending time with very important people.

The hotel girl had too, it seemed. She interacted very comfortably with the Minister, and he’d heard, with the President. She showed appropriate deference when it was called for, but never seemed intimidated.

She also interacted with real people. Not in the condescending way of liberal politicians with money to hand out, who smile as if they are infernally aware of their own superiority and the endless kudos required to feed it. Those sorts of sweet demands for appreciations that make all Jesuits mad.

She interacted in a resigned way, onethat a person who had suffered to such a degree as to be scarred permanently would do.

She wasn’t quite one of them, but she was alarmingly close to it.

She could slide into their ranks unnoticed, he thought, getting an image in his mind of the whiny and visionary Veronica Cartwright in the 70's version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. A quirky little person who could fake being anything.

Even an alien clone than emerged from a messy pod in foggy San Francisco.

Was he jealous of her? He dismissed that thought. He preferred to think that she had to be jealous of him.

He was the smartest person in the room. She had to resent that, he thought.

She could never be him.

That thought was reassuring, until it was not. Until that thought flipped.

He could never be her.

It took one look at young Zane Leonard’s face to know that.

Zane had entered the meeting late, though with reasons providing a fully decent alibi. Zane was the type of person that had his alibi down before he committed any sort of infraction. It always happened in that order.

He had remained polished and perfect. Until he saw her.

He knew her already.

He was surprised to see her. His face, at first showing shock and slight horror, had quickly evolved into a look of pleased joy before it went back to neutral as commanded by the setting.

This all happened in less than two seconds. Dr. T praised himself for noticing it.

Three phases of one face. Zane knew her already, and there was only one way he could possibly know her. In the very oldest and most primal way possible

There simply would have been no other possible point of intersection between the promising Mr. Leonard and that hotel girl, he told himself.

Then, he considered details.

He wondered how their sexual event had occurred. When. Where. For how long. He tried to imagine what it was like, hoping no one could read his mind.

He wondered if it had recurred.

Zane’s face seemed to indicate that he had not seen her in a while.

Her face had been unusually controlled. Or maybe, like Zane’s it had revealed itself in micro-moments. As he’d been watching young Zane enter the room, he might have missed them.

He wondered for a moment if Zane had paid her. And if Zane’s wife knew. Or if the answer to both of those questions was no.

Either way, this was complicated. It was as if an invasion had happened. Something drifted benevolently from the sky and proceeded to infect and conquer everything that came near to it.

Her brazen sexual encounter with Zane, which he was sure had happened, only added to the alluring filthiness of the hotel girl’s image.

He decided she could not last. But that such things had to happen in clever ways, ways which would not boomerang.

Such dreams were rather funny from Dr. T. Because just about everything he did had some boomerang effect.

He could say the most awful thing the most awful time. Even as he planned certain schemes so expertly. Even the cleverest of schemes, expertly woven, could have the most unexpected of outcomes.

He might have learned from this lesson, but it never seemed to happen.

He continued to dream them up, as if he was just steps from the right sequence. He just needed to get it right. Design the right way to destroy someone who was unnatural or inconvenient or simply made him uncomfortable.

This girl was one of those people.

“She was a ballerina once,” said Barbara-Lindy, with some admiration. In the Minister’s administrative office, she would work with the new girl on scheduling. “And her family had a working ranch.” Barbara-Lindy was from Texas, and for her a ranch was a sign of both social and moral legitimacy.

Dr. T wondered how these two dissonant forces could have combined in one person. A ballerina on a ranch. It did not seem coherent.

It seemed wrong. He wondered about her teeth. He pictured ballerinas having perfect teeth.

Her upper teeth were very straight, but he noted when she was speaking that her lower teeth were crooked. He wondered if the family could afford just half a mouthful of braces, and had chosen to fix the upper ones only.

He pictured what her teeth looked like when she was little. It had to have been frightening.

He wondered if she milked cows or rode in a truck.

All of that smelled a certain way.

One time he passed her in the hallway. She was coming from the Minister’s office with a new batch of his signatures on things she had written.

A young man, a staffer in the international unit, asked her if she liked Flamenco dance.

“Or I could teach you Lambada!”

He said that part a bit too intentionally.

She smiled. “I’ve never done Lambada.”

“So it’s just ballet then?” He asked. “And waltzes I assume?”

She laughed, “Yes, and polka.”

The young man was surprised.

“You polka?”

Now she was surprised.

“Of course I do,” she said. “Since I was about three. Where I am from, you just do that.”

The idea of this girl doing polka both titillated and horrified Dr. T.

He couldn’t quite analyze why.

Why that thought was so overwhelmingly awful in his imagination.

**

The tule fog was havin’ a day, and my great Uncle Herman told Gramma not to drive.

The tule fog has a personality sometimes. Sometimes it wants revenge.

And it eats people, said Great Uncle Herman, referring not to the fog’s actual consumption of people, but the deaths that occurred on the road when the fog decided to have its way. Mostly cars hitting other cars, cars hitting trees, cars hitting large and small animals, and people wandering off and falling into ditches or rivers that they did not realize were there.

They found an old man in the Consumnes River the other morning. He was well on the way in terms of whiskey consumption and he’d sort of wandered into the river and fallen asleep there. Then he sort of floated by and they pulled him out.

This was an example of the fog eating somebody.

They found him with the help of a big lug of a herding dog nearby, since he was incessantly barking at the floating man, and not being heard by him since the man had died.

The dog lived, being sensible enough not to fall asleep in the river like the man did.

“Perhaps that is what the dog was giving a speech about,” I said to Gramma.

She didn’t disagree. She was focused, in a big sister sort of tone, on telling off Herman.

Gramma said she was fine to drive. Having approximately zero visibility to guide us on the road, we grabbed on to our believing and got into the blue Chevy Impala. We turned on the radio and listened to Waylon and Willie. They were on two different stations at the very same time. This was apparently a big deal.

I knew the song already so I sang along with it. The men all played Outlaws when they got back from their drinking, so while this song did not permit me to sleep, it did have a way of protecting me from unwanted oaths and flying plates.

http://youtu.be/sNHg_dUSeMs

Gramma and I actually already had a day. We went into town and Gramma made some visits, one was with ladies that played bridge. Gramma had a glass of sherry and I did a jigsaw puzzle that was in the den of the house we were visiting. It was of the alps and had a chalet.

Then we drove down Folsom past the East Lawn Clock and we got rice pudding at the Rosemount.

Rosemount is pronounced Rose-Mont. If you say Rose-Mount they will probably not take your order for at least twenty minutes, though due to a nagging conscience that you are a customer and they have a duty to help and feed you, they will probably get around to you eventually.

You could have rice pudding or tapioca any time, and I thought the rice pudding was better. I knew what rice looked like when it was growing, so I trusted it more. Where rice grows, there are these little raised places like balance beams. I’d pretend to be Olga Korbut and do cartwheels on them. Then I’d get in trouble because if you fall in it messes up the rice.

Rice pudding was filling though. They gave you heavy cream, and we added honey that we brought in from our own hives. You were not supposed to do that but Gramma gets away with everything. So we did. I should also mention that my Gramma never gets speeding tickets. How she worked this one I don’t really know.

We went to Sacred Heart and lit candles. I saw an altar boy there that I knew. I tried to talk with him and he sort of ignored me.

I asked if I could be an altar girl, thinking that maybe he would talk with me if I was in the same position. The priest said no.

My Gramma said that would change one day. But she said it in a tone of voice that said I should not hold my breath on that.

Then we went to the bank, and my Gramma went into the vault with an older man and his assistant, a young lady with long black hair. I think she is Chinese. Her hair is perfect and pretty.

I waited outside, in a large chair which did not permit my black Mary Janes to touch the shiny marble floor. I was presented with a bowl of tootsie rolls.

My Gramma told me not to eat them, not after the rice pudding.

I asked if I could have something to read. There were magazines at the bank and I pointed at one with the Governor on it. The new one with the sideburns. He was smiling.

My Gramma says the Governor smiles because he smokes hop.

I need to ask what “hop” is. Sometimes my Gramma runs into the Governor when she is in the city. I don’t mean with the car, I mean socially.

He is always very polite to her, she says, “and I am always polite to him.”

This is by obligation, I can tell. Because Gramma respected his father even when they disagreed, so the son gets the same treatment.

But she made her point all the same.

I picked up the magazine, not hearing a no which would indicate otherwise. The woman standing by the reading table, who smelled of a recent cigarette break, laughed at me.

“You can read?” she asked. Her contempt was showing.

“Yes,” I replied.

She laughed and walked away, leaving me confused. I could not understand why she just wouldn’t let me read the magazine.

She’d never even met me. How did she know if I could read or not?

Gramma came back. The man and the lady spoke to her with great respect, which she returned. It all had to have to do with what was in the vault, I suppose.

The road was a little busy coming back, meaning that Gramma drove like Gramma will. The Blue Chevy Impala is the size of a boat, but she refuses to use the lane change signal.

She also subjectively considers the color of streetlights, preferring her own assessment of whether she should cross or not.

On that second point, so does everyone else.

The low visibility meant that the road was left to the brave, so it was pretty much a lawless and pioneering adventure all the way back, and since Gramma is fine in such situations so was I.

In the summer it can be different. Still busy, but with smells involved. Lots of trucks from the orchards, lots of horse trailers, lots of afternoons where having a black leather interior means having to put a blanket down on the seat before you sit. I was wearing shorts once and got right in the car and burned both my legs.

You could cook food on the black dashboard, if you needed to.

Gramma pulled in to the dirt patch next to the Inn. It’s next to a little post office and a general store, sort of a trading post that was set up when this was a mining down and kept here because the truckers need to stop and have a drink and chat with a lady sometimes.

Some wait til they get to town, but this place is sooner, and it’s very friendly. They are more likely to look you up and down if you are dressed up.

A barefoot girl can walk in here alone and be totally safe and drink a Shirley Temple at the bar. I have tested this and know it to be true.

We entered the Inn to much greeting. My Gramma is important, I reminded myself, feeling suddenly regal amidst casual circumstances, but remembering that manners apply in all cases.

I sometimes forget whom I am supposed to curtsy to, so I curtsy to everyone. Apparently I overdid it and people laughed at me, but Gramma said it was perfect.

“You are charming,” she said. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

I got a Shirley Temple, and walked around next to my Gramma to have social conversations.

Sometimes the bar man would come by and ask if I wanted a refill. I asked for more cherries, and they made my tongue pink.

I listened to the conversation. It was less social than I expected. This was a meeting. Besides necessary talk of the wake for the nice old man that fell into the river, they talked about politics.

“The next election will not go well,” one said. His tone was definite.

“That’s why its time to do this,” said another. “If we’re goin’ to lose anyway, then why not?”

“This may be our last stand,” said a man next to Gramma. This was one of the men that really didn’t like Nixon, that was happy when he’d left.

It seemed like no one liked Nixon. Maybe that is why he scowled so much.

Yet they never talked about Ford. It was like he did not exist.

They talked about who had fallen too much in line and who was still standing up on his own, naming names or assigning code names. But it was not about the man in the Consumnes this time. It was something bigger.

There was a divide. Neighbor versus neighbor.

Some of the farmers were making deals with the government, for special favors. Some were not.

This was going to consolidate the market in favor of a few.

Now it would all be billed as something to help poor people, even thought that would be a lie. It was to help a few bigger farmers get rid of uncooperative smaller competition. Upstarts.

But people don’t vote for stuff that gives only a few people privileges, especially when those people are rich already. So they have to make up a story to make everyone think they are doing something else. Like helping poor children or saving hungry kittens.

“We need someone who will stop the favors.”

They all nodded.

“The best of us work hard to be the best of us. Those that aren’t the best have to cheat. That’s what this is.

We were first. We worked hard to be what we are. We do not cheat.”

It was a tenet. It also was a definition. People who asked for favors were cheating, and people who cheated asked for favors. At the expense of others.

They cut corners. Out here, getting told you cut corners is a friendship- ending insult. A permanent one. Someone says that to you and they are dead to you.

But there was a rule that was even bigger. You shared what you had. And you did not expect anything in return when you did.

If you expected appreciation, it was not sharing, and you were not accepted.

You did what was right and that was its own reward. Sharing was right.

This favors thing they were describing? Was the opposite of sharing.

“Hear, hear.” Glasses were raised.

They needed someone who understood that. For whom it was a matter past question, a matter of spine and of soul.

“We don’t have time to teach this,” the man who didn’t like Nixon said.

There was no time to teach what one should already know. That work was sacred, that the land was sacred. That unsacred things were not to be welcomed, even once.

Ford, like Nixon before him, didn’t understand the rule of the ink, said one man. It meant that water was clear until it got one drop of ink.

Then it was not clear anymore.

“It’s not gradual,” he said. “You put the ink in, and it’s done.”

Sharing clean water was good. Putting ink in someone else’s water was evil.

“What if someone likes dyed water?” laughed a woman at the table. She was someone’s date, I figured. Not here of her own right.

Even I knew not to say something stupid like that.

My Gramma looked at her with seriousness.

“Imagine if our children drink that water,” she said.

My Gramma went on and everybody listened to her.

She described how crawdads die. Slowly and comfortably and entirely unaware.

I already knew. She said that Ford wasn’t the one, because he didn’t get the ink, an he didn’t get the crawdads either.

They had someone else in mind, and they kept describing him in exciting terms. I had met him. I knew who he was. He used to be the Governor. Before the new Governor who allegedly smoked hop, and after the Governor that was his father and apparently did not smoke hop.

The governor in the middle of father and son used to live in the white brick house with the red roof. The lot went all the way through the block, from 45th to 46th street, but he hadn’t overbuilt the house. He and his wife had an enormous backyard instead.

I think at first, I really liked the Governor for that backyard. That was the reason. It was beautiful and it was filled with flowers and noise, fruit trees and bees. Not wild like out where we are, but more citified. I acted proper there even when I was running around and occasionally falling down. His wife came out and brought me bandaids once, and was very nice about it even though my knee was bleeding on her primroses.

“We need him to turn the tables over. Fix what happened with Nixon.”

Fix what happened. It was about the money, I knew.

Nixon had ruined all the money.

But Gramma said it was beyond the point of fixing it. This is when the table turning over images kept coming up. They were not about fixing anything.

I thought about my mother’s plan. To break all the plates one day.

When the meeting ended there was a buffet, and potatoes and meat were served in foil trays. There was also two kinds of squash and a cobbler with rhubarb in it and a crumbly topping.

“There will be dancing tonight; will you stay?”

My Gramma replied that we would.

There was a band, but it wasn’t official. There were guitars and fiddles and horns and an accordionist, but they had not practiced together before.

They had to decide amongst themselves who took the lead in each number, as the songs are different depending upon who does. The same song can be entirely changed by the instrument and by the artist living within it.

This doesn’t tend to happen when the bagpipe shows up.

When the bagpipe is there, everybody else gets out of the way. You can hear it up and down Route 16. Through tule fog and all.

But tonight there had been a serious discussion about who should be the next President, and probably the bagpiper didn’t want to brave the fog anyway.

The polka began. Just about everyone in the room took to the floor.

They all made a circle. It was more like an oval, though. And the oval turned as couples danced. I danced with one of Gramma’s friends whom I recognized from before. He had big pointy toe cowboy boots, sort of new and still hard. I had curtsied to him earlier. He had been part of the meeting.

This went on, and slower polkas alternated with fast ones.

When the schnells came on you saw the unserious leave the floor. My Gamma would sometimes want a rest, saying she had to mind her heart, but she wanted me to watch the fast polkas because the dancing was so good.

So I did and I clapped along.

There was one bouncy polka that they played, it seems, on repeat. Each time they started it, one of the men or women in the circle would enter alone, and they would dance inside the circle as all of the others clapped and cheered.

My Gramma and I wet into the circle. I was the only child, but no one seemed to mind.

A dark haired woman who was very pretty and dressed in a dirndl followed an older man who had managed, despite excess weight, to keep up with the music without collapsing. They gave him very loud applause when he finished, red faced and panting.

I hoped he would not die, but considered that at the wake they would say it was a good way to die, dancing polka at the Inn with people cheering and happy.

They got him a drink, and the dark haired woman began to dance. She was not as young as I originally thought, but slender and strong and she danced beautifully, I watched her and thought of the dancing gymnasts from the Soviet Union I saw on TV, and in person once when they did a show at the Cow Palace. It was all the star Soviet gymnasts, and it was in the arena where we’d gone before for rodeo and 4-h. Just rearranged for gymnastics this time.

This woman was less formal than the Soviets in leotards, and her legs were thinner. The Soviet girls had thigh muscles that could kill a man thrice their petite size with one swift kick.

The similarity was the confidence. Not an over confidence in herself as much as a belief in the dance itself.

If she did the polka the way it was to be done, she would be carried along with it and would create something powerful and exceptional.

Something that had always been done, but had never been done before in this precise way.

Each dance is unique. They do not repeat, ever. That was the idea.

I started swaying back and forth, and eventually was not just clapping but spinning around too.

The dancing woman started doing something no one had done before. She invited others to join her solo.

First a younger man, then an older woman, then an older man. Each would dance a circle around her and then join her. The older man partnered her more traditionally, moving in to lead, but the younger dancers, male and female, danced alongside. The young man had followed the dark haired woman’s steps. The older woman had done her own dance, not copying her. The dark haired woman had slowed and applauded the older woman’s dance, a show of grace and respect that the crowd appreciated and lauded with cheers and sound.

I was minding my own dance while watching the others, thinking that I was for all intents invisible, and enjoying that angel’s vantage.

Then the dark haired dancing lady came toward me.

She reached for my hand, at the same time looking at my Gramma for approval.

Gramma gave it.

I did not know what to do.

She said, “go dance Lucie.”

The woman pulled me in and I started dancing.

My feet had started to hurt from the Mary Janes, so I’d taken them off.

In the center of the polka circle the floor vibrated. I realized that the accordion felt differently than the horns, and the horns felt differently from the percussion and the fiddles. It was as if I was stepping on sounds and each one would tell me how fast or slow or high or low to go. The floor and music were dancing with me, as a partner carrying me along. Gaining balance, I spun into improvised pirouette. I spotted at first but then lost my spot and was dizzy. But I continued, because I was not done yet.

The sound from the group was getting louder, and after feeling that it was just me and the lady, I realized how many people were watching me, and I saw their faces, their shouting and their drinking, and I thought of flying plates.

I could almost see them.

And I was terrified.

There was a bright light on me and suddenly I felt as if I was surrounded by a circle of people and they were all yelling and waving their hands.

They were. But it looked differently now.

I spun around, wondering if someone would throw something.

The lady took my hand again, realizing I was scared now, even though I had danced with reckless abandon just before.

“It’s OK.” She smiled.

“Your dancing is beautiful. I want you to try again.”

She seemed very sincere, though I am never sure anyone is. I felt fairly confident that no one was going to kick or hit me for this episode, so that was a start.

I tried to smile back, and I tried to move. But my body was frozen. I could not feel the floor anymore. The music in it.

I also couldn’t breathe very well.

A large man leaned in and with very heavy breath of both whiskey and beer, said,

“Aren’t you going to dance again?”

I ran out of the circle, and I hid under a table.

Gramma found me and kept telling me how good my dancing was.

“You are a natural, Lucie. You were better than anyone.”

She was crouching under the table to talk with me. I could tell she was disappointed that I got scared, and wanted me to come out from under there right away.

I wasn’t really sure what happened, but I could still hear the disappointed, deflated oooohhhh that came from the crowd as I ran away.

I told Gramma I was sorry.

I went to find the nice dancing lady to say I was sorry, but she was surrounded by men and I could not get her attention.

As I was walking out, with Gramma, and putting on my shoes again, a man came up to me,

“Little girl, you are a beautiful dancer.” He was one of the workers in the orchards. He had an accent. I said, thank you, and looked down.

He seemed nice, and he had warm rough hands which grasped my own, which were cold. I just wasn’t up to talking.

As we drove home in the fog, Gramma asked me how I was feeling.

“You took your shoes off.”

“Yes, they were hurting my feet.”

“Are your feet swollen?” she said

“Yeah, a little.”

“Did you stop dancing because your feet hurt or because you were short of breath?”

I hadn’t recalled. I’d stopped because I was dizzy and I was cold. I just sort of froze. All the faces looked different.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I’m going to make you a doctor’s appointment, she said, next time we go into town.

“You prid’near fainted. I think you did Lucie. Did you feel like you were fainting?”

I had but I didn’t want to tell her that. She seemed worried. I shook my head.

**

Dr. T waited to hear what the new girl would say.

Do you know red head polka? She asked

“I danced to that when I was a little girl. I was a little red haired girl. Well it was dark strawberry blond actually. So I’d walk in to a polka and the accordionist would start playing it.

I grew to sort of expect it.”

She laughed in a self-deprecating way, remembering something.

“The first time I got very nervous. But later on I got to be better at it.”

“I don’t think they have polka night in Adams Morgan,” the eager staffer said.

“Well flamenco it is,” she said.

“Lambada?” He was still hopeful for the Lambada option.

“That depends,” she said to the staffer, winking in fun. All at once, she turned to her observer.

Whom it seemed she’d been aware of the entire time.

“May I help you Doctor?”

He jumped a bit when she asked. He had not expected her to address him directly. But his jump was really about the force of her stare.

It did not seem to match the quiet politeness of her voice.

Her stare was intense in a way that peered right into his skull. Like she could see what was inside. See what made its home there, in secret or outwardly, or in disturbing combinations of which he might not yet be conscious.

“No, thank you, Miss Daniel,” he said, hoping his polite voice masked his agitation.

He could see it in his mind.

On a two lane country road. A blue Chevy Impala, with ample mud and even ampler fins on the back. A buck-toothed girl in pigtails, a plaid dress, wearing no shoes, and no seatbelt.

She’s sharing a back seat with two big and untethered dogs. Yet her head is out the window, and she’s talking with horses. They’re in a trailer right next to her, speeding down a two lane road that slices through the orchards. At least one of those vehicles, hers or the horses’ is by definition going the wrong way. Against all law and good sense, he added to himself. He really didn’t like horses. Not even in books. Or cars on country roads with kids leaning out the window to converse with them as if their opinions mattered.

But there she was. This person was standing, right before him, rough and unfinished and unintentionally provocative.

In a secure, no access hallway of the Ministry of Treasury. A place where men like him gathered.

Their task? To save the world.

There wasn't anyone else like her in this place, he thought, and there was a very good reason for that.

Find me on Twitter @AnneMarieAuthor

Note on Video Clip. While this clip is from a 1987 performance, it features a duet released in late 1975 which topped the charts in February 1976 and was widely played across country, pop and crossover radio at that time.

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Anne-Marie Fowler
Fiction Excerpts

Freelance writer on politics and entrepreneurship. Author, The Comb (2014)