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What kind of authentic Nashville experience is this?”
    “You don’t have to be June Carter Cash. You could be a session musician from Studio B. Trust me, you want to be with the Cashes today.” Ms. Lottie nodded toward the lounge area, where Johnny Cash and his heartbreaker son were tuning their guitars. “A couple of mornings ago, weren’t you wishing for boy trouble? You just found it.”

2

    “We’ll see about that,” I grumbled. With my circle skirt sweeping behind me, I spun in Ms. Lottie’s chair and stepped out of her hair-and-makeup alcove. I opened my fiddle case on an abandoned bookcase with a “Romance” sign on top. Better that than “Addiction” or “Family Planning,” which was where my parents thought I was parking my fiddle these days. I ran the bow across the strings, making minor adjustments with the tuning pegs. I didn’t need a tuning fork. I could tune my instrument by ear and I was always right. Other people didn’t believe me, though, and I often spent a whole set of songs gritting my teeth and playing A at a fourth of a step up or down from 440 hertz.
    Determined not to let that happen this time, I marched across the bookstore with a smile on my face, which seemed a lot more natural while I was in costume. Mr. Cash and his son sat in chairs on opposite ends of the lounge area, playing their guitars. I would charm them into doing things the way I wanted.
    I watched them as I walked closer. Johnny Cash was a man about my dad’s age with his dark hair greased and combed into a pompadour. He wore a dark suit with a white shirt and a bolo tie,which worked fine for Mr. Cash but also wouldn’t have turned heads anywhere in Nashville. People around here were a little eccentric about bolo ties.
    Ms. Lottie had coaxed his son’s hair into the same glossy pompadour, but his clothes could have passed for current, too, part of the Buddy Holly aesthetic so popular right now at Vanderbilt. He wore low-top black Chuck Taylors, black jeans folded up a few turns like greasers wore them in the 1950s, and a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up above the elbows. The material stretched tight across his chest and biceps. He was big enough to have played football.
    As I approached, Mr. Cash never looked up. There was no reason for him to. The lounge area was always busy at this time of the afternoon with musicians milling back and forth between the couches and Ms. Lottie’s area. A 1950s fiddle player coming closer shouldn’t have been an unusual sight.
    But his son looked up. I was watching them, listening to the cacophony as they played two different songs in two different keys. I saw the exact moment when Cash Jr. realized someone was making a beeline for him. His dark eyes widened at me, his stare so unabashed and his expression so intent, as if reading my face, that I felt myself blushing in response.
    And then he grinned at me. His eyes sparkled. The corners of his mouth lifted through a day’s worth of dark stubble, which didn’t quite jibe with the pompadour. He definitely was only a few years older than me, and so handsome that I wished for the millionth time I’d never cut my blond hair off and dyed it black. Then I remembered I was wearing my red ponytail wig, which was even worse.
    Now I knew what Ms. Lottie had meant when she said he was a heartbreaker. And he hadn’t spoken one word to me yet.
    I hadn’t bothered to impress anyone in a full year, but I foundmyself doing it now. I stopped in front of the sofa and called above Mr. Cash’s continuing guitar notes, “Hello, I’m June Carter Cash,” in imitation of the way the real deal used to say, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash,” at the beginning of his television variety show in the early 1970s. My parents had the complete set of DVDs.
    “She didn’t play fiddle,” the son said, never taking his eyes off me as he stood. “You’re definitely not her.” His words were innocent enough, but his knowing tone of voice told me he