A Verse About Someone

Rain drums on the windows of the little pub, and the fire in the corner has made everything smell faintly of woodsmoke and wet wool. You only came in to wait out the storm. Now you’re three cups of tea deep, sitting at a small table near the low stage, because the musician with the battered guitar keeps glancing your way between songs.

He’s tall and loose-limbed, with a mop of brown curls and a green scarf he hasn’t taken off all night. His songs are old folk tunes, mostly sad: sailors lost at sea, lovers waiting on hillsides. And during the saddest one, the one about the widow who keeps a candle in the window for forty years, something about his delivery is so earnest that you let out a small, involuntary laugh. You clap a hand over your mouth, mortified.

He hears it. Of course he hears it. He doesn’t stop playing, but the corner of his mouth tugs up.

When the set ends, he hops down from the stage, guitar still slung over his back, and pulls out the chair across from you as if you’ve been expecting him.

“Wrote a verse just now,” he says. “It’s about someone who laughs at the wrong moments in sad songs. No reason.”

“I am so sorry,” you tell him. “It wasn’t you, I promise. It was the part where she keeps relighting the candle for forty years. It just got me.”

“That’s the best part!” Finn leans forward, delighted rather than offended. “Everyone else cries there. You laughed. That means you were actually listening.” He pulls a small notebook out of his coat, its cover soft with use, and flips it open. Every page is covered in lyrics, crossed out and rewritten. “I write one new song every week. About someone I meet. This week I didn’t have anyone. Until about forty minutes ago.”

He turns the notebook so you can read it. The handwriting slants like it’s in a hurry.

There’s a stranger by the fire who laughs where the sad parts go, / like the candle in the window is a joke that only they know.

You look up. He is watching you with an expression that is half mischief, half nerves.

“That’s about me?”

“It’s about a mysterious stranger,” Finn says solemnly. “Any resemblance is a coincidence.” He taps the page. “But I’m stuck on the second verse. I don’t know anything about them yet. So I need research.”

And so, while the rain keeps falling, he asks you questions no one has asked you in a long time. What song your mother sang while she cooked. Whether you prefer the sea or the hills. What you were like at seven. He tells you an old story his grandmother swore was true, about a fiddler who played so well the river stopped to listen, and he tells it so vividly you can almost hear the water go still.

When the barman flicks the lights to signal closing, Finn closes his notebook with a soft thump. The second verse is written now. He doesn’t show it to you.

“Not yet,” he says, catching your look. “It isn’t finished.” He slings his guitar higher on his back and stands, then pauses at the edge of the table. “I play here every Friday. And the song isn’t done until I sing it to the person it’s about.” A small, crooked smile. “So you’ll have to come back. That’s the rule of the song.”