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never let that happen to his car. But then, he’s got a brand new BMW. So it’s not like the taillight’s going to fall off or anything.
    On the way over, Terry talks about her brother, Houston. She tells me stories about when they were little kids. He was a real joker, sounds like. One time he invited her up into his tree house and then nailed the door shut. Terry was stuck in the tree house yelling for hours. When he finally pried open the door, she was crying. It sounds pretty mean. But I’ve never had a sister or a brother. Maybe that’s normal. And she’s laughing when she tells the story.
    When we pull up to Houston’s house, my heart sinks. It’s an old one that at one time was probably really nice. Like back in 1900 or something. There’s a big front porch with fancy columns. But the whole thing is sagging in the middle. So is the roof. And the paint’s peeling off.
    The grass is three feet high, which makes me wonder if maybe musicians just aren’t good with gardening. And there’s a rusted baby buggy in the middle of the lawn. Weird. If this was my house, I’d get rid of the buggy, for starters.
    The door’s got a big metal knocker in the shape of a lion’s head. Terry knocks— whack, whack, whack —and then she knocks again. Still no answer. She walks over to a window, looks in, bobbing her head around, trying to see in. Terry looks at me and makes a face as if to say, “What the heck?” Then she knocks again.
    Finally the door creaks open. The guy who opens it is wearing a stained white underwear shirt. You know, the type they call a “wife-beater”? He’s in sweatpants. His hair is long and tousled and gray. He has a five-day growth of beard. And he looks a lot like Terry. That is, if Terry were a guy and hadn’t taken a shower in two years.
    “Hey, man,” he says, rubbing his scrubby jaw. “What’s up?”
    “Houston. Houston, this is Duncan. You know, the young man I told you about? The musician. I said we were going to come this afternoon. You didn’t forget, did you?”
    “Forget?” Houston sticks his hand down the waistband of his sweats and readjusts something. “Naw. I knew you guys were comin’. I just…ah. Well, come on in.”
    It’s dark and just plain strange in Houston’s living room. He pulls back the ratty curtains, letting a little light on the situation. Holy cow! I mean, I’m not the neatest guy in the world. But this place is a total dump. Magazines and newspapers strewn all over the place. Beer cans on the coffee table. Piles of empty pizza and KFC boxes. The place is dusty and full of mothballs. Really dirty. It smells like dead mice.
    “Oh, Houston. I thought you were going to hire a cleaning lady to help you with all this,” says Terry. She scoops up an armful of magazines and sets them down in a neat pile. Clouds of dust puff up.
    “Oh yeah. Sure. I mean to do that real soon. It’s, like, on my list.” Houston winks at me. I don’t wink back. He’s freaking me out a little, to tell the truth.
    Not knowing what to do, I walk over to look at some posters on the wall. One says, The Amazing Rhythm Kings — Live at the Yale . Another says, At the Triple Door for Two Nights Only! — The Amazing Rhythm Kings .
    “That was my band, Duncan,” Houston says. “The Rhythm Kings. Pure, one-hundred-percent southernfried soul. Only we weren’t from the South. We were from Victoria, British Columbia, the land of tweed raincoats and tea-bag earrings.”
    Houston starts laughing, a funny kind of hoarse laugh. A smoker’s laugh. I was happy he remembered my name.
    In a corner of the living room was a piano. Or I thought it was. But when I got closer, I saw it had two sets of keys.
    “Is this an organ?” I ask.
    “It sure enough is,” says Houston. He slides over onto the bench and flicks a switch. There’s a whirring noise. Kind of like starting a car.
    “This, my friend, is a 1969 Hammond B-3 organ. The king of the rock and jazz organs. The king of all