“Do you know any Bonnie Raitt?” she asked. I blinked, confused. She repeated the question, this time with no question mark at the end. A small red light in my brain clicked on.
I was already in a foul mood. Columbia in the 80’s had a thriving musical hotbed and we’d played several clubs and loved them all. This new place and I were not getting along.
First of all, it had as many steps as a Mayan temple just to haul our equipment in–through the front door, not a back dock–jostling customers the entire time.
Then there was the stage, blocking the men’s room, resulting in a line of people filing past us in the front of the stage as we played. The clientele seemed more interested in loud conversation than listening to us, so I was already crossing the place off my list as we slogged through the first set.
So when she appeared, I had to turn off my temper. She was already making it difficult. I said no, we didn’t know how to play any Bonnie Raitt songs. Her eyebrows lowered and her cupid’s bow lips formed a pout of displeasure. The red light in my brain began flashing “Princess Alert!!”
As she began naming female artists one at a time (“Stevie Nicks??” No), I began plotting my escape. I knew the type: Daddy’s Girl, used to getting her own way all the time. The only way to get out was to fake a knee injury.
We really don’t know any of these tunes, I said. “Well, I want to sit in with you,” she said. We don’t usually do that, I said. “I sit in with every band that plays here.” I’m very sorry, I said, but we just can’t accommodate you.
“Oh, I WILL sit in with you,” she said. “I’m good friends with the owner.” I saw him standing twenty feet away. Go tell him, I said, and then ask him to come over here.
I watched as she spun on her high heels (a Princess combat move) and clicked over. He bent down, smiling, and listened.
He walked over. “What’s up?” he said. She’s a pain in the ass, I said. He agreed.
I suggested if he liked us and wanted us back, he’d tell her no. He looked around the crowded room, and walked back to where she stood, the pout having morphed into smirk territory. He bent down and said something, and I watched her eyelids disappear into her pretty face, the smirk vanishing, the jaw dropping. If you looked up “disbelief” in the dictionary, this would be the picture, I thought, as she turned to face me across the room.
Eyelids: slits. Lips: pressed into a thin pencil line. Cheeks: I placed them around vermilion.
Please, I prayed, give me a foot stamp. And she did. A bonus head toss, hair expertly waving behind her as she walked through the crowd and out of my life.
I was beginning to like this place…