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See.”
    He pointed to an open guitar case. Slim looked. The blue velvet interior was empty. No, Slim thought. It was more than that. It wasn’t just empty, it was as if its condition expressed the very meaning of emptiness, of loneliness and loss, it felt wrong, very wrong, and Slim was surprised when he felt an urge to cry or yell or hit something in reaction to the desolate emptiness that now existed where the Gutbucket had been.
    “Vipers?” Progress asked.
    Orville shrugged his shoulders. “I guess. I can’t say. Don’t know anyone else around here that would do it. No one in the business would touch it. No one would take the chance of screwing everything up.”
    Progress patted Orville on the back; and the man straightened up. A half smile crossed his face. “It’s not your fault,” Progress told him. “I s’pect it would have happened sooner or later. Listen, you want to go over to Mitchell’s and get some chili? I want to stay around for Nadine’s gig tonight. Why don’t you come on along and have a bowl or two?”
    Orville shook his head. “Nah, got work to do. You know me, always got work needs doing. You go on and take care of business. I’ll be here if you need me.”
    “Okay,” Progress said. “You call me if you needs anything, too, you hear?” Progress turned to leave.
    “Yeah,” Orville said, turning to Slim. “Nice to meet you, Slim. You hang in there with Progress and you’ll go someplace. Come on back in here and see me, too. I do good work setting up and all.”
    Slim shook the man’s hand once more, then nodded and followed Progress back out to the pickup. The old man wasn’t smiling.

    Slim cleared his throat, then asked, “What do we do now?”
    Progress looked at him and let a tiny gold smile interrupt the seriousness. “Now,” he said, “we go to Mitchell’s Domino Lounge and have us five or six bowls of the best chili you ever ate. Mitchell’s, it’s kind of a player’s hang. All the folks collects there after their gigs, talkin’ and jammin’ and eatin’ that chili. It’ll be slow now, during the day. Mitchell don’t come in till dark. He stays open all night, you know. You play a gig and then you say, “We go to Mitchell’s. We know Mitchell’s be open.’ Then you have you a bowl of that chili and you knows you straight. People’s be eatin’ five or six bowls of that chili, one behind the other.”
    “But what about the Gutbucket?” Slim asked.
    “Oh, I ain’t forgot about that.” He frowned for a moment, and Slim realized that indeed, the matter had not left his mind for a moment; whatever faint cheer there was was despite the gravity of the situation. “But Nadine’s got a gig tonight, so we gonna hang at Mitchell’s, then we go along to Nadine’s gig. After that’s over, we’ll go back to Mitchell’s and talk it all over.” Progress sighed deeply as he drove. “It ain’t no easy problem, son, and right at the moment, I don’t feel like explainin’ it to you no more. You just gonna have to be patient with it. Besides,” he said, a small twinkle in his eye, “you want to see Nadine, don’t you?”
    Slim recalled the picture in Progress’ living room. Yes, indeed yes, he did want to see Nadine. But it was strange. In a way, it was this which convinced him that magic did exist in this world. Because, in some way, he’d almost swear he was in love with this woman he’d never met, whose photograph was the only thing he’d seen or touched. It shouldn’t be, it couldn’t be, but he’d been in love too many times not to recognize the feelings inside him. Yes, he wanted to see Nadine! More than anything else he could think of. And if there was magic in this world, maybe for once in his life, it would work for him.

5

    There is a music which underlies all things. We dance to the tunes all our lives, though our living ears never hear the music which guides and moves us. Happiness can kill people as softly as shadows seen in dreams. We