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screamed. And that
pissed me off grandly. There was a skinny redhead in the gallery,
sexy, everything I’m not, bouncing her tits and holding her drink
up, damn near spilling it over herself with her buoyant enthusiasm.
“Oh, damn, you’re so hot !” she howled.
    I came down to reality. It was just me here,
the fat girl. So what the hell was all that dreaming I was doing
before with shirts off and tongues on breasts and—
    Dreaming. That’s all it was.
    Ace kept playing the crowd, the girls in the
gallery kept cheering him on. Then he hit a riff, started jamming
it, the drums boomed and thumped behind me so hard that I could
feel it deep in my chest, as if the drums were beating my heart for me. And I yowled my soul into that microphone.
    Ace and I burned the house down.
    In the end, the house roared, more people
walked in. Dollar bills were thrown down from the gallery onto the
stage. Open Jam acts never get tips, but we were getting tips.
    Ace started taking his guitar off and people
banged on the tables, screaming, “ENCORE! ENCORE! ENCORE!”
    I knew when it was my cue to leave. I clapped
for Ace, because that’s jam etiquette. And I started walking off
stage. They wanted him, they wanted a solo from him, and they were
right to ask for it. Because here in front of me was the next King
of Rock n Roll. And I was glad I got to sing with him.
    His fingers had smoked on the guitar when
he’d played it.
    But as I was walking off stage, I felt a hard
grip on the softness of my arm, just above my elbow.
    Ace had grabbed me. People whistled. Cold air
rushed down from the AC. It’s always too cold in the Blues Bar. I
turned around to face Ace. There was anguish in his eyes. A look
which said, Don’t go, babe. It’s you and me.
    You know, a life is defined by moments, and
those moments are usually very small, almost indiscernible. I
believe those moments happen in some higher realm—a mental link
between two people, or a singer and a crowd, or a speaker and the
crowd—when you hear something, feel something, know something that hasn’t been outwardly expressed or communicated.
This was one of those moments: Ace’s head cocked, a pained and
hurting look in his eyes— what is that look? what is it? —his
hand on my arm, gripping me.
    Don’t go, babe. It’s you and me.
    I nodded, jam etiquette, faced the crowd.
They cheered. Crowd etiquette.
    My girl Layna caught this exchange. She was
over on the left, in the back, just ahead of the bar, hidden a
little in the dark but I could see her smirk because of the neon
lights behind her. I could see that she’d seen something here as
well.
    We did another song, not as good as the one
we’d just done. It’s never as good as the surprise song. The third
had been the surprise song, where it all came together. But it was
good. The drummer did an awesome set. On the keyboards, Joey
Smythe—he was smoking—played that gospel-style blues up and down
the keys in a crazy combination.
    People roared and clapped. I accepted. I
bowed. I clapped in Ace’s direction—jam etiquette—he clapped in
mine. I turned to get off the stage. Some people surrounded me,
surrounded him, started congratulating him, me, the drummer, Joey
the keyboardist. Then three more people were around me, a girl,
that same redhead from earlier, an older man, someone with a drink.
The drink spilled on me. More people, shaking. “Well done!”, “You
were awesome!” “Thank you, thank you.” “Is it the first time you
played together?” A hand, a handshake. “Well done. Awesome.
Awesome!”
    And then, when they were all gone, I looked
around.
    And Ace was gone.
-14-
    I wasn’t so much sad as I was disappointed. I
sat down with my Honey Jack and swirled it in the melting ice,
staying for the last few acts. My mind drifted, because that’s what
my mind does, and it drifted to stupid things: His arm— what
tattoo was that? —the dimples on his cheeks, his black-black
hair, like mine. They drifted to