By Bettyann Moore
Audrey yawned and
stretched luxuriously under the covers. One of her cats gave a feline
grunt and resettled itself on its mistress’s feet. Audrey winced a
bit and then smiled, bringing her hand to her right thigh. She
pressed her fingers a little harder than necessary into the bruise
she knew was there. She smiled again, tracing its curious curved
shape with a finger.
I really rocked it,
she thought, remembering the night before. Best. Gig. Ever.
Feeling a slight twinge
on her left thigh, she slid her left hand along her flank, finding
tenderness there as well. She broke into a full-fledged grin.
“Definitely the
best,” she said aloud, sighing.
The tell-tale clicking
of claws on the worn hardwood floors pulled her out of her reverie.
“Up, Cooper,” she
said, and her poodle mix dog leapt into the bed, burying his nose in
Audrey’s armpit.
“What a good boy,”
she said. “Did my boy have fun last night, too?” The dog wriggled
closer, his tail thumping happily against her bruised thigh.
At the end of every
gig, Audrey brought Cooper into the bar to meet her fans. Heather,
the bar owner, never seemed to mind. Maybe next year she’d ask if
he could stay for a set and hear her play. He’d watched her
practice before, but had never seen her with the rest of the band.
Dwayne poured himself
another cup of coffee and thanked the universe that he’d given up
drinking years before. Tina, his wife, was grateful, too, and didn’t
mind the little bit of weed he smoked between sets.
I’ll let her sleep
a little longer, Dwayne thought. She’s not used to those
late nights any more. The band would be on the road for the rest
of the Memorial Day weekend and though Tina seldom accompanied him to
his gigs any longer – 30 years was long enough, she said – she
always went with him to his annual Friday-before-Memorial Day gig at
Heather’s Bar. Last night was not much different than the last 15
he’d done there. Cuckoo, the drummer, had played 12 of those 15 and
Brian, the bass player, had done ten of those Friday shows. Only
Dwayne himself – and Audrey – had done them all.
And while Tina hated to
see “Audrey’s annual embarrassment” as she called it, at the
end of the night she would hug him tight and whisper in his ear:
“You’re a good man, Dwayne Cooper.” They both knew the tips
would have been larger if he didn’t let Richard, the horrible sax
player, and other wannabes sit in with the blues band’s third and
last sets. Dwayne included Audrey and her tambourine in that lot,
though he would never classify her as a wannabe. Audrey was a special
case.
It was Saturday and
wash day for Audrey, despite the holiday weekend. She had nowhere to
go and nothing else to do. She sorted the darks from the lights,
lovingly adding the black t-shirt with its look-alike Harley logo
emblazoned in faded silver across the chest. She only wore it – and
her black leggings and knee-length jean skirt – once a year, but
she’d been wearing them for 15 years now. They were looking a
little worse for the wear. In fact, she’d had to do a little repair
work on the neck of the shirt that morning after she’d pulled it
over her head and discovered that a thread had been caught on her
necklace.
She placed the three
items, plus her once-a-year black bra and panties set, in their own
washing machine at the LaundroMax and set it to “delicate.”
Dwayne and his band
mates seldom drove to a gig together, but since they’d be playing
each night of the holiday weekend, they loaded their gear into
Cuckoo’s van and headed to their Saturday gig – a new blues bar
at a tony resort in northern Wisconsin. Once on the highway, Friday
night’s post-mortem began.
“Nice sets last
night, boys,” Dwayne said. The “boys,” including Dwayne, were
in their early- to mid-60s.
“I came in too early
after the guitar solo in ‘She Gets It’,” Brian said.
“That’s cool,”
Dwayne replied, turning in his seat to look back at his old friend.
“Hell,” Cuckoo
said, rolling his eyes in the rear view mirror, “it’s no wonder
with Lady Luck sittin’ in. That woman couldn’t find a beat if her
life depended on it. Totally rhythm deaf.”
Dwayne took a long pull
from his bottle of Mountain Dew. Here we go again, he thought,
the annual harangue.
“No shit,” Brian
said, leaning forward between the front seats, “at least the
audience was clapping in time. With Sister Mary Sunshine shakin’
her thang right next to me, I had to look out into the bar to get
back in the groove.”
Cuckoo guffawed, while
Dwayne looked out at the flat expanses of farmland that rolled by. He
didn’t want to get into it again.
“Hell, I know we’re
white boys playing the blues,” Brian added, “but that chick has
zero soul and zip in the looks department. No freakin’ librarian
has had enough demons in her life to play the blues.”
Dwayne cut his eyes at
the bassist, but said nothing.
“Don’t forget zero
titties and bootie,” Cuckoo said, snorting. “It’s a crime
against nature and music for a tambourine player not to have a nice
bootie – not that she’s actually ‘playing’.”
Dwayne knew they were
trying to get a rise out of him. Back in the day, they would have
been successful. He went on staring out at the scenery.
After the laundry was
dried, folded and put away, Audrey indulged in her Saturday treat: a
cup of tea, half a sandwich and a bowl of soup at the neighborhood
Internet cafe. She paid an extra dollar for the privilege of using
one of the cafe’s outdated, but functional, laptops.
Her hands shook as she
logged into the Dwayne Cooper Band’s Facebook fan page. Maybe
someone had posted pictures of last night’s gig. Maybe she’d be
in some of them.
Ah, she thought,
I’m in luck! Someone – Tina Cooper, in fact – had
already posted pictures from the show. She’d taken a lot of them.
Audrey’s excitement grew as she clicked through the photos, knowing
that if she did appear in them, it wouldn’t be until near the end.
She was getting closer.
There was that old guy with the saxophone. She’d eased herself up
on the bandstand shortly after he sat in for the second song of the
third set. And – oh, happy days! – there she was! Part of her
left side was cut off, but she had her tambourine in her right hand
then anyway. I look a little stiff, she thought, but I was
nervous at first.
Audrey clicked to the
next photo, then several more before she saw herself again. It was
taken during the last set, she knew, because Dwayne was playing that
boxy-looking guitar he always brought out then.
“Oh, my word!” she
said aloud, causing a few heads in the cafe to turn. A thrill went up
her spine. Why, she looked positively disheveled! The black shirt had
slid down her left shoulder and the whole world could see the skinny
strap of her black bra. There was a wisp of hair over one eye. She
was even smiling.
She glanced at the
comments section and felt a momentary let-down.
“Whose the stiff
bored?” someone named BouncingBetty had written. Audrey slumped a
bit in her chair, then brightened.
“It’s ‘who’s’
– not whose – and it’s spelled B-O-A-R-D,” she said quietly,
rolling her eyes. A few pictures later, she came to the end without
seeing herself again, so she logged off.
It had been an amazing
night.
The band slowly
unloaded the van in the alley behind the Blues & Brews Club. They
were early, but Dwayne liked it that way. In the early days, though,
he seldom arrived at a venue in time; quite a few times he never
showed up at all.
“I’d like a nickle
for every gig we’ve played in a joint called ‘Blues &
Brews’,” Brian said as he held the door for the others. There was
nothing to carrying his bass and his band mates never let anyone else
touch their instruments, Dwayne especially. He treated his various
Fenders like bottles of fine wine. Brian had heard rumors that the
guitars had been in a pawn shop 20 years ago, but Dwayne never talked
about it.
A big guy, Brian also
guarded the van while the others were inside, probably unnecessary at
a fancy resort in Northern Wisconsin, but you never knew. He flicked
a half-smoked cigarette down the alley as Dwayne and Cuckoo came out
for the last time; Cuckoo just had to move the van out of the middle
of the alley and then it was time to practice the new tune Dwayne had
written the week before. Out of the corner of his eye, Brian saw a
figure lurch out of the shadows toward the smoldering butt.
“Even here,” Brian
muttered, nodding toward the man. Dwayne took in the tattered
clothing, the mismatched shoes, the piss-stained pants and the
scruffy beard. He shuddered, then looked away.
“Maybe especially
here,” he muttered. With morbid curiosity, Cuckoo and Brian watched
the man’s drunken progress.
“Jesus, it’s not
even three in the afternoon and the old guy can’t see straight,”
Cuckoo said none too softly.
The man paid them no
attention as he tried to hone in on his prize, stooping down several
times, nearly capsizing, then finally snaring the butt. The look of
satisfaction on his face was quickly wiped away when he tripped on
his own feet and went sprawling onto the gritty alley, where he lay,
dazed.
“Gimme the keys,”
Dwayne demanded, snatching them from Cuckoo’s hand. “I’ll move
the van and you guys work on the new tune.” His voice brooked no
argument; the drummer and bassist shuffled back into the bar.
Casting a glance down
the alley where the drunk was struggling to come to his feet with
little success,
Dwayne stood stock still, raised his eyes to the
sky and swore. He unlocked the van, reached in under the driver’s
side seat where Brian stashed his smokes and pulled out a nearly-full
carton of Marlboros. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a wad of
bills from the previous night’s tip jar and shoved them into the
carton. Then he went to help the man to his feet.
Before she went to bed
that night, Audrey ironed her uniform as she always did before her
Sunday service. She would be working the corner of Prospect and
Racine streets, where she’d had some success in the past. Dwayne
Cooper could be counted as her greatest success. She took special
care with the pleats in her polyester skirt while recalling how she’d
found him sprawled in the gutter, lying in his own vomit, a broken
bottle of MD 20-20 still clutched in his hand. It was unprofessional
of her, but she’d abandoned and completely forgotten about her
tambourine and collection kettle as she knelt beside him, doing
nothing more than holding his hand until he came to.
After that, it was his
work, not hers, that took him figuratively and literally out of that
gutter – though Dwayne insisted it was all her doing. The
embarrassment of riches he bestowed on her – the new tambourine and
her life’s dream realized – humbled her. But she wouldn’t give
them up for the world.
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