Unless You've Been Here

            It’s the sort of place that covers its tables with brown, craft paper sometime beforehand. Very likely the same girls who had set-up earlier this afternoon are taking orders now.  I can imagine them hauling out a heavy roll from storage, then rough-cutting a rectangle for this table, pinning it down with a metal paper towel stand and placing the salt and pepper shakers as bookends for the laminated list of beers before moving on to the next table.  All readied without much thought, I guess, as I trace where the wooden table now stretches beyond the too-short, paper edge.  Or maybe they had other things on their minds.  Maybe they were talking about personal problems or neighbors or work.  Or everything else they had to get done before the dinner crowd arrived. 

            I’m in that crowd, waved to this table by a friend with a smile.  And glad for that.  This place used to be a grocery store.   Repurposed the way things often are around here.  I once bought bread off a shelf about where I’m seated now.  Or perhaps canned tuna.  I’m not sure.  “Nachos,” I say, when I’m asked what I’ll have tonight.  I keep it simple because I can’t hear conversations well and I’m not sure the server will hear me either.  It’s OK.  I came for the live music.  For this musician.  

            He’s as talented as sunshine without the faintest cloud of doubt on the horizon.  As proof, the room quickly warms up to him.  He chooses his own songs for a while, blazing away with Pink Floyd, Johnny Cash, Bob Seger, a glimmer of Steve Goodman.  Then he asks what they’ll have. "Lady Gaga," they call out.  Lady Gaga?  Too many peppers in the hot sauce, I think.  He delivers a pretend Gaga song and they laugh.  Children dance like fireflies in front of the stage.  He improvises and sings about a little boy’s graham cracker.  He was a little boy once too.  I know his mother. 

            And people tell me they never expected us to move back here.  Ha.  What were they thinking?