By Glenn Goodspeed (September, 2017)
It was a chilly evening, but I loaded my gear into the little Austin-Healey Sprite and set out for the nightclub with the top down. It had taken a couple of years to get the Sprite into working condition, and I took every opportunity to drive it. I had to resize my bass rig to fit the car. I was using a 2-10 cabinet that stood in the passenger seat. I made a folding wooden stand for it and threw that in the back along with the G-K amp. The short-scale bass guitar in its gig bag barely slid in beside the amp case.
We were playing at the Eclectic Ballroom on the west side of town. It had been a disco joint for a few years, but now the management was introducing live music on Saturday nights to see if it would improve attendance. It was a pretty nice place. It had a large, hardwood dance floor surrounded by a wooden railing where people could rest their drinks and watch the dancers. On one side, the bar stretched the length of the room. It was big enough for two bartenders, but there was only one and a waitress. There were tables opposite the dance floor.
I pulled into a parking space and our singer, House, came out to see if he could carry anything for me. I was playing in a band that required every member to have a nickname. "House" was a natural for Robert, because he was a huge man. He limped sometimes due to his size and a circulation problem in his feet. I handed him the bass guitar and said I would get the rest.
We played the first set to an almost empty room. A few customers sat at the bar and a few at a table. Nobody danced. We took a break and the bartender cranked up the disco music. It was louder than we were, and the customers, recognizing familiar tunes, got up and danced. It could have been discouraging, but we told ourselves that it was, after all, a disco joint. We played another set and a few more people filtered in, but again they only began dancing during our break. At last, halfway into our third set, several members of a dance club walked in and took to the floor. They were good dancers, obviously enjoying themselves.
During our next break, I stood at the railing and watched the dancers. A woman who had entered the club alone joined the crowd and soon picked up a partner. She was good-looking. She might have been beautiful when she was young, but now at forty-something, the beauty was fading. Her face was still pretty and her figure not too padded. Her blonde hair was fashionably cut. She wore a short, sleeveless, red dress. It was a peculiar light shade and had a sheen like silk. She wore matching high-heeled shoes. The dress and shoes accented shapely legs. I thought she might be a flight attendant by trade. She danced well, but she was not a natural dancer. She had a certain number of moves that she applied in sequence. In one of them, she pulled her arms back briefly, wrinkling the skin on her shoulders. It dawned on me that she was dancing right in front of me. She was looking at her partner, but it was as if she were performing for me.
We played one more set to a full dance floor. Afterward, as we packed up our gear, the disco music pounded the smoke-filled room. The crowd dwindled until only a few dancers remained, the disco dregs, I thought. We finished packing and loaded up our cars. Then I stood at the dance floor railing with House and watched while we waited for our drummmer, "Eight Ball," to get our pay. Poor House was covered with sweat. He leaned heavily on the railing and said, "Why do we do it, Elwood?"
"I guess it's better than watching TV," I said.
As we waited, the woman in the red dress was again dancing right in front of me. I watched for her shoulders to wrinkle, and I couldn't help taking in those legs. What is that old song, The Girls All Look Prettier at Closing Time? I got that feeling in the pit of my stomach that I get when I know I'm about to get laid. Surprised by that, I turned away from the dance floor. Eight Ball came and gave us our pay and we headed for home.
One of our guitar players, "Big Dog," said he would follow me to make sure no one tried to mess with me. I guessed he thought that the little Sprite with its top down and the speaker cabinet sticking up out of the passenger seat might look like a target to a troublemaker at 2:00 a.m. Silly, I thought, but didn't say anything. The early morning chill was no match for the pleasure of driving the topless Sprite and listening to that bold exhaust note on the nearly empty freeway. The drive was uneventful. Big Dog honked farewell as I took my exit. My wife was asleep when I got home.
On Monday, I got up early and went to work at my day job in downtown Fort Worth. Work was light and the weather was warm and sunny, so I walked uptown at lunch time. I bought a hot dog from a street vendor. I sat on a curbside planter to eat and watched the lunch crowd ebb and flow. Then, something hit my shoulder hard. As I turned, a handbag brushed my face. I was about to speak sharply, but my assailant was already three steps away and walking quickly, unsteadily at first as if recovering from the impact. I saw the red high-heeled shoes, the legs, the red dress and the blonde hair. She didn't turn around. In a moment she was gone. The hot dog man was smiling at me. I had to laugh. In thirty years, in a city of a half-million people, I cross paths with the woman in the red dress twice in three days.