Tomorrow is a Long Time by Celli
The band is new, but their sound isn't...well, it's not bad, Edie is forced to admit, although every note of the bass thumps through the floor and reverberates in her feet. Her already sore feet. Damn alt-indie-new-whatever bands.
You couldn't have applied to country bars? she asks herself. Jazz? Someplace where you could hear yourself think, and Christ, woman, you're thirty-two, not seventy-two. Next you'll go home and complain to your cats about the young whippersnappers that wouldn't turn their music down.
She chooses not to remember that she does, indeed, have two cats, and leans over the bar. You do this job long enough, you can pour a draft backwards. Julie--she's the new bartender--is over making eyes at the lead singer, so Edie stacks up a few more.
Their manager is over at a side table, tucked into the shadows, along with a tall boy with orange hair who hasn't taken his eye off the stage in hours. She sets a beer in front of each of them, and waves off the manager when he reaches into his sweater pocket. "Free to groupies," she says, winking at Tall Boy. Actually, she's planning to take the money out of Julie's tip jar. It's one way to learn to stop drooling and do your damn job.
Tall Boy gives her the sweetest smile ever. "I'm an Astrid groupie," he says. Edie just nods, and the manager says, "Of course you are, Charlie," absently.
The band is about three songs past her limit by the time she gets back to Charlie and whatshisname again. She opens her mouth to ask if they want more beer, and then she hears soft, plaintive guitar chords. "Dylan?" she asks, stunned, before the first line is even out of the lead singer's mouth.
"Yeah," Charlie says. "I think. I'm not too good with classics."
She doesn't even register the "classic" comment. She's too busy with a twelve-year-old memory, and a goofy boy not unlike Charlie sitting cross-legged, naked, on her dorm room bed, playing a guitar badly.
"Tomorrow is a Long Time," she says softly. Charlie sort of blinks at her. "I mean, that's the song."
"Oh, cool."
Then the bass player starts singing too, softly but in perfect harmony with the lead singer, and the manager stares openly at the stage. Edie watches the boy with glasses singing directly at them, and for the first time all night her smile is genuine.
Everyone's a groupie, eventually.
06/20/03