A Song For Ally (Part 1 of 6)

We were finishing up the first week of a guaranteed one month booking at the Sunset Cabaret and we all agreed it was just about the best gig we've ever had. The money was good and the crowds were great.

A decade of playing clubs from one end of LA to the other taught us that crowds out on the west side could be downright brutal if they didn't like the band, but we'd found ourselves a gem this time. In case you're wondering, "we" are Jimmy Bishop, that's me, and the Temescal Canyon Band, the five guys who make me sound good. We play a little bit of everything—blues, rock, jazz, and even disco if the audience actually wants to hear it.

Besides landing the Sunset Cabaret gig, we had even more good fortune to keep us smiling. A month or so ago we released a new single, and after bouncing around just below the charts for what seemed like forever, Show Me Your Heart suddenly took off. We were half-way to the top of the Billboard Top 100 and climbing. That made us six of the happiest guys on the west coast.

The next fortune we encountered came directly at me and it took a while to find out if it was good fortune or bad. I noticed her at the club the first Saturday night we played there. She was sitting at the back of the room with some girlfriends and she didn't look like she was having a very good time. In appearance, she was a strikingly attractive tall blonde who would stand out in any crowd, but she was doing her best to make herself invisible—kind of looking down at the table except when we were actually playing.

For example, we did Show Me Your Heart next, and when I sang, "Show me your heart, that's a good start," she looked me straight in the eye with intense concentration on her face, as if she was trying to fathom some deep meaning behind every word I sang. We stayed like that, looking into each other's eyes for almost the entire two minutes and twenty seconds of the song. When the last chord faded away and the applause began, my new friend returned her blank gaze to the table and slowly swirled the ice cubes in her drink.

Since that was the last song of the set, I decided to go meet this enchantress. Into the microphone I said, "Thank you folks. We're gonna take ten minutes to recharge our batteries, and then we'll be back to keep the party rolling.

I stepped away from the microphone and as I turned to jump down from the stage, I saw my blonde and her friends leaving the room. I elbowed my way through the audience fast as I could and caught up just as the last of the five girls, a short brunette, got to the exit. I tried to step around her, but we crashed. She turned, looked surprised, and said, "You're him! You're Jimmy Bishop."

"Yeah, but please excuse me. I'm in kind of a hurry."

To Be ContinuedCopyright 2018 Steven O. EitzenAll Rights Reserved

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Story and design © Steve Eitzen
Header Graphic & HPO Logo © HPO Productions
Character Photos: © 123RF Used by license