"Been thinking about getting a real job."
This from Eddie, my disgustingly good-looking African-American best friend as we sat on the patio of our favorite beachside St. Arbuck's enjoying a pleasant, if overcast, afternoon.
"A real job as opposed to what, the unreal one you have at present?" I said while watching a young couple streak by on inline skates, hair flying in the breeze, their skin glistening from a light sheen of perspiration.
He said, "Nah, man, the job's real, but right now it's real slow."
A reality affecting nearly everyone I know in the music industry.
"So what's slower, studio sessions or live gigs?"
"It's all slow, Jack!" he said firmly. "Been slow for most of this year, but nothing like it is right now."
"What about that thing at the Bellagio?"
He screwed up his face in puzzlement and said, "What thing?"
"You know, that thing where you were going to do five nights a week with your quartet."
"Man," he said, waving his hand dismissively, "that was all a bunch of hot air. Dude never intended to follow through on that for one minute. Just blowing smoke is all."
I said, "As I recall, the music biz has more than its fair share of that."
"You sure got that right. The whole industry runs on--"
"The stuff that sticks to your boots when you walk through a cattle yard?" I said.
"Exactly!"
Three teenaged girls entered the patio from the sidewalk still dressed in their beach attire--which wasn't much--walking in a tight cluster and all talking excitedly and simultaneously about a boy they had just seen surfing.
Once the twittering trio had made their way inside Eddie said, "That thing about getting a real job. I've actually been thinking lately about just getting out of the music business altogether."
"Because..."
"Well, because it's hard. I mean, you know that."
Immediately a line from "A League Of Their Own" sprang to mind in which Tom Hanks' character says to Gina Davis' character, "If it wasn't hard it wouldn't be baseball."
But since I valued our friendship, I let it go.
"I understand what you're saying," and I truly did, "but it'd be a shame." After a pause of a few seconds I said, "What does Sylvie think?"
He laughed humorlessly and said, "She said she just wants to see me smile again."
"And it's such a nice smile. At least I remember it being so, although it has been a while," I said and took a sip of my iced tea-lemonade. "Any idea what you'd do to replace the income?"
"Income?" he said mockingly. "What's that!"
"You must have thought of something."
He was slow in answering, and when he finally spoke his voice was coated in sorrow.
"That's just the thing, RG...apart from music, I basically have no skills. At least none that are marketable."
We sat there for a few minutes in morose silence.
Then out of the corner of my eye I spotted a guy walking purposefully toward our table.
Ignoring me completely he walked right up to Eddie and said, "You're Eddie Washington, aren't you?"
"Guilty as charged," Eddie said, making a brave attempt at humor.
"I knew it! I told my wife--that's her over there--that it was you."
The guy introduced himself and motioned for his wife to come over, a cute thirty-something blonde woman with a smile that could light up a room.
He said, "We saw you and your quartet last September at that jazz festival down at the beach."
"Really," Eddie said. "Were we any good?"
The guy's wife said excitedly, "Are you kidding? You guys stole the show."
"And the way you play drums," her husband added quickly with a sense of wonder in his voice. "I've never heard anyone do what you do. It actually made me feel things I've never felt before when I was listening to music. Anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt your conversation, but I just had to come over and say thank-you." They started to walk away but the man turned back and said, "And don't ever stop. We need you."
With that the two went back to their table leaving Eddie staring after them with a look of, well, I'm not sure what it was. Perhaps the best way to describe it would be to compare it to the expression on the face of a man dying of thirst who has just had a taste of cool water.
"So," I said, drawing the vowel out longer than necessary. "You got a date in mind when you're going to hang up the ol drumsticks?"
Eddie's gaze snapped back to me and he said, "Not quittin'! Not now...not ever."
And with that, the subject was closed.
I chuckled softly prompting Eddie to ask, "What's so funny?"
I said, "Oh, nothing. I just had a mental picture of you greeting people at Walmart is all."
He threw his napkin at me.
RG...out!
