She was one of the most striking women
I’d ever seen. Undulating, ink-black hair trailing like dark rain over delicate
shoulders, eyes greener than a St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin, a shape that might have
prompted the Pope to look twice. Her voice was pure music, avian poetry, even
when competing with the noise of the crowded bar.
I wasn’t in love, but I figured I would
be within the next 20 minutes or so.
And here she was, sitting with some
girlfriends at the club in which my little bar band was working. Every guy in
the joint cast furtive glances her way – except for those who simply stared
openly: hungry wolves contemplating a wounded lamb.
To her credit, she seemed unaware (and
unimpressed) by the attention. My guess was she had grown used to it.
The band went on break and I said hi as
I walked past her table; too smooth and cool to actually be hitting on anyone, y’know,
just an employee of the bar being polite and all that. That’s the vibe I was
going for, at least.
Maybe I hit my mark, maybe not, but one
of the young ladies at the table stopped me and requested a song. It was her
sister Mary’s favorite, she said. Mary, as in the raven-haired beauty of my
dreams to whom I was currently not paying any special attention. There’s an art
to this sort of thing and though I was at the time a clumsy practitioner, I at
least knew which end of the brush to dip into the paint.
I turned to Mary, planning to say
something charming and witty, but my voice got all tangled up around my heart
somewhere. Seeing her up close made my knees go all funny. I struggled mightily
to hide this, and failed.
“Um, yeah, we can do that tune,” I said.
Everyone can do that tune. But nobody
wants to. Not even Van Morrison, who
wrote it and has probably made millions off the thing. It’s one of the most
hated – and most requested – songs in the bar band business. Not as hated as
“Freebird,” but real close. But for Mary, I’d have happily beat the tune out on
my skull with a rubber mallet.
“Oh, thank you so much,” Mary said, taking my hand in hers for the briefest of
moments.
What I wanted to say was, “It’s my pleasure! I love you. Will you marry
me?” What I actually said was, “No
problem.”
I made to stumble away to the bar, where
I hoped a small shot of whisky might serve to steady my knees. Mary had other
ideas.
“Would you like to join us?” she said.
I felt it took me waaaay too long to
process her words and respond, but it was probably only a few clumsy seconds.
“Uh, sure, thanks,” I stammered. I sent
up a quick prayer of thanks, grateful I had chosen music over plumbing as a
lifelong profession. Plumbers rarely get invited to join a table of beautiful
women, although they make considerably more money than do guitar players.
Mary and I spent the next 20 minutes
chatting, laughing. Her direct gaze was disconcerting, disorienting, but I soon
fell into the rhythm of our conversation and even managed to scare up a little
wit and charm after all.
I went so far as to break my
long-established rule and buy a round for the table. That left me broke, but Mary
was worth it. I even liked her friends, or family, as the case must have been.
Two of them, after all, repeatedly referred to her as “sister.”
And I suppose you can see where this is
going. Mary was a sister, all righty. A Catholic sister. A nun. I figured it
out just before going back onstage for second set.
My memories of nuns, accumulated while
attending St. Isadore school as a child, are not good ones. In my youth, nuns
were dark engines of rosary-fueled destruction; black-and-white bastions of
God’s wrath, ready to unleash torrents of righteous punishment on any wayward fourth
grader. I had been wayward a lot.
To my recollection, those nuns never dressed
in “civilian” clothes and none looked anything
like Mary. If they had, I’m sure my current math skills would be better than
they are.
This all happened nearly 30 years ago.
But I learned my lesson well: never buy drinks for married women, especially
those married to deities.
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