Read Online Playing Without the Ball by Rich Wallace - Free Book Online Page A

She looks at me, then at Julie, then back at me. She shakes her head. “You coming out?” she says to Julie.
    Julie nods. “In a minute.”
    “Those guys followed us here.”
    “I figured they would.”
    Suddenly I feel cut off from the conversation. “What guys?” I ask.
    “Some guys we were dancing with at the other bar,” Julie says. “Cowboy wannabees.”
    The other girl tugs Julie’s arm. “You coming?”
    “Yeah. But I get the guy in the black hat this time.”
    “You can have him.”
    Julie gives me a point, with one finger out and the thumb up, like a pistol aimed at my heart. “So long, Jay,” she says.
    “Bye, Julie. Come see me again.”
    She turns and goes. There’s a frayed horizontal rip in her jeans, maybe three inches long, just below her right cheek. I stare at that spot in the air until long after she’s gone.
    I’m still staring when her friend reappears in the doorway.
    “Yeah?” I say.
    “Just looking,” she says.
    “At what?”
    “Nothing much.”
    “Thanks,” I say.
    “Just busting you,” she says. Then she’s gone, too.
    So there’s a guy in a black hat out there who got shot down at one place, followed his prey to Shorty’s, and is dancing with Julie just because he doesn’t know how to give up. Maybe I could learn something from that.
    Maybe not.

“L.A. Woman”
    S aturday. Spit’s in the kitchen telling me about last night’s performance at Ground Zero. She says they want her back real soon. She’s drinking ginger ale.
    Bobbi comes in to empty the bucket they dump the ashtrays into. She pours it into the trash and a puff of ashes comes up. She smiles at Spit and says, “We could use you guys tonight.”
    “Oh, I think they’re good,” Spit says, referring to the band.
    “They’re all right. But the crowd is down.”
    The band
is
pretty good, even though they’re just covering popular stuff. To my ear they’re as good as most bands, even some that make it. I don’t know where you draw the line for success. I guess it’s like basketball: the difference is that little spark of creativity, that inch more of talent. You can work incredibly hard and you’ll probably get good, but then there’s the extra dose of genius that separates the truly great ones from the rest of us.
    “Take a break?” Spit asks.
    “Sure.” We sit at a table in the corner to watch the band. It’s not as if the kitchen’s busy. There’s about nineteen people in the bar, and twelve of them would be here no matter what. So the group is performing for maybe half a dozen people.
    There are four guys in the band. They’re older, probably near forty, so they tend toward classic rock and some country. Two girls are dancing, and the bass player comes out onto the floor with his guitar and jives with them. He’s a barrel-chested guy with a beard, wearing a black suit jacket over a red tank top, and he’s got frizzy hair that’s balding.
    Spit leans over to me. “Check out the buttons,” she says.
    The guy has three shiny pins on his lapel: a guitar, a saxophone, and a treble clef.
    “Merit badges,” I say. “Bass, sax, and … general musicianship.”
    Spit giggles. The song ends and the bass player goes back up to the stage, which is really just a low wooden platform in the corner. He starts talking into the microphone about their Web site. Then they go into “L.A. Woman,” which is a pretty good Doors tune.
    Spit grabs my hand. “Let’s dance.”
    I frown and push my chin out toward the bar.
    “He won’t mind,” she says. “It’s good for business.”
    I roll my eyes and shake my head.
    “People will leave if nobody’s dancing,” she says.
    I point to the two women on the floor.
    “Come on,” she says.
    I get up and we start to dance. Spit is hard to keep up with, but I try to mirror her movements. Her hair whips around. She’s skinny and quick.
    She may be right about one thing, because another couple starts dancing, too. So there’s six of us out there. I