Passin' through on my cool-off walk, I stumble upon some kind of concert. Kids out of tune, mostly. But it's my friend's terrace and she's about to close shop. So the promise of a cold one makes me veer in. Then the kids change from atrocious wannabe english to pretty darn good french rock. Funny how they play their instruments better when the lyrics are familiar. What an amazing race the Gardois are.
I listen with both ears, but my hands, heart and dick are all cellphone, cause my baby is home fondling her prototype charade godlike fuselage and telling me all about it. I encourage her on. Tzingling. Oooh. Picture. Oooh.
Suddenly, I feel all eyes are on me. The kids have seen me play somewhere, as it were, and are asking me to come and jam. Hell. Before I can think my legs are on stage. Hate myself sometimes. I stash my dripping burning girl into my pocket and take the guitar I'm being handed. I'm adjusting the strap when they hit the first chords. Turns out my B and low E's are quite off. Oops. No tuner in sight.
I manage. Three tunes, then I'm off. But hey, it would seem the crowd is now in a frenzy, clapping, dancing, undressing?… They won't let me sit back down. Hell, I hop back on, all fingers sticky from the sweat and the goo I picked up on these 2 year old strings. I'm still thinking of my fiancee, lying on her parisian bed, waiting for me to comment on her last picture. Fed up with that atrocious guitar I grab the unused bass leaning against the stone wall. The kids in the band are drunk past recognition by now. They jump into a mock tibetan meditation chant. Hey. It's in C. So make it funky, I always tell myself. My lama is JB. And we take it from a two note sparse groove to a full blown sex machine. The kids have no idea what this song is and think we just invented the butter knife. They sing "show me the way to the Jet 27". It's kinda fun. It lasts 30 minutes. The terrace is full, by now. My waitress friends are running to and fro with orders. Pitchers are sweating moonlight. Glasses are clinking. People hug, dance in the gravel, dogs run amok under the stars. We've managed to turn this into another Sauvan miracle.
I sit finally and my girl is fast asleep. I'm asked if I want a drink. I'm asked to massage some (durn perdy) feet. I'm offered food. It's 1 am. Sure. Food. I'm offered another drink. I stumble to my sandals around 2. Gotta work at 6. The heat. The deadlines. I just walk inside to kiss my friend good night.
— Hold on, she says. And she turns around.
For a terrible second I think she'll spread the cards out for me, force me to poison the planet with one of those sadistic cliché lines. But no. Eternal pretentious that I am. It's not that she wants me to carry her up the village. It's something completely different.
— Here you go, she smirks. 15 € and 20 centimes.
I can feel the weight of my old skin dropping heavy on my skull. Can't pick it up. It just hangs low. My smile must be flapping about my shoulders by now. 15 €. That's not remotely possible, even if you erase six thousand years of bar owner pays the entertainer's drinks.
She notices I'm reacting in a sub festive mood.
— Oh, your friend, you know, the violin player? She left without paying.
— My… friend?
— Well she sat with you… at the beginning.
— Oh.
— And your two drinks.
By this point I want to pay real bad. Every cent. And be out on the bridge, breeze on my legs and arms. Away from people. All of them. Semi-tuned kids with built up torsos, half naked miniskirt teenagers hoping for their first orgasm, drunken violinists, sexy waitresses nonplussed about their bankruptcy, old ladies sleeping in their drool, odd weirdos parking their trucks in the middle of the night, ex-girlfriends barely able to walk, driving off to Anduze… All of it… I need air. Air and silence.
I reach the other side of the river. Tzingling. Oooh. My girlfriend's taken another pic. The moon is huge as it swims about on the Vidourle's thin black current.
Where did that happy whistling come from? My entrails?
