Just as she leaned across the bar again, giving me a spectacular view of the 'Billy's' on her t-shirt, when the swinging doors to the kitchen parted and Tracy came into view. Twin slices of cheescake on the piecart of life. It's a wonder anyone ever left this place.
"Freedom girl, the shift is up, you better run while you still can.." Tracy called to Lucky, and then caught the apron that Lucky tossed to her.
"'Nuff said," Lucky called back, she came out from behind the bar and looked at me. "You still wanna hear about those guys, Madison?" I nodded "Grab a table and give me a few minutes, okay?"

I sat down at a corner booth, facing the door, and waited for Lucky. She came out in a clean shirt that was nary a thread larger than the one she'd had on earlier, but who was I to complain? Just enjoy the view.
She fixed herself a cherry coke and came to the table, "Your drink okay? Need a refill?" she asked, but I waved the suggestion off. She sat down and told me the story of the previous evening.
"Okay, you know that Chaz Chesterton guy that Billy has in on Tuesdays now? He was wailing away, as usual. Gawd, that guy can murder a song...sorry.." she looked at me apologetically then continued. "Anyway, he was just about done for the night, you know the spot where he always sings 'Love Potion #9' as a pre-encore, but then leaves out all the words in his vain attempt to be cute?"
I smiled and nodded, I'd seen the joker before and he was the reason I didn't come here on Tuesdays. There isn't enough alcohol in the world to combat Chaz Chesterton. Lucky must have seen that look on my face, because she smiled and did the waitresses patented Chaz impersonation dance that included a 'swim' that could give a guy a coronary, and the pouted lyrics "She bent down and turned around and gave me a _____".

"Enough, I get the idea." I grimaced. "What next?"
Lucky smiled her smile, and continued. "Well, I was trying not to vomit, as is usual on Tuesday nights, when I got this table of new guys in. Never been in here before, of that I am sure. We don't get many of the refugees from PearlJam summercamp in here. They all had crummy LedZeppelin shirts on, and were complaining about having to be roadies for a 'freakin' folkie gig, man'. And of course, all they are drinking is lite beer, there is NO tip coming from that table, but something struck me as funny, so I hung around a bit."

"What was so funny?" I asked, what I thought was innocently enough..
"You are so cute when you act ignorant Blakey-boy. You know exactly what. A group like that, in here, and talking about an attempt on the life of Condolezza Schwartz, that's what. Now if you want to play games, I can go home right now. My feet are killing me and I'm not up for your theatrics."
I reached down and pulled her feet into my lap, apologizing a bit too profusely, but she continued anyway.

"They said they had seen the little knife throwing gag at her gig that night. No one had seen where it came from, but no one was suprised either. That was a bit odd. There was one guy, quite a bit older than the others, that seemed to be this kind of roadie guru, kind of leading the inquisition. And with that brain-trust at the table, well, you know it took long enough to get around to what they thought had happened.....Damn, Madison, easy on the arches....anyway, the general consensus was that they could pretty much reject the idea of the jilted/jealous lover. Condolezza has the rep. The only thing they could come up with is that she was getting her just deserts for stealing all of those songs."

I stopped abruptly somewhere inbetween the piggie with roast beef and the piggie with none and stared at Lucky. "Stolen songs?"
"Yeah, I heard the cds too, and I still can't believe it. But the story they had...lemme see if I can do this right," she sat up and adopted the vacuous gaze of the roadie before continuing "You see, man, it was like, you know, just like when Robert Plant was accused of stealing songs from Robert Johnson, man..." They think she was being threatened out of retribution...but after hearing that stuff, I have a tough time thinking that there was anyone out there willing to claim authorship."

I gently set her feet to the floor, looked into her baby-blues, and asked her, "What are you doing on Saturday?"