Condolezza Schwartz' act had started about forty-five minutes behind schedule what with one thing and another. We could hear her back-yard-in-Yonkers-cowgirl tones throbbinbg lamely through the evening air, and the dull sliding-steel-and-chalkboard rasp of her Country Band In a Box back up group whining piteously while it tried to catch up. They were doing the support vocals and I could even make out the moo--moomoo --mamoo moo incantation, and I was glad we weren't any closer.

The dull roar of the hawkers and festival goers was punctuated by the occasional punch-through of little clumps of selected important phonemes from the band.

"...lunches.....da dee da dee da..bunches.....mufl wuffl wah wah..."

I was wondering if the scorched blister dawg was maybe reorganizing itself in my lower intenstine, when I felt Lucky grab my arm. Two women had walked up to the leather-jacketed punk and his Rottweiler buddies and started talking to the one with the Cosmo logo on his back. One of them was a short preoccupied woman with dark hair.

As the closing bars of the Farm Person love song faded behind the buzz of the midway, I stared hard at what I thought I was seeing. I shook my head hard. Nothing changed.

The other woman in the conversation was Condolezza Schwartz.