MtH #18 Tuna Piano Conclusion

Continued from MtH #17

So the story continues. While at the doctor’s office the phone rings. Jennifer answers it.
“It’s for you.”
“Nobody knows I’m here.”
“‘Nobody’ wants to talk to you” she replies with a tinge of friendly sarcasm.
“Then why should I answer it?” I say, playing the game.
“Who’s on first?” we both say in unison.
I’m not sure insipidity is an actual word, but I need a noun to describe really lame small talk at which I’m an expert.
I pick up the phone.
“I know who you are, I saw what you did’….. Aha! Another expert. It’s Warren.
“We got the drugs. You left your bag on the floor beside the keyboards last night in Nashville. Chuck put it away. And just so you don’t think we followed you, we hacked into your computer and found your message to the Quickie Clinic. By the way, what’s this “Escorts USA.com” all about?”
“Geeze. it’s a relief you didn’t invade my privacy by stalking me.”
I arrived at the 4 o’clock sound check at 4:45. I’ve definitely used up my “sign your late-slip” quota. In fact, I won’t be even until 2019. 
As is usual these days, the show went very well, and we headed back to the hotel with a lobby call of 11 am to travel on to Charleston. That should have been enough time for a good rest but my sleep was troubled. Not because of the RLS. A combination of two Mirapex and a chapter or two about antebellum America is enough to knock out the meth lady, but I tossed and turned anyway. Gord was cutting me some slack, but for how long? I was flirting with Tardy, and I saw no future in that relationship.
It’s difficult to get any exercise while on tour. When our trips tended to be shorter I could pack some running shoes and get a half decent run in every two days or so. Doing so now would use up valuable suitcase real estate usually reserved for socks and underwear, a situation highly unrecommended. 
To make up for it, I walk to the venue if it’s less than a kilometer and a half from the hotel. I use my cell as my GPS and either it was wrong or I’m just a dolt (stop it….too easy). Whatever, I start walking in the wrong direction. By the time I realize the mistake and backtrack, you guessed it, I’m late for sound check. Warren issues me with my walking papers. Two weeks and I am out. 
I was ashamed and depressed. It was 11:41 pm Tuesday.  I’d just finished cracking most of a quarter kilogram package of pistachios purchased  impulsively from the George Street CVS  on an angry Witch of November (March, actually) evening. A battle raged between my conscience and the gun in my front pocket that was happy to see no one. 
The problem was the storm. The perfect storm bereft of the complaints of thunder or the conceit of rain. A storm of values played out against the lies of gale force equivocation. As a coda, the Gat did eventually swim in the petulant swirling waters leading to the harbour, tossed defiantly from the upper structure of the Arthur Ravenel bridge…….but I get way ahead of myself. 
The alabaster city gleamed undimmed by human tears, crashing down upon the walks of man, entry barred by fears and flying shards of atonement, the contrition palpable. The tentative step over the yellow tape could be justified considering this. The four bullets? Perhaps……but the universe only returned to any kind of benevolence with the long arc. A trajectory, god-like in the poetry of movement that was my revolver and cell phone spinning into the eddies of the Cooper. My blessings outweighed my regrets. Really? Really. Then I woke up.

There actually is a Jennifer. She isn’t a doctor. She’s a Physician’s Assistant. She’s probably in her twenties, not thirties. There is no such thing as a Quickie Walk-In Clinic. I didn’t get fired.                           Mike H