Lulu at the Blue Note

by Jonathan Wood

The same guy comes to see Lulu sing every night. She never looks at him. He never looks at anyone else.
She’s been singing here a month when I get stupid. She’d walked in one Wednesday, sung one song and been hired. I’d been playing horn twenty years and I’d never heard anyone sing like that before. Sang like she was scared to stop.
After a week, I asked her, “What are you doing here? I know I’ve missed my break, but you…?”
She didn’t speak. Never did. Only sang. But the next night she looked at me as she crooned, “Some dreams are nightmares, some dreams are for fools. We’re never careful what we wish for, and sometimes dreams come true.”
Never speaks a word to me, but I still I get stupid. Normally I only get stupid over blonds. But that voice and that guy. So I hire a PI and a month later I’ve got an envelope full of photos—Lulu at different bars. And every time the audience is in a photo, I see that guy.
Next night, I catch him at the back door and we go at it, shouting back and forth ’til Lulu appears.
“What’s he got you scared for?” I say. I’ve got my hand on the guy’s throat.
She looks at me, and then she starts singing, and it’s more beautiful that I’ve ever heard her sing before, and my heart breaks at the sound.
“Some dreams are nightmares, some dreams are for fools. We’re never careful what we wish for, and sometimes dreams come true.”
And suddenly, I don’t know why, but part of me gets scared. I’m scared I’ve got the devil himself by the neck, and I’m scared right down to my soul. The man stares at me, then at Lulu, and I’m trembling like a child.
Then she speaks to me for the first time. “No Steve-o, it’s not that,” she says “You got it backwards. All backwards. He’s keeping me…” she pauses, “away from temptation.”
The guy shakes me off, puts an arm around Lulu and they walk off. And for a moment, just an instant, I could swear he has wings.
Lulu doesn’t come back to the Blue Note after that. But I keep on playing, and my break keeps on not coming. And part of me is glad.