A hushed desperation filled the city as I walked into the jazz club for my duty at the door. It was early. The club was empty save for the tender and a mysterious woman sitting at the bar. The music was low and the candlelight added to the drama. I needed a rumpled trench coat, my fedora, and a twitch that only a shot of bourbon and a beautiful woman could calm. "See the fog pushed you into our two-bit jazz joint, pretty lady," is what I should have said, but settled for "Hard day at work," which I coolly delivered as a statement not a question. "You know it," she responded. Okay, I thought... the script for my pulp crime novel night was almost writing itself as I settled down on the stool next to the #1 perp in the crime I'm destined to solve. "Where you work," I asked--expecting to hear about a file-shuffling job in a local insurance company? I am, after all, a realist—where else could she work? She leaned toward me and cooed in a sub-text voice the monosyllabic name of a gentlemen's club--"ever been there," she asked? I should have said, "Never had a reason to visit.... 'till now." Instead, I derailed the perfect unfolding script, with my blush-faced "No!" Geeze, what a chump, am I, was what I thought, when I realized there's no rewind button in life. The conversation shifted to weather and the quartet playing tonight. I realized that with her vivacious allure she could make a cold front seem sexy. I recognized that I was outmatched by her and that her cool confidence has tefloned her from a lot of harm. The bartender handed me my starting wedge of small bills and I knew it was time for me to assume my post as The Doorman. Once the band kicked into Thelonious Monk’s In Walked Bud, I'd be in the role. I'd be back in control.
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