Diary Of A Blues Goddess. Erica Orloff

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СКАЧАТЬ fame and fortune in Vegas—or at least a gig singing “Love Me Tender” at this little wedding chapel. But Jack fell into a groove with us, as if he’d always been part of our group.

      I flopped back on the bed. “I am sorry about Sara. I never liked her, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy that you caught the little bitch with someone else.”

      He fell back next to me. “You’re practically oozing with sentimentality, Georgia.”

      “Yeah. I know. It’s one of my many shortcomings.”

      “I don’t know that you have as many as you think. Anyway, I figure a night blinded by tequila, a few clubs, some R and R at the Heartbreak Hotel, and I’ll be over her in no time.”

      I rolled over and kissed his decidedly stubbly cheek. “That’s the spirit…. You’re face is all scratchy. You need a shower and a shave. I’m going to go take a nap before the wedding tonight.”

      “Didn’t you just get up?”

      “Yeah. But that means nothing to us creatures of the night.” I feigned a Transylvanian accent.

      He stretched. “Sara and I fought all night long. A little shut-eye sounds good to me, too.”

      I got up and walked to the door. “Sleep tight. Watch out for Sadie.”

      “I’m more afraid of the wandering drag queen and her mud masks.”

      Hours later, Jack frantically knocked on my door. “You ready to go?”

      “Of course not.”

      He opened my door, handsome in his black tux. “Jesus Christ, you’re not even dressed?”

      “You know I am genetically incapable of being on time.”

      That is my stock answer. I also blame it on pantyhose. And sequins. They’re a deadly combination.

      Sequins are unforgiving. If you want to wear something that screams out that you’ve indulged in a chocolate binge of epic proportions, including Junior Mints, followed by a pint of Heavenly Hash ice cream, wear sequins. If you want to remind the world—no, flaunt to the world—that you use the treadmill in your bedroom as a coatrack, wear sequins. If you want proof that God in heaven, indeed, has a fucking sense of humor, then look in my closet. In the colossal cosmic joke that is my life, I wear sequins every weekend. I live in sequins.

      And so there I was, in my best bra—which simply means my two cats haven’t chewed it—and a body shaper, staring at six sequined dresses like a sparkling, spangled rainbow, and dreading putting any of them on.

      “Gary’s going to kill us,” Jack said, his hair still wet from the shower.

      “You shaved. Very baby-faced now. Cute.”

      “Sara liked that whole slightly edgy musician look, complete with perpetual five o’clock shadow, so it’s outta here. She also hated the earring—” he pointed to the small diamond stud in his left ear “—so it’s back. Now stop talking, Georgie, and start dressing.”

      “I hate these dresses. Every damn one of them,” I moaned. “Sure, you all get to wear classy black tuxedos, but I have to look like a refugee from the 1970s.”

      “And you would rather wear…what? Your bra onstage?”

      “No. But not this.” I held up a silver-sequined gown. Being in a wedding band is like being stuck in the disco era. Think of every song you’ve ever heard by ABBA, and imagine singing them each and every weekend while grandmas and aunties, often in sequins themselves, take to the floor, usually dancing with prepubescent nephews and grandsons who roll their eyes and wish their private-junior-high hell would end. Playing conventions is worse. Imagine two thousand dentists converged on one dance floor in the grand ballroom doing the ’gator. That’s a lot of bicuspids you’re looking at. Now picture that you have no time for a personal life because you’re singing for other people’s personal lives, and you get the idea.

      Georgia’s Saints is the most popular wedding band in New Orleans. We do a set of zydeco at conventions. However, most white men can’t dance, and they sure as hell can’t dance to zydeco, no matter how generic we play it, so truthfully, what we do is pretty basic, though the guys are excellent musicians and my voice can even make a ballroom full of funeral directors get up and dance. I’ve been friends with Gary, the keyboardist, since my freshman year of college, and we formed the band seven years ago while we were still in school—first for extra money, then, as we started getting booked even a year in advance, we devoted ourselves to it full-time. Gary is stuck in another dimension. He actually likes ABBA. He also likes leading the hokey-pokey, singing to grandmas in sequins and getting a room full of computer geeks from Silicon Valley to do the electric slide. He was positively giddy when the macarena craze began. Gary is balding, and probably all of five foot four, married now with three kids born in four years—like he doesn’t know what causes that?—always short on money so he accepts any job that comes our way. He’s also a great keyboardist and gifted arranger—even if what he arranges are KC and the Sunshine Band songs. I forgive him his eccentricities, like the fact that he refuses to believe disco is dead, and the hippest he gets is listening to vintage Madonna, and he forgives me mine.

      He accepts that I am always late, always have a run in my pantyhose, crave Junior Mints, often have chipped nail polish and, to cap it off, lipstick on my teeth, and that I always cry, no…sob…at weddings. Something comes over me, and so I keep a tissue tucked in my cleavage just in case. I also wear waterproof mascara. Dominique is wrong. First of all, she wears mascara that runs despite my arguments for waterproof. Second, though she accuses me otherwise, I also still believe in love. I don’t know whether I cry because I think the love between two people taking to the dance floor for the first time as husband and wife is so beautiful, or because I’m not sure I believe it ever really lasts. Or because some of the greatest guys in my life prefer wearing pantyhose and mascara, just like me, and want to borrow my clothes. Or because no one’s ever asked me to marry him.

      I want to get married someday. But after all I’ve seen as a wedding singer—grooms making out with maids of honor in upstairs hallways, the bride’s side ending up in a massive brawl with the groom’s side, and even a couple of no-show grooms on the big day—I picture, instead, me growing old like Nan. Still in this house surrounded by my friends and a few cats. I’ll be the Crazy Cat Woman of New Orleans. Though, with all the eccentric characters in this town, I’m sure that coveted title is already taken.

      “Georgie! Decide already!…Come on! What about the red sequins?” Jack pulled me back to the immediate crisis of what I was going to wear at the wedding we should have left for twenty minutes before. He grabbed the red dress on its hanger and thrust it toward me.

      “Convention-wear.” I hung it back up. “Stuffy parents of the bride do not want their wedding singer dressed in red. They prefer silver, pale blue…lavender, even.”

      “Then wear the silver. The silver is fine.”

      “Well, I have a slight problem with that.”

      “What?”

      “Guess?”

      “Your fucking pantyhose.”

      I nodded. “The silver’s got a thigh-high slit.” Pantyhose is the bane of my existence. They can put a man on the goddamn moon, land a probe on Mars, СКАЧАТЬ