So I have my three dollar beer and I'm reading at the bar when a pretty redhead comes in - pretty eyes, green dress, nice boots. She sits beside me; I'm reading. She orders a vodka tonic and peripharally(sp?) I can tell that she's fidgeting like she isn't used to sitting alone. We make eye contact and smile, but I'm reading. This is the best thing to do.
"What are you reading?" she says and I saw that coming a mile away, but I tell her and I am reading again, but I know it won't work and pretty soon she's asking if it's a good book and what is it about? "It's about farmers in Indiana, just after the war, World War I that is, and there's a homeless woman who just appears, real mysterious, and a family takes her in and she helps to straighten their lives out. Very interesting," I say, "if you like that sort of thing."
"Sounds great," she says, and now we're talking and she asks for a cigarette though she shouldn't smoke, she's a singer, and I shrug and we're drinking faster now - I suppose we're both a little nervous.
A loud Yo La Tengo instrumental jam is playing so she's leaning closer to talk and finally she asks do I know who she is? Feigning horror, I shoot back, "Oh my God! You're not my sister are you?" She laughs at this.
She's Jenny Lewis of course. I knew that when she walked in. "I have one of your records," I say, "the last Rilo Kiley. It's very good"
Aside: "I also have about two dozen photos clipped from magazines and pinned to a bulletin board pushed under my bed."
"Do you know who I am?" I ask. "Should I?" she's laughing. "I write Nutshell Kingdom, on the web. It's sort of a creative writing/fantasy/nature writing/bloggy type thing. Very well known with the cool kids." "Oh," she says, still laughing, and this conversation is going very well indeed.
That is until she says that she wants to go dancing and is there anyplace around that's good for that sort of thing? I direct her two doors down to the Clarendon Ballroom, careful to warn her how much of a meat market it is, though in fact I have never been there. It certainly looks like a meat market from the outside and many friends have told me as much. "I suppose I'd be ok," she says, "if you went with me?"
