Mermaid Beach by Sheila Roberts

Author:Sheila Roberts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MIRA Books
Published: 2023-02-13T22:15:41+00:00

* * *

It wasn’t a good night over at The Drunken Sailor. The restaurant did okay from about five to seven but then the place turned into the restaurant version of a ghost ship. Alcohol sales would be through the basement.

Tony and his crew arrived and set up and the sight of them didn’t do J.J. any good. “Give me a Jack on the rocks,” he said to his bartender Madison.

She did and leaned her elbows on the bar and regarded him. “You know why nobody’s here, right?”

He nodded, took a sip.

“Everyone’s loyal to The Mermaids. We stick together.”

Small town–itis. Except it was more than that and he knew it. Why hang out to hear an inferior band when the best band in town was playing somewhere else? He frowned and downed the rest of his drink.

Tony joined him at the bar. “Hey, where is everybody?”

“At Sandy’s,” said Madison. “They went to hear The Mermaids.”

“The Mermaids?”

“They were the house band before I bought this place,” J.J. explained.

Before seeing The Mermaids in action he’d thought of local lounge bands as musical wallpaper—background for the drinkers and a beat for the dancers. Bonnie Brinks and her crew had showed him how wrong he’d been. They provided a party atmosphere and were almost like celebrities with their good looks and casually flashy outfits. They had a following and now that following had moved away, leaving the pub feeling hollow. J.J. was feeling pretty hollow, himself.

Tony leaned back against the bar and scanned the non-crowd. “Don’t worry, dude. Once word gets out that Tony and the Tones are here we’ll pack ’em in.”

“More like unpack ’em,” Madison said as Tony sauntered off to the bandstand. “Hashtag: clueless.”

Just what J.J. had been. He was going to have to do something fast if he wanted to keep his place a popular watering hole.

The band started playing again. It was an old song by the Beatles that his parents had played when they were young. “Nowhere Man.”

Another couple paid their tab and left, leaving behind a total of three women in the lounge, and one of them was reaching for her coat. Meanwhile, there stood Tony and the Tones, living out the lyrics, playing their songs for nobody.

J.J. tossed back the last of his second drink. It didn’t help him feel any better.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.