I reluctantly turned to go back in.

“You’re the music tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“I wish I could have heard you…”

  “Well, why not, man?  I’m not goin’ anywhere…  I’ll probably be here as long as you are tonight.  Maybe afterwards I’ll play you a tune or somethin’.”

She smiled broadly, brightly.  Ah, I was sold.

“Please do,” I said, smiling.  “I’d really like that.”

My mind wasn’t on the dishes the rest of the night.  It was all I could do not to send the things back out dirty.  No, my mind was on that firm grip, the calluses, those marvelous large green eyes, and the ringlets in her wonderful coppery hair. 

In between barrages of silverware and plates and beer glasses, I could hear her, Eileen.  She played the guitar, both electric and acoustic in turn.  The house band backed her up as she ran through pieces that were strange and foreign to my ears – more exotic than strange, really.  Sometimes they were fast and rhythmic, complex and at other times they were very slow, soft and sad… but always beautiful, for her voice was clear and powerful, womanly, enchanting.  Her rolling Gaelic added to mysterious quality of some of the songs, their beauty and poetry.

The depths of this woman’s soul opened up to me in those songs in words I did not understand yet grasped and I realized at once that there was far more to her than a nice body and red hair and green eyes.  It was a sort of revelation a man has so infrequently in the presence of a stunning woman – it is difficult for a man to see beyond an attractive form into the fact of a woman’s personhood, her specialness, her real value and talents.

But there, at Sam’s restaurant, in between the clank and crash of the dishes and the hum of the crowd, and the bashing and cursing of the kitchen crew, I intuited something very clear and perfect about this woman, like a signal breaking through thick static and interference on the radio late at night on a long and lonely drive.