ambiance but large cheap drinks, the regular customers may never have noticed any change at all.
Those customers were not the sort to leave a long black limousine parked outside with its driver patiently leaning against the hood reading a magazine while they took advantage of the two-for-one Happy Hour at the bar, so when I saw such a car waiting there, I stopped to look at it. Then I went to the bar door. Standing in the doorway, even before my eyes had time to adjust to the shadowy light, I recognized the woman. It wasnât just the sound of her voice, although it was a memorable voice, singing a cappella the old country-western ballad âI Canât Stop Loving Youâ in a strong, clean soprano that came soaring out from the little black-carpeted band platform across the empty tables toward me. It was the shock of her beauty.
There were only a few other patrons in the place (the Tucson catered largely to a late-night just-lost-my-job and looking-for-love crowd), and they stood off to the side with the waitresses and the kitchen staff, all of them bunched together like a chorus listening to the woman as intently as if they waited on their cue to join in.
There was no mistaking the slender singer with the tangled mass of lion-colored hair. She was the woman Iâd seen from a distance this morning standing on the dock at Pine Hills Lake. She was the woman whoâd suddenly thrown off her red silk robe and dived, a shimmer of perfect flesh, into the misty lake water. And Cuddyâs magazine covers had looked familiar because, as I now realized, the woman Iâd seen at the lake, her hair now a tawny swirl of color much longer than the buzz cut sheâd worn in those photographs, was the Irish rock star Mavis Mahar.
Chapter 2
Mavis
Watching the singer as she stood alone on the black platform in a tight black top and black jeans, a bottle of Guinness in one hand, half a dozen blood-red tulips in the other, I thought again that she was the loveliest woman Iâd ever seen. Photographs just flattened and dulled her. She was resplendent.
She was drunk too, and the famous Celtic lilt was slurred when she called over to me, âHey you, boyo there in the door! Hello again. Is your big black horse tied up outside?â
I raised a hand, saluted her, shook my head.
She gestured me to her with the beer bottle. âCome in now, wonât you, and have a pint with Mavis and her mates? Iâm here at the pub having a bit of the past back. Iâm remâ¦inâ¦isâ¦ciâ¦.â She had trouble with the word, gave it up, and turned to her small knot of awestruck fans with her arms outstretched. âIsnât it a sad thing?â she asked them, and they all nodded that it was. âI was a wild gaarl, a gaarl from the west country, singing out my heart every blessed night in Dublin pubs the sorry like of this pub here, and I met a man, you know, a man that had that sort of a look to himââ She pointed the Guinness bottle at me accusatively and the crowd turned with a hostile glare in my direction. âThat man kept sad Mavis locked away like a song bird in a cage of goldâ¦.â And without a pause her voice lifted into the opening line of âPleeease release me/ Let me goâ¦.â
Iâd read in the effusive magazine Iâd taken from Cuddyâs office that Mavis Mahar had close to a four-octave range and that the musical world considered her âone of the phenomenal talents of her time.â Her time was undoubtedly now, for according to this article she had âbroad crossover appeal, drawing fans from teens, Gen-Xers, boomers, and even Ike-ersâ (that ancient crew whoâd reached their adolescence in the Eisenhower fifties). The article said she could play three or four instruments and that she loved singing all types of songsârock, blues, pop, and folk. Listening to her version of this old country tune now, I heard what the critics were