... at the far end of the Paradox there was a stage set up with a cover band playing. Front man, drums, electronics, hawaiian shirts, jeans, beaded necklaces. The front man looked to her to be one who would always be refilling his gin glass and never really focusing on thoughts outside of his own grey boufont. The stage was an indoor outdoor concept covered in potted plants with bright lights set everywhere and barstools at it's base on the outdoor part. Even though this city is two hundred miles from the nearest coast line men and women sat sipping bright purple drinks wearing swimwear. The band, called Prom Dress she noticed from the banner tacked up behind the drummer, was playing Jimi Hendrix. "A Vietnam vet," she thought as she looked around the already crowded bar/lounge full of happy hour's finest. People who live a few floors above these places, a few blocks this way, in stacks and towers who are mostly the same age. "A Vietnam vet," she repeated in her head, feeling obviously out of place with her sweat stained t-shirt and dusty, unwashed hair. She wasn't going to go any further, was ready to bail on the whole napkin chasing fantasy. "Shit," she thought, "this is dumb. I could be walking into a trap." The napkin had blown into her lap earlier that morning and it had scribbled on it directions to this place, a child-like line drawing of a man wearing a beret and striped shirt swinging a golf club, and her name. Not the name she was known by but her real name, a name she was pretty sure only one other person knew, and that person was very, very far from this financial mecca.
Just as she turned to leave a familiar sound caught her ear. When she spun back around she saw a dark-skinned man with one or two pearly round teeth hanging into his open smile from gums the shade of a sharks liver looking directly into her eyes as he pressed the keys and pumped the lung of a harmonium. The front man of the band was sipping Gin out of a plastic cup and smiling at some older women in the front row. As the girl leaned over the bar to hear what the Indian man with the pretty tooth was saying the band started up again, an Allman Bro's tune. She leanded closer and smelled the mans breath, like that of clorophyl and roots. He pushed half a coconut to her full of a powdery green liquid. He shot one back himself, he had been saying something to her. She leaned in closer saying, "I can't hear you." "It is not goo-od at all if your mother and father are crying..." he said, and looked down at the juice. She picked it up and took it down in one swallow. He laughed and began to pump the harmonium louder, drowing out the southern rock top 30 in the background....
