Chapter 30

Saturday morning; I’m up, not very early, but still before the others. Quick trip to the bathroom; damn, my running shorts are still outside; I hope they are dry. Okay, focus Carl; you can do this; no more beer for you. I was outside with a towel wrapped around my waist when Carol called out from the main house; “Do you guys want breakfast?” I gave her a quick, thumbs-up; “It will be ready in 15 minutes.” And we’re off.

I knocked on JB and Angie’s bedroom door and told them Carol was making breakfast, to get their asses in gear. I know I heard at least one groan, and not a sexy one either. Fortunately Karen was way ahead of me, at least to the point where she was already in the bathroom; I pulled on my mostly dry shorts and a t-shirt; Karen came out of the bathroom looking like a million bucks, how do they do that? She already had on her panties and bra; she gave me a brilliant smile and little shimmy, then pulled on a pair of shorts and one of my t-shirts; “I heard breakfast is almost ready; let’s go.” It figures, the one time I’m dragging, and she’s raring to go; at least right now she’s interested in breakfast. We joined JB and Angie on the way to the main house; it was a little awkward, but not bad; that was until we got to Carol in the kitchen.

“I saw your bathing suits drying on the chairs; did you go skinny dipping last night? It sure would have been a good night for it,” she said.

I think it was JB who laughed first, but the rest of us soon joined in; “Yep, we ended up skinny dipping,” he said, “it was a very nice evening.” More giggles from the girls, but that was all that was said; both of us guys got a kiss on the cheek from both ladies.

Breakfast was pretty good; we all had a side of aspirin to go with our juice; then lots more juice. Soon most of our brain cells are awake and functioning, and we are ready to take on the day. Bob joined us eventually; we decided we didn’t need to practice for the abbreviated show tonight, we’d just wing it and go with whatever came up. It’s forecast to rain late tonight, hopefully it will cool off a little; we decided just to hang out around the house for the day, maybe hit the pool again that afternoon. That got the girls smiling; the four of us went back to our respective rooms in the pool house; and spent the rest of the morning in bed with our girl, very enjoyably.

A little after noon I got up, Karen was peacefully sleeping so I just covered her up; when I dressed and made it into the living room, Angie was sitting there in a robe; she seemed to have her bathing suit on already.

“How are you doing?” I asked her as I sat on the couch.

“Pretty good,” she said with a faint smile; “I’m still a little confused about how far we went last night.”

“Don’t worry about it; we all had a little too much alcohol to drink, and not enough to eat,” I smiled at her. “We experimented a little bit with people we trust and care about; doesn’t mean we have to go any further. You’re JB’s girl; I’d never try to get between the two of you; as long as you got some pleasure out of it; we’re good.”

“Some pleasure?” she softly exclaimed; “I thought I was going to explode; I know I stopped thinking about anything except what I was feeling right then.”

“So it was good; there’s nothing to worry about. I will let JB know some of the other things my girls have liked; don’t be surprised if he tries a couple on you,” I told her with a grin.

“You are a damn devil,” she replied.

We talked for another hour or so; mostly about how she and JB ended up together. Her family had owned a farm up the road a couple miles from JB’s; and had also sold off most of the land when the area began to be developed. She had gone to school with JB from the very first, she remembered being in the same elementary school classroom with him; they’d been together ever since. Angie’s folks had sold most of the farm off and just kept the family home until she had graduated from high school; then they sold it off and headed for Florida. They had bought a nice fishing boat and her dad was now chartering it out for fishing trips; her mom spent most of her days playing cards with the other ladies in their community; and they had taken up golf. They seemed to be doing quite well, Angie told me; so far, they hadn’t come back to Nashville very often.

The big decision for her now was what to do this fall; should she keep her apartment, or maybe move in with the Brooks for her last couple years in college. They had offered and it made sense; her folks could save the money they spent on her rent, and put it toward their wedding when she graduated. She liked having her own apartment; but she really liked being with the Brooks, especially when JB and I showed up. Now that JB was probably going to be able to visit for a long weekend every other month; she was thinking about taking them up on the offer. I told her I thought it was a good idea, especially since she got along so well with Bob and Carol; I asked if she would simply take over the pool house, she said she would just move into JB’s room. When JB and I were here visiting, they would continue to stay in the extra pool house bedroom; Angie was afraid her reunions with JB would get a little too noisy for the Brooks, she told me with an embarrassed smile. “Especially if you keep teaching him new tricks,” was the end of that discussion.

Finally Karen and JB appeared, we went into the main house and I fixed lunch for everyone. When we mentioned what Angie and I had been talking about, Bob and Carol repeated their offer, saying how nice it would be to have Angie living there; after a while it was agreed, Angie would move in before college started up again. We also talked about JB and I heading back; we decided we really needed to leave by noon on Monday, so we’d be fully rested when we went back to work Tuesday morning. That seemed to trigger a suggestion for a party; maybe we could do another outdoor BBQ on Sunday, invite all their friends. The list of people to invite quickly got pretty big; Karen was going to invite a couple of her friends and her parents, Angie wanted to invite Becky and a couple of her friends; if that was okay with Karen and me. We said yes; JB had a couple high school buddies he wanted to invite so we could play some basketball; Bob and Carol had a few people they wanted to invite also, seemed like if we could keep it under a hundred people...

We decided to keep it simple, just burgers and hotdogs that JB and I could do on the grill. We’d have a bunch of finger foods and snacks; chips and dips, cheese and crackers, and cold cuts; with maybe some cut-up fruit, and veggies to dip also. We’d have everyone bring whatever they wanted to drink; that would make it easy on us, and let everyone bring something. The girls quickly got on the phone inviting everyone on Sunday; and passing the word that Bob, JB, and I would be performing at the club tonight from 8 pm until midnight. JB and I went out and cleaned up the pool area, making sure it was pretty much ready to go; Bob was the only smart one, he decided to go take a nap. Carol, Angie, and Karen went to the grocery store in the big Buick; the huge trunk was full when they got back with a few bags in the back seat; we weren’t going to be short of food.

Once we had everything put away, we had a couple hours before we needed to eat something light and get ready to go; a nap sounded good to everyone else too. I don’t know about the others; but Karen and I really just napped; helped by the fact that we stayed dressed. I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer...

Up at 6 or so, we managed to shower and get ready with only a little fooling around; then we all sat down to Carol’s light supper. The conversation was pretty light too; I brought up a couple things I thought we should try tonight, since we’d be missing Tom; Bob had arranged a couple singers to attend and help out if things didn’t go well. They would approach the stage only if Bob signaled them; otherwise, we’d try to get the audience more involved. At 7 we headed to the club; the ladies got set up at the side table, and we got our equipment ready to go; including a stool and mic for the missing Tom. The club was almost full; I was a little surprised when Becky and some friends showed up and sat with Carol and the others. At 8 the three of us were sitting on stage, ready to go; the manager shut down the jukebox, turned on the stage lights, and we were on.

It was quiet for a couple seconds; then I turned to the empty stool and said into my mic; “Well, shit; I guess we need to go to plan ‘B’.” That got a couple laughs; I turned to Bob, “Do we have a plan ‘B’?”

“Just sing something,” he smiled; “we’ve got some fans here, they’ll help us out.” A couple chords from JB; and I started singing;

”What would you do if I sang out of tune,
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song,

I will try not to sing out of key.”

Just about everyone came in with the chorus;

“Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends;
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends;
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends.”

we’re off and running. We did one more Beatles song, ‘All You Need Is Love’; then I explained that Tom was only temporarily missing in action, but we were opening up the empty mic to anyone that had a favorite song they wanted to sing. We were going to do requests during the second set; hopefully someone would like to sing along with us, but that wasn’t a requirement. We had a pad of paper to sign up on at the edge of the stage; just come up and put down the song you wanted to hear, and your name if you wanted to come up on stage with us.

“I see a few “no-name band” t-shirts out there,” I told the crowd; “so some of you know the songs we do; come on up and give us a hand. We’re all in this together; and I can harmonize with just about anyone, not just JB and Bob.” We did a couple more pop and rock-and-roll songs, then a few country classics, then a couple Motown songs that had gone over well before; we closed out the first set with ‘Take It Easy’, then asked again for requests for the second set.

We managed to reach the side table and say hello to everyone; then people from the audience started coming up one-by-one, asking for specific songs. We agreed to all of them, just please put the name of the song on the paper; pretty soon we had a list of 10 songs to do, and two names of people willing to come up on stage. I chatted with Becky for a minute, and got introduced to her friends again; I didn’t recognize the other couple with her, but the guy was the one I remembered from before. Pretty soon we were back on stage and did a couple of the requests, the second was James Taylor’s “Something in the Way She Moves”; then our first guest singer was a lady that came up and wanted to do Carol King’s ‘You’ve Got a Friend’. It took a couple moments for JB and Bob to figure out the tune while she and I sang the first verse together; once we thought we had it, we started over and sang into the mics, and to the audience. She had a very nice voice and it was easy to sing along with her; the audience gave us a big round of applause when we were done. We did a couple more requests; then a guy came up and sang ‘Pretty Woman’, not quite as good as Roy Orbison but not bad; then a couple more requests, and we ended the second set with ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’. Now we had a line of people signing up to sing with us for the third set; it seems there’s a lot of people in Nashville ready to go on stage.

We’d been so busy I hadn’t noticed that Karen’s parents had joined the table; they were really enjoying the show and Anna asked if I could do ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’. I told her we could do that if she’d come up onstage and help out; I was surprised when she agreed. They were also planning on coming to the BBQ party, the next day, if that was okay; ‘of course’, I told them. Our list of singers had a couple twosomes; Bob took an extended break to start the third set, and JB and I took the stage and played while they sang. By now we had all the help we wanted and then some; some were pretty good, a couple were awful; the ones needing a lot of help, got it from the audience. I got Anna up there and we did a couple Motown songs, to a nice round of applause; the third set ended around 11 and could have easily gone longer. We had a moment to chat with everyone for a couple minutes between sets; the others at our table were going to leave soon, but we’d see most of them at the party tomorrow.

Bob, JB, and I had a bit of a conversation before starting the last set on how to end the show; we decided the last request would be at midnight, then we would wrap it up with ‘The Party’s Over’; that’s what we did. We managed to get through most of the people that wanted to sing; many of them were quite happy to have the audience sing along with them. At the end of the show Bob announced the ‘no-name band’ would be playing there at least one weekend a month; those that didn’t get on stage with us were welcome to come back and join in on the fun, next time.