and the story continues ...

Maria sat down at her desk and picked up the headphones. She opened Pandora, and the "Sultry Blues" channel started up with Lavay Smith whispering "Baby you can use me" in her velvet voice...BadadumpBadump. "You can abuse me" DadadaBump. Then the horns came in and the Red Hot Skillet Lickers blazed off into an up-tempo riff, with Lavay wailing "But just don't refuse me!". So NOT what I need today, she thinks, clicking on the "next" icon. Clang! "I've walked forty-seven miles of barb wire." Clang! "Gotta cobra snake for a necktie"...Maria glares at the screen; "George Thorogood is Sultry Blues? What kind of idiot wrote this program, anyway". Click. Ok, let's try the Grateful Dead Channel. The opening notes of Dark Star creep into her ears. "That's much better", she thinks, picks up a stack of papers, and starts to read. As she reads, Maria's memory drifts to the show in 1993 when Sting actually opened for the Dead.... she shifts to Drums and Space.... then an encore with "Walk me out in the Morning Dew".... when she looked up and he vomited on her shoes... grilled cheese for a buck didn't mix well with the X. They both looked at her shoes. "Is that oatmeal?" "Yeah, late breakfast. Guess I should've skipped the sandwich." They looked at each other. "Hey, sorry about your shoes."

            That was how she met Wendell. And Therese, his wife. Maria smiled. Therese had propped Wendell against a wall and taken Maria to the ladies room, where they used paper towels to mop up the vomit. To no avail. The shoes were ruined, but a lifelong friendship was born. Sometimes it felt like she was destined to inherit Wendell. After two years, she still missed Therese. And now Wendell had fled without explanation.

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