She made a beeline for the young man playing the lute. She stopped in front of him, her head bobbing along to the terrible ‘hey nonny nonny’ tune he was plucking.
The guy smiled at her and carried on.
He threw a couple of curious looks her way as she continued to stand right in front of him.
He hit a couple of bum notes, starting to get nervous about the weird girl eyeballing him from two feet away. He’d probably never had a groupie before.
But it turned out Flossie had something other than getting his autograph in mind. When he finally came to the end of his jaunty little ditty, she moved in closer and started speaking with him. Or at him. She was very animated; he was very frightened.
He looked confused at first, but after a bit he began nodding. And then he shrugged a reluctant acquiescence.
Flossie turned around and faced the room. Most of the men were more interested in what was in their mugs to be too concerned with what was going on in the corner. Flossie cleared her throat and began singing ‘True Colours’ by Cyndi Lauper.
It was acapella at first, and then the lute guy joined in. He was trying to copy the refrain and struggling a bit, but he eventually locked into the melody, or a simplified version of it, and his accompaniment became more confident.
Flossie’s soft, clear voice found its way through the noise and the men in the room slowly transformed from a disparate group of drinkers into an audience. The noise subsided and then died out altogether so only Flossie’s voice and the pling-pling-pling of the lute could be heard.
The end of the song was met with silence. Not in a negative way, just slightly confused. A few people started clapping, but Flossie didn’t take a bow or say thanks, she started stamping her foot, and clapping herself.
Stamp, stamp, clap. Stamp, stamp, clap.
It was such a catchy beat, the men joined in. And Flossie began singing over the top.
Buddy you’re a boy
Playin’ in the street
You got mud on your face
Kicking your can all over the place
“What are you doing?” I had a horrible feeling the whole time I’d been checking for trouble over my shoulder, doing everything I could to stay out of its reach, it had been sitting next to me all along.