The band was loud. And bad. The band was always bad but played so loud the distortion covered up how bad they were. As if that wasn't bad enough, I had to listen to the loud, bad band three nights a week. They played in the empty dining room off the bar right below my apartment. I had a free three bedroom apartment over the bar at the motel. I paid for my space by having the night bell for the motel ring in my bedroom so a traveler needing a bed at 2:30 in the morning could rent one. So I put up with the bad band playing loud three nights a week, even though I worked seven days a week. Sleep is overrated.
My ex was coming to town. She was bringing her two girls by her first ex, my ex-roommate. The girls wanted to visit their father so she was bringing them up. I wanted to see the girls, too. Their mother was the bitch. The girls were something special and I missed them more than I cared to admit to anyone. With any luck, I could see the girls and miss her. In any event, that was for tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime I had to figure out a way to go to sleep despite the bad, loud band. I had a dawn appointment with a boathouse cupola that needed painting before the breeze came up which meant I needed to be asleep fairly soon, despite the loudness of the bad band.
So I had gone down to the bar and gotten myself a quadruple Jack. Four good shots of Brother Daniels' sovereign remedy in a water glass on ice will usually defeat the loudest band. I had slid back up the inner stairs to conform to the liquor laws and was now sitting on the deck at the top of the outdoor stairs up to the back of my apartment, thinking deep thoughts in communion with old No.7. I heard the back door of the bar open below me and Wanda yelled up, "Hey Ted! You've got company. Go over to the foot of those stairs and up. They lead right to his back door." That last part was Wanda telling who knows who how to get to me.
Wanda was my ex-roommate's landlady. He and I had discovered that in the misery of our mutual ex-wife there was a form of friendship. We had built an apartment in the barn attached to the back of her house before I had gotten the gig at the motel. Dave had decided to stay in the apartment and his daughters and our mutual ex would be staying with him for the next few days.