(author's note---this is an early scene in my next novet A POEM ON A BAR ROOM WALL. Hope you like it!)

I Once Thought of Amy

To say I never ever thought of Amy again would be untrue, but once I came home from school and got on with my life I never really gave her any serious consideration except for once. College with all of its freedoms and irresponsibilities was not the real world, and everything that happened there remained behind as the end of a very happy childhood. But that one time I did think of Amy she kept me from making a very serious mistake.
Back when I was going through all the self inflicted crises that one goes through when he or she turns thirty (not to be confused with the crises I was now encountering at forty), I went through a period when I seriously thought it was time to get married. Many of my friends were recently married, and enjoying the moments that go with buying their first houses, and having their first children. Little did I know, everyone seemed so happy to me.
I was at the time dating what seemed like the perfect marriage candidate, Shelley McGinnis. To most of my friends, Shelly was the complete package. Very attractive, great sense of humor, and she liked to have fun. Plus, and here was the kicker, she was loaded! She was the youngest sales manager in the country for one of the new telecommunication companies and at the time was making over a hundred grand. Shelley, her corporate expense account, and I had a lot of good times together.
We dated for eighteen months and did some great things. When she had to travel for sales meetings across the country, and I would often tag along. Skiing in Lake Tahoe, a weekend in New Orleans, excursions to wine country in California. And when we weren’t traveling, she loved going to restaurant openings and enjoyed sporting events.
After a year of this, I was feeling quite comfortable. But deep down I had a feeling that something was missing. Everyone was telling me how lucky I was, and asking me when we were going to be the next ones down the aisle. (This was before divorce crashed half of the marriages of my friends and family to the ground.)
Shelly had a big trade show in New York City in the spring, and I tagged along for fun. I took Friday off from school, and flew up to meet her Thursday night. We went out to a show and then did up the town, and we crawled back to our room at the Parker Meridian in the wee hours of the morning. The next day Shelly got up early to do her thing, and after sleeping in I got up to explore the city. Shelly had started to drop hints about the Big M word the night before, and I was thinking that maybe it was time to take the big plunge.
It was a beautiful day and after a long walk through Central Park, I spent some time wandering through the upper West Side. I ended up stopping at Lucy’s Retired Surfer’s Bar for a mid afternoon beer. I had been there once before during a college trip to New York, and I was quite proud of myself that I had found it again.
The place hadn’t changed much from how I remembered it, except for a new stereo system and a stack of CDs behind the bar. The place was empty except for a beautiful Hispanic woman a few years older than me behind the bar. She had long black hair with a touch of gray, and she had that slightly weathered look on her face that sometimes makes a person look wise. She was cleaning the mirror behind the bar and looked very sexy doing it.
She got me a beer and I just sat there taking it all in, watching the people out on the crowded sidewalk, and watching the beautiful woman wash the mirror behind the bar. She stopped her cleaning for a moment to put a CD into the stereo.
The album she selected was Living in the USA by Linda Ronstandt, and when I heard the opening riff of the first song I thought of Amy for the first time since I had gotten serious with Shelley. Because it was Amy who, years before during our all too brief time together, in her upstairs bedroom in her house on Summer Street, had gotten me into Linda Ronstandt. She loved that genre of rock that stretched from Karla Bonoff to Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt was her favorite. And the last time I listened to, or was able to listen to, a complete Ronstadt album was with Amy so many years ago. It seemed that whenever we fell asleep after making love Linda Ronstadt was on the turntable, all those great California rock albums of the Seventies like Hasten Down the Wind, Heart Like a Wheel, and Prisoner in Disguise.
So I thought of Amy during the first song on the album, a honky tonk version of "Back in the U.S.A." that would make Chuck Berry proud. But then I really started to think of Amy when the ballads started kicking in. First Rogers and Hart’s "When I Grow Too Old to Dream," then her version of J.D. Souther’s "White Rhythm and Blues." By the time the disc got to Elvis Costello’s "Allison," I was in tears. Because for a brief moment, a brief but real moment, I felt inside of me that place in my heart Amy had taken me oh so briefly, oh so long ago. And it was there, sitting in Lucy’s Retired Surfer’s Bar alone on a beautiful New York City spring afternoon, with a tear running down my cheek, that I realized what was missing, and would never be a part of my relationship with Shelley. I knew as soon as we got back to Cleveland, it was over.
An unordered beer appeared in front of me, and I looked up into the wise blue gray eyes of the beautiful bartender. The CD was on its last track, Linda’s version of the King’s "Love Me Tender."
"What was her name?" she asked.
"Amy."
"How long ago?"
"Close to ten years."
A quiet moment and then she said, "Honey, I got a few of them inside of me too."
I flashed her a smile then she left me alone again. I finished the beer, threw a twenty on the bar, and headed back out into the street.