We left the Dollhouse Lodge and Restaurant and went to the Mountainside Playhouse after a brief argument between Sammy and Lila on how to finish off the evening. Sammy wanted to go to Arch’s, to his workshop, and play old records and dance. It would be in my honor, he asserted. A trip down memory lane. Lila persuaded him that memory lane was too narrow for three people. Besides, she wanted to be in a crowd. Sammy eagerly surrendered. “This will balance things off,” he promised. “All that French wine will rot a man’s system, unless he chases it with a good cheap beer.”

The Playhouse could have been a tavern in Georgia or in Alabama or Texas or Tennessee. It had a bar, a bandstand, a dance floor, a jukebox for band-break, a collection of assorted tables shoved close together, and the unmistakable odor of beer, popcorn, and cigarettes. It was crowded with a group that had just completed country-dance lessons at a local community center, and they were trying their steps to the music of Jack Cavalier’s Merry Mountain Music Makers. The group consisted of Jack on fiddle, a woman named April Moss on piano, a drummer named Pete Capes, and a guitarist they called Sailor Parker. They were energetic and personable, but not very good, as Lila had cautioned. And as she had also cautioned, Sammy thought they should be playing for Dolly Parton in Nashville.

“Damn,” Sammy complained, “I just don’t understand it. They ought to be making a million dollars a year, Bobo, but they can’t seem to get going. I’ll bet they spend more money promoting themselves than they make, and this place is packed all the damn time when they’re here, but they can’t raise a fart in a windstorm outside of here.”

Sammy drank beer and ate peanuts and bellowed hellos to people who wandered by. Lila laughed easily at the pawing of men she knew. She danced once or twice with Sammy, playing seductive and teasing bumps and grinds toward me. She tried to pull me onto the floor, but I refused and Sammy made her stop. “Jesus, Lila, leave the man alone. Maybe he’s not in the mood to be dry-humped before a bunch of people he’s never seen.”

When we left and drove back to the Inn, Sammy and Lila were pleasantly drunk. They invited me to have a glass of brandy with them, but I told them that I wanted to take a nostalgic drive to Margaretville, to the Galli-Curci Theater, to spend some time thinking about what I would say at Avrum’s memorial service.

“Shit, I forgot about that, Bobo,” Sammy apologized. “We should have skipped the Playhouse.”

“I’m glad we didn’t,” I told him. “I had a good time.”

“One of these days you’ll be able to say you saw the Merry Mountain Music Makers before they became famous,” he declared.