Taylor brings out her bags. The added bags make the corner where she wedged herself next to Allie extremely crowded. I met Taylor through Tracy at one of the parties that Tracy loves to throw. She rented out an empty barn and hired local bands. Or maybe the bands did it as a favor, a rock and roll professional courtesy, since they knew her and Silver from work. Stephen and I had just recently broken up. Taylor and I started dancing when the band played “Honky-Tonk Woman.” We were both on the floor, moving to the music, couples and other singles dancing around us. Rick, Taylor’s husband, didn’t dance and so the two of us spent most of the party together while Rick drank beer and watched. Sensing his eyes on us, I tried to wave at him to join us, but he looked away, a handsome man with a sour expression that some women would find an enticing challenge. He’d evoke the need to make him smile at any cost. A woman who thinks her mission is to make a man happy might turn herself into a pretzel to accomplish that task. That night, Taylor was pregnant with her second child. It wasn’t perceivable then.

“You seem familiar to me,” I said.

She shrugged and looked away. “I used to have bright red hair. Used to be twenty pounds thinner, too.” She moved away and kicked back in a perfect swing dance move.

I tried to remember where I’d seen her before. I knew it wasn’t at a party. “Maybe I’ve just seen you around town.”

When the lead guitarist asked if she’d like to take the mic and she shook her head, I suddenly remembered. “You were with that band … what was it called? Crazy Alligator.”

“But that was another life. That was … what? … fifteen years ago. I can’t believe you even remember!”

In between sets, she told me that she was now in Internet technology, working for Pfizer. Rick also worked there, in the research labs. Rick had played keyboards to Taylor’s singing in Crazy Alligator Band. A blues singer, but without enough growl and pain in her voice, she was an okay local headliner, but could never be a star. Her sound was just too wispy. She held onto the mic like it was salvation, like it grounded her to the stage so she couldn’t escape. That singer needs to reach down and let loose, I had thought. I hadn’t paid any attention to the keyboardist. He was a journeyman, but without any pop. He had possessed a mathematical understanding of the music, but not the emotion behind it.