Spiral

Gray Ghost, a sixty-nine GTO loaded. But you lease these things, you don’t feel so bad about the ding in the parking lot at the supermarket, you know?” Eisen grinned. ”Of course, I still got to pay the body shop.”
    We turned onto Route A1A, which I remembered as the beach road. ”Where’s this place you’re taking me?”
    ”Just south of Las Olas. Great food, but that’s only the warm-up.”

    The parking lot of ”Coconuts” was crowded, but Eisen found a space near some large boats docked on what looked to me like a spur of the Intracoastal. As we walked up to the restaurant, I could see it had an outside deck for drinks and dining. I wondered if Dr. Henry Forbes and I had passed it that day.
    Eisen said, ”Outside’s nice for eating, but you can’t hear as well, so we’ll go inside.”
    The hostess led us to one of fifteen tables, arranged cabaret style in front of a small, raised stage with three stools on it. Eisen ordered a bottle of Australian shiraz from the wine list. By the time we’d put napkins on our laps and opened the food menus, a waitress was popping the cork. After she dribbled a dollop into Eisen’s glass, he sampled the wine and approved it. We’d just told her our entrees— filet mignon for him, sirloin strip for me—when somebody dimmed the room’s lighting.
    I looked around, didn’t see any entertainment just yet. Eisen said, ”They like to draw it out.” He lifted his glass, clinked it against mine. ”Here’s to what you got to do not being drawn out.”
    As our salads arrived, two guys moved to the end stools on stage, leaving the middle one open. Both wore beards and seemed to be guitarists, though one took a harmonica from his pocket and slapped it against his thigh a few times.
    By the time we’d finished the salads, each guitarist had played and sung a couple of easy listening pieces. Occasionally, Eisen would lean over to me and say, ”Remember Seals and Crofts?” or ”Next to last one Jim Croce ever did.” Our entrees arrived, and Eisen refilled the wineglasses. ”Kind of music we been hearing, you’re wondering what the fuck we’re doing here, right?”
    I nodded.
    He said, ‘Take a look around us.”
    I did. It had become a standing-room-only crowd. The people were all ages and races, many dressed expensively. Then a rising buzz of different voices began saying ”Hey” or ”How you doing?” And a tall African-American woman in her twenties with a beautiful face and ginger-colored hair weaved through the well-wishers.
    Eisen touched my forearm. ”The franchise.”
    As the woman took the stage and the middle stool, one of the guitarists said, ”Give it up y’all for—”
    The mounting applause drowned out the name.
    Eisen leaned closer. ”L-A-G-A-Y-L-I-A, capital ‘L’ and 'G' pronounced ‘Lah- Gale -yuh.’” He leaned back as the woman moved her mouth toward the microphone in front of her. ”Now I’m gonna shut up, Cuddy, but once she starts, don’t forget to eat your food.”
    After about two minutes, I knew what Eisen meant. LaGaylia could sing, yes, but the interpretations she put on the composer’s notes and lyrics, the facial expressions and hand gestures—of joy or pain, love or jealousy—were extraordinary. By the end of her set, I’d seen and heard the best female vocalist of my life.
    I also realized that Eisen had been right about my meal. ”You want, they can doggy-bag the rest of the steak?” The crowd was still buzzing about LaGaylia as I lost sight of her. ”I can eat it cold.”
    ”Okay,” said Mitch Eisen, ”But we got two more places I want you to see before we call it a night.”

    As we drove down Route 1, I said, ”Why haven’t I ever heard of LaGaylia before?”
    ‘You mean, she does Alanis, Mariah, even Melissa and a few more, with incredible range and fire, how come she isn’t a superstar herself?”
    I didn’t get all his allusions. ”Basically, that’s my question.”
    ”Okay, Professor Eisen’s opening lesson of the night. The year LaGaylia was twenty-two, there were ninety-nine others her age with just as good a voice, face, and body. The year she was twenty-three, there were a hundred girls twenty-two, coming up behind her.”
    ”But how can the woman I just saw not be...?”
    ”Discovered?”
    ”And appreciated, I suppose.”
    ”Well, first of all, she is appreciated. LaGaylia’s a hell of a success down here. Packs them in three nights a week at Coconuts