Red Lights

Red Lights

It was the last night of the tour and soon they would leave Mansfield. The lighting and sound rig would be packed away for a week. Then it would all start again, another band in another broken town. 

Tribute acts were where the money was these days, he understood that. He didn’t like it but he was grateful that it put a roof over his head, food on his table and stopped the loneliness. 

He faded the lights up to rose red  and triggered the smoke machines as the final song started. He thought he could see her swaying in the thin audience, raising her hands to the mirror ball. But this happened every bloody night regardless of where they were. Runcorn, Rotherham or Basildon, she was always there.  

It happened between them only the once. A freezing night in Paris. They were the old days, the days of the real thing. No wigs and no taped backing tracks.  

On that particular night she’d told him that he had got lucky, that her eyes, heart and body were set on the bass player or the drummer. She said she’d take on anyone at this hour though, on account of the coming storm.