It's time, Ms. Kirsner

Karen performed the same ritual she had been going through for seventeen years while she waited for someone to come and tell her it was time. Left pocket: two extra picks. Tap three times on the guitar case, but don't open it. The guitar had been perfectly tuned fifteen minutes ago and there was no reason to take it out again. She'd done it once, four years ago in Eugene, OR, and a string had snapped with such ferocity during the first song that she had spent the rest of the set wiping blood from the cut on her wrist. Someone had shouted "Punk rock!" when they saw it, but it had really hurt and she knew she had played terribly. So don't open the case. It's OK to tap on it and shift it around, but don't open it. The rest of the ritual: two bottles of water tucked carefully in her gig bag and a shot of Jameson's held tightly in her left hand. She would down it in one go when they came to get her, then open one of the water bottles and take a swig to cut the burn. Timmy, her old bass player, had told her she should just get it on the rocks to cut it down a bit. She did one night, and then after the show she found Timmy and her soon-to-be-ex husband naked in the dressing room. So, no more Jameson's on the rocks. The water bottle is just fine.

No more bass player either. Just her these days, bringing her guitar along and playing the old songs that everyone still cheered for and the new ones they mostly clapped politely for. She thought about getting a band together - maybe even getting the old band back - but this was so much easier. She could play wherever she wanted; she toured by herself in her little Toyota stuffed with her guitar, a week's worth of luggage, and a few boxes filled with copies of the new CD she had recorded in the garage. Her mom liked to tease her about that - "You never did a garage band when you were a kid, so now you have to do one when you're an old lady." Old lady. She rolled those words around in her head and thought how strange it was to get that from her mother. Like they were sisters now, like Karen had passed some kind of threshold when she turned forty and they were all the same, growing old and breaking down together.

There was a knock on the dressing room door and Karen got up off the stained, creaking couch. A kid who didn't look old enough to be working in a bar gave her a bored, hipper-than-thou look when she opened the door. "It's time, Ms. Kirsner," he said. He didn't even wait for her to say anything, just cocked his head in the direction of the stage and walked back down the hall.

Fuck you, thought Karen. "Ms. Kirsner" my ass. Like I'm your algebra teacher or something. She threw back her shot of Jameson's and tossed the glass onto the floor. It bounced a few times and rattled around, but it didn't break. Karen wondered if that was a good sign. She picked up her guitar case off the couch and walked out toward the stage, wondering, as she always did, about whether she'd picked the right songs for the set. The kid who had unceremoniously summoned her to the stage barely looked up as she walked by. Karen wanted to show him something, to give them all the best thing they'd ever seen on a stage. She had vague notions of a furious set that left the crowd stunned and speechless, and then a triumphant march past him on the way back to the dressing room. She wanted to slap his face and say, "listen, asshole, I toured with Nirvana so don't you give me any of this shit about being old and broken down."

She walked out onto the stage, squinting at the lights that beat down on her as soon as she came around the corner. There was more applause than she had expected as she popped open the case and took out her guitar. It made her smile, in spite of herself. She couldn't help it. One minute ago she had wanted to tear it all down just to give that dumb hipster kid something to think about, but now she was standing alone on stage with an acoustic guitar and a room full of a lot more people than she had expected. They were watching her, wanting her to give them what they came for. She felt like she should say something to them, something better than "Hi, I'm Karen." She had her guitar around her neck and was fiddling idly with the strings, pretending to be checking the tuning but mostly just enjoying the feeling of standing in front of a room full of people with a guitar.

She closed her eyes and started playing. She sang the songs she knew they wanted and they clapped and shouted. Someone screamed out a request for a song she hadn't played in eight years and didn't remember the words to. She said she was sorry and made a joke about only being able to play that song after a good fuck. They laughed like they always did. She did another old one, a couple of covers, and threw in a few songs from the new CD. It felt like a good set. An hour came and went. She looked down at the set list and saw that she was coming to the last song. She told them so and a few people shouted for more. Always good, she thought. They should always want more. She smiled for them one more time as the song ended. They clapped and stomped their feet and she told them she loved them.

What Karen was really thinking about, while the lights shone on her and the people, the people who were left, clapped and shouted, was where her car was parked, how far back to the hotel, how far to the next town, how much sleep, how many shows, how much longer. You're an old lady now, she thought. Even your mom says so. This is where you've come to and this is what you've done with your life. So smile at them. Smile and play and tell them that you love them.