I sat down on the bus next to an old guy, with a red suit jacket and a black cane, like you get at a medical supply store.
After a while, he asked me if I could play Linda Ronstadt on my phone.
It brought a long ago memory of a time when my mother came out of a gas station. A man had complemented her by saying she looked just like a young Linda Ronstadt. I picture the man in a cowboy hat and wrangler jeans, with a western style shirt. Funny how memories can surface, unbidden but sweetly like that. It happened in an instant, then I was back in the present.
The guy on the bus was saying that he made her famous.
As “I fall to pieces” played on my phone, he said that she asked him how she could get famous down in Berkeley California.
“Oh really?”, I prompted.
He had walked into a building, she was sitting there, not yet famous, 1974, they danced cheek to cheek, he touched his face and closed his eyes in bliss.
She asked him how she could become famous. He said, “Do you have a manager?”
He told her to do whatever her manager said for a year, and if she wasn't famous by then, to fire him and find a new one.
“She followed my instructions, and a year later she had a hit.” in a gravelly voice.
I didn’t get to follow-up with other questions; just then another man that he recognized got on the bus, they were busy talking, and I was forgotten.
I had to get off the bus anyway.