I had never seen them before. Not here at LouAnn's Country Store, a combination restaurant and dance hall where five-piece bands come to play their own renditions of Hank Williams and Waylon Jennings, with a little nod to Willie Nelson every once in a while. A little nod? I don't think I've ever been to the Store without hearing “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” I'm often the only person here alone and I don't mind that even a little. Enough women ask me to dance that I always have a good time. That's the nice thing about being a regular. Hell, a few even invite me back to their houses after LouAnn's closes. And I usually go. It's all just for fun. But it's not really that kind of a place. I mean families bring their kids here to eat and dance to Texas swing. When “Cotton-Eyed Joe” gets going even the little kids get in line and kick and step out, better'n most of the grown ups.

But I was talking about them. The young man and woman I hadn't ever seen here before. He looked kind of slicked back, if you know what I mean. He'd combed his stringy blond hair back and plastered it down to his head. Real good looking and I thought most women would have liked him a lot. But he had kind of a “don't trust me” look that he hid behind a smile. She was taller than him, a little on the skinny side, even better looking than him. She seemed pretty pale, though, sitting across from him at the table. She wore a man's white dress shirt over faded almost white jeans and had sandals on her feet. His shirt was deep and sparkling blue, covered with sequins like so many fake cowboy shirts are. He wore boots that shone almost as much as the sequins. And I could see they weren't very happy.

I shouldn't have been looking at them so much, but I didn't think they'd notice. He was smoking, tapping his fingers on the table and they were talking very low. I doubt that anyone could hear them, not even if they were sitting at the booth just behind them. She looked at him with a real intense look. Every once in a while she'd brush the hair out of her eyes, but her hair wasn't always in her eyes when she did it and I knew she was crying a little. Just as I was getting real curious about why she was crying and why he was puffing so hard on his cigarette, Ruth Pollard stopped by my table.

“I've always loved ‘Eatin' My Heart Out Over You,' Bud. Come dance with me, okay?” I nodded and stood up just as The Crooked Horseshoe sang, “...and there ain't nothing left for dessert.”

Ruthie was the kind of woman who liked to lead. A big woman—when you put your arms around her you knew you had your arms around something that could just run away with you and you wouldn't be able to stop it. She held me real close and sang softly in my ear, “My husband's eatin' me outta house and home / while I eat my heart out over you.”

It wasn't one of my favorite songs and the Horseshoe weren't even doing a very good job of it. But Ruthie seemed to be enjoying it. I finally got a good hold on her and steered her across the floor near the young couple I'd developed some kind of an interest in. But even dancing right next to them, with Ruthie's hips endangering their table, I couldn't hear what they were saying. I did notice that the woman was dabbing at her eyes with her napkin.

Ruthie managed to get me back under control and her rather large bosom herded me back into the middle of the floor. When the band stopped playing that wretched song and segued into “I Cried a River Over you,” I excused myself on the grounds of needing another Shiner Bock and walked back to my table.

My fascination with that young couple did not abate in any way. The band whipped into a few bars of “All My Exes Live in Texas, and that's why I live in Tennessee” just as she covered her face with her hands, and I became convinced that he had brought her out to Lou Ann's just to tell her that he wanted a divorce. It's a good way to do it. Not that I've ever done anything like that. But if I was married and was going to ask my wife for a divorce, I suspect a public place might be pretty appealing.

It's a little tarnished, with a few chips broken off, but LouAnn's has one of those big old mirrored ball that turns and sends things that look like little stars spinning around the room. I've always kind of enjoyed that even though it's become a real low class kind of thing lately. Anyway, just as she stood up to go the bathroom or something, one of the little reflections raced across her eyes and I could tell she'd been crying pretty good. Maybe it wasn't a divorce. Maybe she was pregnant and the son of a bitch wouldn't marry her. Could be almost anything.

“Hey, Bud, whatcha thinkin' ‘bout?” Shit. Mary Alice Guidry. She and I'd had a thing going for a while and she hadn't been too happy when I broke it off. “Well, I'd like to say I was thinking about you, Mary Alice, but to be honest my mind was just a total blank. Must be the music.” I looked up at her. She was wearing one of those low cut dresses she always liked to show herself off in, but gravity was just starting to make itself known. “Didn't say whether it's good or bad, now did I?” Mary Alice's husband owned LouAnn's, it was named after his first wife, and I figured she'd tell him a good customer didn't much like tonight's band.

“Come dance with me, cowboy,” she said. And I had to confess, though she already knew it, that I wasn't a cowboy. Big accounting firms don't really have much use for cowboys.

I couldn't help laughing when the band started up on a few choruses of “Long Tall Texan.” You know the song, I'm sure. Everyone who's spent much time in a Texas bar knows it. “Well, I'm a long tall Texan / I got a girl named Sue...” And it goes through about a hundred girls' names telling what they do so special before the song ends. They sang one about “a girl named Mary / and when you get real close, boys, it's like front row at the dairy.” My favorite verse was always about a girl named Jean, but the lyric and her both weren't very “clean, / --if you know what I mean / Huh- hu-huh-hu-huh-hu-huh-hu!” so they couldn't sing it in a place like this.

Mary Alice was the kind of woman when you danced with her she was like a part of you, her thighs against yours, her belly rubbing against you, her breasts in perpetual motion, and she liked to try to scoot your hand down to rest on her bottom. I guess you can see why we had that little thing not too long ago.

Anyway, I talked old Mary Alice into going into the bathroom and seeing if that young woman needed any help. When she came back, she told me the only woman in the bathroom was sitting in one of the stalls behind a door and she just couldn't think of any way to bang on the thing and say, “Need any help, hon?” “Wouldn't seem just right, you know?” So, she grabbed me again and relaxed all over me while the band sang “Don't Get Around Much Anymore.”

I really shouldn't have let myself get interested in that little girl. I danced a few more times and overheard a word or two, but I never did find out what was wrong with her. Except I was pretty sure it was the man she was with. He was no good, I could tell by looking, but some women like men like that.

Hell, look at all those movie stars and musicians and the women who chase after them. I mean even big old ugly men who can't really sing very well and those big old Wrestlers like Gorgeous George who used to grease up their bodies or something, they have to fight women off with a stick sometimes. And this guy wasn't even ugly.

I was already walking over to ask her to dance when the band started up on “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” and when I got a few feet from their table they both stood up. She looked right at me, kind of cold like, blue eyes in a hard face. Anyway, she turned to the guy she was with and told him to sit back down again. “I want to dance with this guy; he's been lookin' at me all night,” she told him. He nodded and sat back down.

She put one hand in mine and the other back behind my neck and I danced her around the sawdust dance floor a few times. But it was almost like she wasn't there. I asked her what her name was and she didn't say anything. I asked her if she was okay, why she'd been crying and if she needed any help. She hummed along a little with the song, but didn't say a single word. The whole time we were dancing, she kept her body at least three inches away from mine and looked right in my eyes. Maybe not in my eyes, but through them, like she wasn't really seeing anything. I can't recall seeing her blink even once. And when the boys finally sang, “In a world that knows no part of / blue eyes cryin' in the rain,” she took her arms away from me and ran out of the LouAnn's with that guy racing after her.

Me? I went back to my table and then out back with Mary Alice. Hell, I'd have gone with Ruthie if she hadn't already headed home.