THE COMEDIAN AND HIS MUSE (continued)<br/><br/>Thalia lets me breathe.  I don't have to tell her about Janie, how she fell and became bedridden.  How she depended on me and then grew jealous and hateful of my mobility.  Hopelessness followed and she just lost the will to live.  No matter what I said or did, it made no difference.  The woman who knew me,  loved to hear my jokes, who I loved to make laugh, who played the piano and sang with the voice of an angel became a stranger and left me.  And then she died.<br/><br/>Thalia holds my hand.  I look into her eyes and I'm thinking, 'Thank you thank you thank you' and at the same time, because of her beauty and compassion, I'm thinking, 'I love you'.<br/><br/>I then see her take a look over at the stage.  I hear the music of the first song end and the applause of the lounge patrons.  Then Thalia asks me, "Why don't you go up?"<br/><br/>This is Dion's.  I would absolutely love, maybe even fight, to stand on that stage.  I might even come up with a story about how I stormed the stage, cheered on by the most beautiful blonde woman that I'd ever seen.  Maybe the bouncers would take one look at me and flee, because I could fall on them and crush them as they tried to remove me.  Finally, the bouncers' lawyers would find me in the mental hospital, smiling like an idiot and repeating over and over, 'I did it....  I played Dion's....'<br/><br/>With a power not apparent in her physical frame, Thalia pulls me to my feet.  Her hair is like gold in the lamp lights and it moves like it has a life of it's own.  The scent of her..., it's like brown sugar, lilies, violets, vanilla and caramel.  My heart, there's no physical pain, but it feels like it's going to explode from my chest.  I want to lift her in my arms and kiss her.<br/><br/>"When the band takes a break," she says "You should go up on stage. You've made me laugh, and I'm the Goddess of Comedy. I know a good kid like you when I see one," and she winks at me.<br/><br/>'Goddess of Comedy'?  I could believe that, but I've also seen how many drinks she's knocked back in the minutes we've known each other.  Also, I want to have her see me on stage.  But I am not going to crash this stage.  I don't want to be haunted by an act of great stupidity.  I don't know what to think.<br/><br/>"Sweet Thalia," I say to her, "If you can get Dion, or whoever's in charge here, to give me five minutes on that stage, I will worship you forever."  As the words leave my mouth, I realize that I mean it.<br/><br/><br/>(to be continued)