That they're great. You're not stupid.

The band steps off the stage and grab seats around the table, picking up the drinks that a waitress delivers at the same time they sit.

"So what do you think?" Christina asks, looking at you with glint in her eye.

"You're great!" you answer enthusiastically. "I'm really impressed."

"Spoken like a man who wants to explore a musician's pants," she laughs, clinking glasses with the rest of the band.

"But he's right, we are great," Vicki chuckles. "Especially me."

"You've got great tits," Lisa says with a smirk. "That's not the same as being 'great'."

"Ahhh you flat chested bitches don't know nothin'," Vicki says in pretended scorn as she stands up. "I gotta piss. Catch you later."

"Tina says you play a little," Carmen says inquiringly.

"'Little' is the key word," you reply. "Mediocre to poor guitar, and decent blues harp."

"Yeah? Where'd you learn it?"

"When I was a kid, but then a teammate and I started playing after games. Him on guitar, me on the harp. Mostly old blues standards but a few rock and folk rock numbers."

"I gotta check some stuff with Ted at the bar," says. "Try to behave while I'm gone, all of you."

"You know us," Lisa says with a smile.

"I do. That's why I'm saying that," Christina laughs over her shoulder as she struts away.

Lisa and Carmen ask a lot of questions about what you used to play, then segue into some polite but uninformed questions about baseball. Neither Christina nor Vicki return. You see them both near the bar at the centre of their own little circle of fans, laughing and bantering and obviously enjoying themselves hugely.

You're not quite sure what to make of Christina. Women as plain spoken, confident and self assured as her have not been common in your past experience and you confess to feeling a little intimidated. You're more used to women fawning over you, although there hasn't been anywhere near as much of that since you left baseball.

Regardless, you're very intrigued by her, and determined not to act like a stuttering schoolboy in front of her.

Vicki and her finally break free of their fans and make their way back to the table, Vicki blowing an extravagant kiss over her shoulder and wriggling her way back. Christina, on the other hand, struts like a panther across the floor, looking thoroughly sexy and untameable.

"Ready to rock and roll?" she asks, picking up her glass and draining it. "Then lets do this!" she shouts, leading the band back onto the stage.

They open with hard blazing version of 'I Fought the Law,' Lisa's pounding drumming leading them into it and Christina tearing the heart out of her guitar while Vicki's vocals fill the room. Christina's playing is even better than you heard back on campus, and not for the first time you're astonished at her electrifying stage presence. When the song crashes to a close to a burst of applause, she steps up to her mike and looks out at the crowd.

"Thank you Red Falcon! That song goes out to all of those who have lost to the law! Which would be all of us I guess," she laughs. "There's a friend of ours here tonight who we're going to ask to sit in for a number. Ladies and Gentlemen give it up for Bad Brian Watts, the madman of the blues harp!"

To your utter shock she points at you, gesturing you up on stage with a smile.