The brunette behind the bar was sopping up dregs with a towel. There were three punters in the place, five if you counted the ageing biker-looking fella and his broad getting off with each other in the corner booth. The heat was stultifying and there was a storm to come, but now there was nothing but a dull tension in the air and sporadic drizzle that streamed horizontal through the open door to the smoking area.

The band played on. They were in fairly dismal form. Phil was on bass as always, plodding along to Daz on the drums. Nobody pulling any muscles. They played the blues.

They'd played the blues for years. They loved it, but it was rare that any of them remembered why, especially on nights like this. It wasn't even dark yet. You can't play the blues when it's light and raining AND you're sober.

They meandered their way into the solo. Keith took a little sway forward - there were hours to go yet in the set, but Keith had been goign pretty hard all day. The most they'd been able to get out of him is that he'd had some news. He'd gone no further than that.

And then Keith stoped swaying, and hit his first note. It was a bum one, and it jarred the band and the punters and the brunette and the hobo in the smoking area out of their dazes.

And then he bent it. And it was as it with that bend, he grabbed everyone in the little dank room by a heartstring and bent them all. It sang.

His fingers fell over the neck of his guitar and poured gold down the lead into his amplifier. The same progression everyone hears from the day and hour they hear music, the same four chords, but reborn. He caressed his instrument with care with his left hand, while he slashed with abandon with his right. And the music that fell out of him was perfect.

The light in the place was transfigured. It didn't fall through the windows like fog, it poured in like honey, and the rain that drifted in outside smelt of mangroves and mud and buzzed with life. And still he played, quicker and quicker, his fingers a blur now, but never without perfect care, it seemed, never a missed step in the dance into which he led the band and the drunks and the couple and the brunette.

He wound higher now, rising to a great cresting wave, and then all at once, with one finally sustaining note he was done, and wound back down. His guitar had sung, and wailed, and howled, and now it sobbed.

We wrapped up the song. Keith put down his guitar, grabbed a drink and we took five. We found him in the toilet, sat on the bowl, still warm. Dead, but with a smile on his face.