Sonny's Blues

The juke box was blasting away with something black and bouncy and I half watched the barmiaid as she danced her way from the juke box to her place behine the bar. And I watched her face as she laughtingly responded to something someone said to her, still keeping time to the music. When she smiled one saw the little girl, one sensed the doomed, still-struggling woman beneath the battered face of the semi-whore.