THEY TOLD ME there would be a new wedding, a second wedding, a church wedding. It would be held at some old mission in San Francisco. All of my relatives would be flying in. The caterers had been paid; the hotels had been booked. It was all set. This time, everything would be different. A second wedding. I just had to stand there. Look nice. That’s what they said.

My mother arranged it. I was to remarry my ex-wife. There was a glitch though because, as far as I knew, we hadn’t reconciled. And I didn’t particularly feel like being married to anyone. The desire just wasn’t there. I could appreciate the moneymaking opportunities provided by a good wedding, of course. All of those fat checks. There was a financial upshot to these things. But the downside? The whole thing troubled me. “But you have to get married again,” my mother said. She was a big Italian woman. “All of your cousins will be there. They have been waiting.”

I didn’t even know where my ex-wife was during this time. It took some asking around, but eventually I found her living in a hostel somewhere on Van Ness. She was sleeping on the top bunk of a set of bunkbeds. She laughed and said, “I couldn’t care less either way.” That settled it, there would be no wedding. An old blues musician had been hired to play a few sets during the event. I met him outside the mission, borrowed his guitar. I played it there for a while. He said he had been given the guitar by Slim Holmes himself. He showed me new techniques, chord progressions. It was nice. “Hey there, kid,” the old bluesman said. “You play pretty good.”