The tea actually was iced, with us being in Florida and it being the month of June.  The time was correct for tea, the wooden clock on the mantel over the fireplace in the parlor striking four o'clock when we sat.

I came to know Miss Maybelyn in haphazard fashion the manner in which all of my contemporary acquaintances seemed to sprout into being at that period of my life.  Miss Maybelyn came to be to me nearly like a nanny, although I was hardly a child at the age of thirty-five.  Miss Maybelyn, on the other hand, looked the role of nanny, in a fashion when at her home, even if I bore no physical resemblance to a child any longer.

Miss Mabelyn, I figured, was somewhere in her sixties.  She was a short yet robust ebony skinned woman with a light sprinkling of white about her short cropped hair which looked rather like a dusting of confectionary sugar atop of rich mocha treat.  Miss Maybelyn's arms were thick, dimpled at her elbows.  Her nails were manicured flawlessly and weekly, coated in a vibrant red of crimson, buffed and filed to perfect shape.

Always Miss Maybelyn wore a dash of rouge on each of her round cheeks, small patches over her chin, the color of ripened bing cherries clinging to the tree after an afternoon rainstorm in late summer.  Her lips were blushed with cosmetic the color of her firey fingernails.  The make-up and manicure were evidence that Miss Maybelyn was not the keeper of children.

The call to tea was my first direct invitation to Miss Maybelyn's home, a stucco bungalow at the south edge of Ft. Lauderdale where the seaside city blurred into the neighboring enclave of Hollywood.  Airplanes arriving and departing to and from the international airport a several miles off routinely traced, rambling and rumbling, over Miss Maybelyn' bungalow.

The day of taking tea with Miss Maybelyn occurred one half year after I first met the woman, a transplant originally hailing from South Carolina.

I, myself, came to three years prior to tea, at the start of the new millennium, the commencement of the 21st century.  Coming from Kansas at that time, I drifted off the endless plain and dusty prairie feeling more like a specter of a person than a concoction of flesh, bone and blood, a fleeting apparation rather than a true human and completed man.

I packed my car, abandoning the vast majority of my possessions in the Sunflower State to a malignantly disposed ex-wife who kept the name of a prior husband even after we married, a usually blonde mopped woman called Carolyn Wander.  I started wafting southeast across the continent, taking in only about three hundred miles a day.  I simply slowly dusted along.

Not deciding precisely where I wanted to settle until I roost my first year in the Sunshine State in a snug condominium on Singer Island, a couple mile long stretch of sand breaking the Atlantic Ocean right next to Palm Beach.  The place was airy and light, located on the top floor of a 24-story riser on the beach with gracious views of the Atlantic to the east, the Lake Worth Lagoon and West Palm Beach to the other side.

I was able to assume the flat for an indefinite period and for a cellar-pitched price because the owner, an octogenarian, widowed and retired physician became incapacitated by Parkinson's retreating to a nursing care center down the coast in Boca Raton.

I found the languid life on Singer Island initially much to my liking.  The days were easy, the nights calm and serene.  With money saved from my abandoned career in the Kansas capital city, what cash was not clawed away by Carolyn Wander, I was able to take an easy position as one of the seasonal society beat reporters for the Palm Beach newspaper.  Being one of the local scribes designated to cover the feigned majesty of the resident thin nobility, I quickly gained regular entrée to the grandest of balls and the most gilded of salons the island boasted.

As the weeks passed, I became acquainted with many of the Palm Beach glitterati and they came to know of me as well.  Wandering down Worth Avenue, as I did from time to time on late mornings, I increasingly found myself stopped by palmed islanders as I ambled along down the sidewalk.  They approached me with faux familiarity, on the surface speaking with the hardy and hearty kindness that was routine along the sidewalks of my former pastoral home.

After a bit over a year, I found myself anxious, restless in the staid confines of my unperturbed island home.  One morning, in the springtime, while on a light footed constitutional along Worth Avenue, I decided to move further down the coast.  The flatness of spirit on Palm Beach dulled my easily fatigued spirits much as had the plain and prairie of Kansas.

I wasted no time in arranging my shuffle from Singer Island downward to South Beach and soon called a comfortable suite of rooms at the Clevelander Hotel on Ocean Drive “home”.

At South Beach I found the shore's sand well littered with beautifully sculpted human beings, men and women that easily could have sat for Michelangelo and become the marbled stuff of his creations.  Each night, the three-block strip of Art Deco design pulsed fully alive - Caribbean and Latin style pounding and pouring from nightclubs and even bistros until the most wee hours of the morning. 

I worked little while at South Beach, an occasional freelance piece written to pay the bills. The Clevelander Hotel, my home on the shore, maintained an expansive out of doors bar with a barstand that snaked and looped around the terrace, a place where I often placed myself come late afternoon.  I fell into a routine where I drank a couple of margaritas and nibbled on an order - sometimes two - of boiled shrimp. 

After my light and early supper of sorts I tended to wander across the asphalt of Ocean Drive to the beach where I strolled on the blonde colored sand until sunset and then meandered to my rooms for a nap.  Along about nine o'clock, sometimes later, I rose, redressed and returned to the sidewalks of South Beach, ambling about like a misty apparition around the usual throng of people in celebratory spirit.

On my nighttime jaunts, I normally alighted in a smaller bar or tidy bistro for a drink or two, sometimes for a slice of Key Lime pie.  In the six months I spent at Beach I never particularly befriended anyone in my nighttime wanderings or otherwise.  I was never sought out by anyone who I could call a companion sort.

At best, I found myself to be nothing more than a vague presence on the very periphery of others' lives, nothing more than a nocturnal vapor passed through and instantly forgotten if even ever noticed.

Eventually, and as it happened, directly before Thanksgiving, I got a hankering to migrate once more.  I spent a week motoring about the southeast coast of Florida, tripping from one city to another.  On Thanksgiving, I ended up in Ft. Lauderdale, alone.  I idled the afternoon away walking on the beach, hoping like I appeared to belong somewhere.  By sunset, my stomach growled and ached because I did not eat at all during the day.

I found myself in a quandary.  By myself, all alone, I did not want to venture forth in a confined public space like a shore side bistro on a day dedicated, devoted to family, friendship and comradeship.  On an open beach, I could pass from point to point like a foggy figment, no one pointing a finger to declare:  “But look!  That man!  He's alone, all alone!”

I sat sown on the sand to watch the sun finish its pull from the sky.  A chorus of crimson and violet and amber filled the heavens over the blackening waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  Occasionally, to my spot, I was paid visitation by some sort of spindly legged bird that seemed to develop an unsteady curiosity about my presence at the water's edge.

Finally, with the dark of a new night enveloping all around, I lifted myself off the beach and, stiff legged, made way to the roadway carousing the shore.  Crossing the street, I hurried along the sidewalk, keeping my gaze trained to my feet, keeping my ears tuned to the plap - plap - plap sound of my boating shoes hitting the cement.

By happenstance, I looked up for a moment to ensure my bearings directly in front of a darkly illuminated restaurant with a cozy patio populated with but two customers at a table tended by a happily laughing waiter.  Beyond the patio, the front face of the bistro rested, consisting of open windows to allow the pleasant evening breeze into the candle lit confines of the dining room and bar.

Taking a quick look through the windows and inside, I saw that only a couple of tables were occupied.  I spotted two separate barstands inside, one at the front fully visible through the opened front windows, which was deserted.  The second barstand was built off the left side of the bistro and set some ten yards towards the back.  Nestled between the edge of that bar and the fronting of glass was a small bandstand overhung with a mellow pale blue neon sign that announced “Blues Nightly.”

At the barstand off to the side and somewhat towards the rear I spotted two customers, spaced to opposite ends of the counter, and a bartender leaning against his side of the bar absently wiping off a glass.

I turned and faced the bistro squarely on, quite casually and considered those inside. Others were by themselves and alone.  My stomach continued to pain me, beckoning for sustenance.  My throat was dry, petitioning for liquid and my brain, weary and seeking a more heady relief.  And so it happened that I happened inside this place called Evangeline.

 I quickly paced myself over to the bar at the left, taking a vacant seat towards the middle with ample space to either side between my stool and the other two patrons.  The lackadaisical looking bartender perked to attention the instant I took the stool.  In little time I was served a platter of Cajun seasoned shrimp and some sort of Jamaican rum concoction complete with the petite paper umbrella.

I was not long in the bistro, not finished with my shrimp and my rum drink, when a short African-American woman wearing a glittering red beaded dress took a stool at the bar a couple of places from where I sat.  She ordered a cola and exchanged some pleasant words with the capable bartender.

Her voice I instantly found melodic, nearly hypnotic.   She spoke in even, lulling tones with the hint of a Southern accent, the common kind I heard rather often around the South Florida shores.

I listened to the sound of her voice for the near hour she sat at the bar, not really listening to her words but taking in the soft luster of the woman's speech.

Directly at nine o'clock, she rose from the bar and walked over to the smallish stage, where members of a band gathered about the prior quarter hour.  With a hand from the drummer, the woman in the red beaded dress mounted the three steps to the stage, took the microphone and said “good evening” in the same lush, rich voice she used while speaking at the barstand. 

“I'm Miss Maybelyn,” she continued, smiling gaily.  “And I'm going to do a little bit a`singin for `ya tonight.

And so she did, so she sang sultry blues tunes, in three sets, bleeding away with her melodic voice until the midnight hour.  I sat on the stool, keeping turned towards the stage and Miss Maybelyn the entire time she performed, drinking very little.

By the start of Miss Maybelyn's second set the bistro was well populated, nearly all the tables inside and all seats on the patio occupied.  After each set of songs, Miss Maybelyn retook her stool at the barstand, slowly drinking a glass of iced cola.  Finally, at the end of her evening's performance, when she returned to her stool, sweat beaded lightly on her brow, I turned in her direction and said “hello.”

She pivoted to face me, smiled, tipped her frosty glass of iced cola in my direction, and replied “hello, there.”

“I'm new to Ft. Lauderdale,” I said, clearing my throat first and raising my voice so as to be heard by Miss Maybelyn over the background din of happy patrons with cheerful smiles, a hearty group obviously pleased with the evening's satiny show.

“Well, then, welcome.” Miss Maybelyn positively beamed once more, she tilted her glass in my direction, a friendly, gracious gesture.

“You're very good,” I said.  “The show . . . it was great, really it was.”

Miss Maybelyn set her half full glass on the bar counter and firmly placed both of her hands on her ample lap, patting her thighs twice.  “Well, thank you sir.”

Our budding conversation-of-sorts was interrupted when a couple of young ladies, likely college coeds from somewhere north and west of Florida traveling on holiday sidled up to Miss Maybelyn and effusively gushed about the staged performance. Both ladies enthusiastically explained how much they loved the blues all the while remarking that they never heard the blues prior to that night at Evangeline.

Miss Maybelyn chatted cordially, finally signing her name, twice, on a couple of disposable coasters stacked next to the napkins and straws on the bar.  The eager, delighted women walked off and Miss Maybelyn turned again in my direction.

“So, you've moved to Ft. Lauderdale?” she asked me.  “Or are `ya visitin'?”

I fumbled a bit, not knowing what to respond. 

Technically, I lived at Miami Beach but the purpose of my visit to Ft. Lauderdale was to consider a place to alight for a new home.

“Well, I guess you'd say I'm moving here, just now . . . to Ft. Lauderdale.”

“Oh, then, good for you,” she replied, taking a deep draw from her glass.  “Ft. Lauderdale . . . it's lovely, a lovely place.”

“Are you from here?” I asked.

“No, no . . . been here dozen years, though,” she replied, explaining she was born in and spent most of her life in South Carolina.  “Was in Carolina until my Clyde passed, then I came on down here.”

“Your husband?”

“Oh yes . . . Clyde and I, we were together coming on thirty years before I lost him.”

“Have you always sang?”  I asked Miss Maybelyn, as she finished off her glass of soda.

“Lordy, yes,” she replied, a great smile stripping across her face yet another time.  “I never sang in a joint, though, until I came here, to Ft. Lauderdale.  I got this gig here about six years ago.  The owner, he heard me sing one time when my church's choir played at a rest home, a rest home where his own mother lived.  Not long later he gave me the gig here.  Three nights a week . . . Thursday, Friday and Saturday.”

“You're very good,” I remarked, complimenting her talent again.

“`Course, I always sang at church . . . in the choir . . . still do,” she added.

We talked a while longer.  I offered her a fresh cola or a drink, which she declined.  “Can't have too much caffeine,” she explained.  “And, no liquor for me.”

She left the bistro about an hour after the show, visiting with a dozen more customers who desired to sing their own praises to the woman for a show well done.  Realizing myself that it was after one in the morning, and I drank a goodly share, I decided to take a hotel room for the night, finding one finally after four attempts, vacancies being scant with the holiday crowd.

I spent the following day on the hunt for an apartment, deciding on that Thanksgiving that Ft. Lauderdale would be my docking point, at least for the time being.  By mid-afternoon I settled on a one-bedroom flat located on a finger islet surrounded on three sides by canal-like waterways and by Las Olas, a main thoroughfare running across Lauderdale, on the fourth.  The snug little patch was christened Hendricks Isle and the small building in which I let an apartment was at the north end, where the roadway dead ended and the two north-south canals met up with the waterway slipping west to east, spilling eventually into the ocean.

Although much remained to be done to make the flat habitable, I returned to Evangeline that evening for dinner, drinks and to hear Miss Maybelyn pipe out the blues.   Miss Maybelyn had not yet arrived when I made my second appearance at Evangeline in so many days.

I took a seat at the same barstand I occupied the prior day, on the left side of the lowly illuminated bistro.  Upon my reappearance, the bartender who'd been lackadaisical the day before was more animated with and friendly to me as I sat, drank and ate.

Perhaps not wanting to tempt fate in proverbial fashion, I ordered the same Cajun shrimp dish and the identical Jamaican rum drink that I took the day before.

“New in the city or visiting?” the bartender, who introduced himself as Kenny asked not long after taking my order.

“Very new.  I just moved here.  I came from Miami, South Beach.  Before that Palm Beach.”

“You're making the rounds.”

“Kansas before that.”

Kenny thumbed his chest.  “Iowa, here.  Came from Iowa to Florida six and a half years ago.”

I sipped my drink.  “Ft. Lauderdale seems nice.”  He nodded.  “I mean, I liked Palm Beach, but it was a bit too slow for me.”

“And South Beach?”  he asked.

I shook my head “A bit too fast for me, really.”

“You'll like it here,” Kenny pronounced.

“Kind of the best of both worlds here in Ft. Lauderdale.”

As I ate and drank, Kenny reviewed some of the finer points of life in Lauderdale until we happened on the subject of Miss Maybelyn, the Evangeline blues singer.

“She's something,” Kenny said.  “Shes a real following with the locals, the regulars.”

“I bet.  I really enjoyed her show.”

“She's here three nights every week … Thursday, Friday, Saturday.  Sings from about nine o'clock until midnight.  Three sets.”

I nodded, knowingly.

“She's really something,” Kenny said.

On about 8:30, Miss Maybelyn entered the Bistro and took what seemed to be her regular perch at the corner of the barstand.  Kenny wasted no time in serving her a cola drink.  I cleaned my throat and said “hello”.

“Well looky at that … it's our new neighbor.  How are ya tonight, honey?”

“I'm pretty well.  Came back to hear you sing again.”

“Well isn't that right nice.  I hope I do okay for you.”

“You will, Miss Maybelyn, I'm sure of that.”

She laughed deeply from her gut.  “Lordy child, y'all got yourself more confidence than I got.  But, I promise I'll give it my best.”

As on Thanksgiving night, directly at nine o'clock Miss Maybelyn left the barstand and took the corner stage.

“I'm Miss Maybelyn,” she told those seated around the interior of the bistro and those on the patio that fronted the place.  “I'm going to do a little bit a'singing for ‘ya tonight.”  People continued to filter into Evangeline during Miss Maybelyn's first set; I noticed no one leave as she performed.

When she finished her final set of the night, we visited a bit more around the bar like we did the night before.  With regularity, we were interrupted by well wishers who came to Miss Maybelyn to thank her for her show.

Saturday night was spent also at Evangeline, eating shrimp, drinking rum, idly chatting with Kenny and taking in Miss Maybelyn and the blues.  When Monday came round, I considered my banking accounts and recognized that I needed to be more certain in regard to employment.  My editor from graciously connected me with the feature's editor from the Ft. Lauderdale Sun who did bring me on board to write colorful pieces about life along the balmy east shores of Florida.

Winter and tourist season eventually gave way to Spring and Easter.  Fewer and fewer folks frolicked to Florida as summer approached and as temperatures and humidity peaked along the Lauderdale beaches.  With the spring break finale receding like the pre-dawn tide, Lauderdale locals began reasserting themselves at bars and bistros along the beach.

With the tourists flowing backward and homeward, attendance for the blues hours at Evangeline slumbered downward.  Although not filled, the bistro was not left unpopulated on the trio of nights Miss Maybelyn performed.  In a word, the turn out during the off-season for Miss Maybelyn was, in a stately word: “nice.”

In fact, with the tourists thinned off I came to see that Evangeline was a regular roost for a couple dozen different folks who rounded in with regularity to hear the blues.  Many were singular in their visitations, coming to Evangeline alone as I continued to do into the summer.

On the third Friday in May, I took up what was my regular stool along the side bar at Evangeline.

“Say,” Kenny said, placing a vodka and tonic with a lime in front of me, the beverage I moved to after a couple weeks with the Jamaican rum.  “Say, I read your story today in the paper.”

“You did?”  I'm certain I sounded surprised because this was the first time since I landed in Lauderdale that someone actually remarked on one of my stories directly to me in person.  Although the paper received thoughtful, often kind, correspondence from readers about my efforts, I really did not personally know anyone in the city that could pay to me an actual compliment.

“Yeah, I read it.  I do read the paper, you know.”

“No, no  . . . That's not what I meant.  I guess I'm surprised when I hear that someone actually read something I wrote.”

“It was good  . . . the story in the paper today.”

“Thanks, Kenny.”

“You know  . . . you know what you should do, what you should make one your stories about?”  I shook my head.  Kenny leaned over the bar towards me in rather the conspiratorial fashion.  “You should do up a story about Miss Maybelyn and her blues singing.”

I sat quiet for a beat and then smiled.  “That, Kenny, is a good idea.”

Kenny beamed back in reply  “So, you'll do up one of your stories on Miss Maybelyn?”

I nodded.  “If she'll let me I will.”

“I bet she will.  She'd probably be flattered with the idea of you doing up a story about her and her music, about the blues.”

“I'll ask her, tonight  . . . after she performs.”

As always, at nine o'clock on the spot Miss Maybelyn took to the stage.

“I'm Miss Maybelyn and I'm going to do a bit a'singing for ‘ya tonight, a bit a'the blues.”

I drank a few vodka tonics throughout her three sets, occasionally exchanging a few words with Kenny as Miss Maybelyn performed.  When she finished for the night, at midnight, Kenny pointed at me and said to her: “Say, Miss Maybelyn  . . . I think he has something he wants to talk to you about.”

“What's that?”  She smiled at me as she dabbed tiny beads of sweat from her upper lip with a cotton hankie.  I shifted nervously on my stool, feeling every bit like a third grader at the all-school spelling bee.

“Well, Miss Maybelyn, I think you know I write articles for the Sun.”

“The newspaper?”  She nodded.  “I do know that.”

“Well, you see . . . I was thinking that an article about you and your singing  . . . I was thinking you and your performing  . . . that would make a great story for the paper.”

She laughed as if to fill the room.  “Lordy  . . . an article on me?  Your readers, they'd all fall asleep.”

“No, no  . . . they wouldn't.  You'll be perfect, you'd make a perfect article for the paper.”

“Oh Lordy.”

“He's right, Miss Maybelyn,” Kenny chimed in.  “People'd love to read up about you.  They sure would.”

“Lordy, Lordy.”

With some more persuading from me and more robust cheerleading from Kenny, Miss Maybelyn finally agreed to think about sitting for an interview.  “I will think about it, I promise,” she said.

The following week, after her Friday night show, she agreed to the interview, to the story.  She invited me to come to her home for tea the following week.

Sitting in her cozy living room, Miss Maybelyn poured us each a tall glass of tea.  Opening up my reporter's notebook, Miss Maybelyn spoke:

“You know, everything you need to know about me  . . . you already know.  It's in the music, my music  . . . the blues.”

With that said, Miss Maybelyn sat back in her chair, sighed deeply and spoke no more.  The memorial service for Miss Maybelyn was three days later - a traditional New Orleans styled jazz funeral.  I went to Evangeline the night following the burial of Miss Maybelyn.  At nine o'clock sharp, a different performer sang.  In the end, without Miss Maybelyn the music was a paler shade of blue.