It Was Only Ever You by Kate Kerrigan

those years and leaving with nothing but some lousy cash. Money was never the point. Sheila knew that she had forgotten more about music than Dan and his ballroom-owning business buddies would ever know. Yet they were the ones who held all the power. She had tried to help Dan make more money by getting hip to the new scene, but he had laughed in her face. And, as she looked across at the sunlight flashing off the lit-up Pepsi sign, Sheila had a thought, as powerful as the revelation that night when she first heard Bill Haley. Rock and roll was here to stay and so was she. To hell with Dan – he had done her a favour. Losing her job at the Twilight was an opportunity. She was over thirty now. A spinster, for sure, but she wasn’t ashamed of the fact. Sheila had known from a young age that she couldn’t rely on anyone except herself. However, because she had been working for him for nearly ten years, she had come to rely on Dan more than she ought to have done. She didn’t love him, and had only slept with him out of comfort because he was there, and she knew him, and couldn’t be bothered to try and find a new, more exciting lover. Worse than that, she had become complacent about her work. Her passion for music had become dulled by time and familiarity.
    In the ten years since she had left college, Sheila had never really thought about her life, where it was going or what she was doing.
    But that, she decided, was all going to change.
    Sheila had always wanted to be a music manager. Out there, on the scene – finding new talent, then bringing them along, turning them into stars, making hits and making money.
    She was going to take this slap in the face from Dan as the kick she needed to make it work. There wasn’t anybody to push her forward, but that meant there was nobody there to hold her back. She’d flown in the face of convention already just by being a single Jewish woman working in a white man’s world. She was going to get herself out there, find herself an artist and start making hit records.
    If she got to stick one in the gut to Dan McAndrew and his fuddy-duddy ballroom while she was doing it? Well, that would be a bonus.
    She made a start the very next day.
    Sheila made a list of all the great musicians who she knew were without formal management, or who would be willing to switch to somebody with her kind of fresh ambition. If she could manage a few established jazz musicians, offering them good bookings and better deals on their existing pay, Sheila believed that would give her the basis from which she could seek out and make investment in completely new talent.
    She was delighted to see that the list was long, ten to fifteen definite-maybes – she knew a lot more people than she had realized. The list done, she washed her face, took off her bra and lay down for a nap. Seasoned night worker that she was, Sheila always rested in the afternoons so she would be ready to work hard in the hours when most other people slept.
    But this time, she could not sleep. For an hour, she lay there, just staring at the heavy blinds. She noted the slice of sunlight at the sill that settled on the dusty floor like a ray of hope. Sure, she was alone – at thirty-one, Sheila figured that was, more or less, a given now. She had hoped to find love, just like everybody else, but she knew she wasn’t most men’s idea of romance. She was too tough, too outspoken. Plus, she liked sex for the sake of it, just like a man. Men loved her for that and all of her best friends were men, but they didn’t fall in love with her. How could they? She was too much like one of them. Some afternoons, lying alone in her single bed above the diner, Sheila felt sad about that. But not today. Today she was going to put them all aside and follow her dream. Her first love was music, it always had been. Until now she had been flirting from the sidelines; today, she was going to jump right in and join the game. Sheila Klein: Talent Manager. Hell,