Rainy Nights and Mondays

Portland we're not.

And yet it took me three tries before the rain let up enough to venture to the car and then on to Secco.

Unexpectedly, there I found every table taken and half the bar, too.

It may have been a rainy Monday night, but people wanted to be o-u-t.

They were down to only one French Rose, La Grange Tiphaine, a pale salmon-colored delight with hints of strawberries, which I happily took from my server Kenneth (not his real name, nor did he resemble a Kenneth, which I told him, much to his disappointment).

As the rain tapered off now that I was safely inside, I ordered Montasio cheese crackers with late summer tomato jam, an exemplary sweet/salty tease to get me started.

As luck would have it, a friend arrived and asked if she could join me.

I assumed it was a rhetorical question.

Since we hadn't chatted for a while, I got to hear about her boyfriend's new position, the first two times she was sexually harassed at work and her current read, "At the Mouth of the River of Bees," a book recommended to her by the guy who lived in my apartment before I did.

Barely one degree of separation in this town.

Over a salad of field greens, pistachios, chevre and lemon/thyme dressing, I told her one of my first sexual harassment stories, which involved a DJ, a slap on the ass and a misguided compliment.

Not long after, two women came in, took seats at the end of the bar and jumped into the conversation, inexplicably yielding all kinds of info about their family and past.

That their parents had been only 15 and 16 when they'd married.

That their grandfather, an alcoholic, had thrown his wife down the stairs when he found out she was pregnant.

That they think their grandmother eventually murdered their grandfather, although it was referred to as "pneumonia."

Best line of the night came from the younger sister.

"She was a mistake and I was a regret," she explained perfectly seriously.

Friend and I howled at that.

I left the three of them to more libations and headed down to Balliceaux for an evening of Count Basie and Duke Ellington.

Just as I arrived, the RVA Big Band took off with Sir Duke's "East St. Louis Toodle-oo," so I watched and listened from the steps near the kitchen so as not to interrupt their flow.

During the applause, I slipped in, finding wall space under the kitchen for Basie's "Corner Pocket" and "Jive at Five" and Ellington's "Cotton Tail."

By that point, the band was in full swing and a fellow jazz lover observed that several of the songs being played tonight were from the '30s and must have sounded very exotic to the middle class white people hearing them back then.

At least they would have been dressed to go out. What I was noticing tonight was the dress code.

Many's the time I've gone to hear the Big Band and seen people dressed up nicely in the audience, especially the women in pretty dresses and heels.

Tonight it was mostly short shorts and sandals on the women and guys in longer shorts.

Glamour was noticeably absent, except for in the music.

"Ko-Ko" had the bandleader trading his sax for a clarinet while "Moten Swing" actually got a couple up and swing-dancing to it in that way that made everyone in the room envy their skills.

During the break, a few people left but mostly a whole lot more people arrived (coincidentally, mostly in shorts), making the room very full with a 17-piece band and standing room only for latecomers.

Basie's "Magic Flea" kicked off the second half but it was "Nobody's Perfect" that had one of the sax players pulling out a flute for a couple of notes at the end of the song, making him and the audience grin at the unlikely ending.

No big band night should be complete without "Take the A-Train" and mine wasn't till we heard it, all swinging sophistication and confident musicians.

You can't go wrong with Basie and Ellington on a warm, wet Monday night.

No mistakes, no regrets.