Maybe it was the grill. The thousands of them that had gone before, leaving greasy footprints on the hands of time. Maybe it was the meat. Some ultimate juju concoction that defied those who would try to unlock its secrets. Its possible it could be the bun. That toasting on said sacred grill that put the whole deal over the top. Onions? Yes, but that was too obvious. Way too obvious. They didn't even use Heinz Ketchup. The quintessential Fuck You.

Finally, maybe it was the place. JESUS JONES had started out in the late sixties as some sort of southern fried hippie hangout. An oasis of insane sanity on the social desert that was Nashville Tennessee in the dying days of the sixties/seventies. If you had long hair back then, you couldn't even get served at the local Pancake House. Segregation still a foregone conclusion. Hell lurking just around the corner. Church of Christ the only sure shot to Heaven. Baptist a slippery slope to damnation. Speaking in Tongues, snake handling and tithing sure to get you an inside track to the pearly gates. JESUS JONES was a loose buckle on the Bible belt. You could get cold Budweiser inside, hot sex in the parking lot when Vanderbilt was in session and all those impossibly blonde coeds were trying so hard to get back at their Type A uncaring daddies and their hopelessly alcoholic, jealous mommies.

Unfortunately JESUS JONES had lost its counter culture cache thru the years and had become “just another beer joint.”. Owners came and went. Neon beer signs went up and came down. But one thing had remained the same. One thing could not be vanquished. One thing had a life of its own and lives on to this day: THE CHEESEBURGER .

The beer remained reasonably cold. The parking lot sex had been mostly quashed by that nasty little party favor AIDS, but THE CHEESEBURGER ruled. Lived on and thrived. College Profs, locals from the neighborhood, Lawyers, Losers, Winners, Retirees. They all came to pay their respects and receive communion at the wobbly chipped tables that adorned JESUS JONES. Another legion of pilgrims were the long motley line of singers, songwriters, musicians, Wannabes, Has Beens, Never Weres, and Hillbilly Millionaires, that lived, worked, lied and died on and around that inbred clump of streets near downtown Nashville, called Music Row.

He'd first had one in the late seventies. An A&R intern from the label had brought him to JESUS JONES after a concert. While he was performing in town he wanted to score some blow. Maybe a blowjob,if it wasn't too much work. While he was waiting to score he'd gotten hungry. He always got hungry after a gig. Hungry for food. Hungry for sex. Hungry for drugs. Hungry. Just hungry. It was the first real by God RocknRoll tour he'd ever been on. He had become a genuine badass electric guitar gunslinger. “The best in my price range.” he used to joke.

Through the years he'd forgotten about what kind of drug he had scored, or the face of the English Lit. major that buried herself drunkenly in his lap, but he'd never forgotten that Cheeseburger

2:03pm: Owen Love had been up for at least two hours already.2002/Owen Love. Those two things did not go together. A cosmic oxymoron. In Owens mind it was still somewhere in the late seventies/early eighties and he was still twenty six. Lear jets? Owen had been there, drinking Dom and snorting cocaine off some top shelf titties. Big Tours? The biggest. Owen had been there making whatever flavor of the month star look like he, she; “it” was actually that good. “Keep ‘em laughing and wear cool clothes.” That was Owens mantra. Mr. Country Savior or Little Miss Diva really didn't have a clue just how good Owen was. But that was O.K. As long as he got the gig.

That was the trouble right now. Owen didn't have the gig. For the first time in a long time, Owen Love didn't have a paying job as a musician. As a matter of fact his last gig had sucked pretty hard. There was no Lear involved. No brand new Prevost tour bus with a bunk directly over the rear wheel to call home. Just a very late model Silver Eagle that used to belong to some over the hill Rock Star and was now being leased by a Bi Polar Bulimic country Chick singer who hadn't had a hit in five years. Make that seven and counting. The honkytonks, hat bars and cinder block skull orchards he had played on his way up he was now playing again. Not a good sign. Definitely not a good sign. That's why he had come to JESUS JONES. That's why he had taken up his sentry post at the bar.

Owens shaggy black hair hung unkempt around his puffy oval face. The last ten years had put on an unwelcome twenty pounds, mostly around his middle. A rocker with a beer gut. Bad form. Bad for business. He could still get layed but no longer by the Diva and lately not even the background singer. Viagra gave him a headache and made him see everything with a blue halo around it. Lately he had pretty much lost interest anyway.

Owen wore his trade mark black jeans, blue denim work shirt and Harley boots. He'd given up wearing shades sometime back in the nineties. If he wasn't cool enough by now, Owen thought, he was fucked. He regarded his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Rough. Still some handsome left but he could almost see it sweating out of his skin. One too many tequila shots backstage. One too many bumps from the A+R guy who was protecting his investment and his own ass. Like James Brown said; Payback was a Mother Fucker. The time had come and Owen knew it. He needed intersession. He needed healing. He had come for most Holy Communion. Owen Love had come to JESUS JONES for THE CHEESEBURGER.

When Owen had gotten divorced from his first wife Nikki he holed up in JESUS JONES for three straight days and nights. Living on cigarettes, Stolichnya Lemon flavored Vodka and the occasional C.B. Up until Katie, he had been batting a thousand. If a girl was dysfunctional, delusional, damaged or any combination there of, she would end up in Owens bed and entangled in his showbiz life. Sometimes she would even end up married to Owen Love. Nikki was one of those girls. One of a kind of a kind. Thank God He didn't make anymore of those. One day Rachel Agnes Felder woke up and became Nikki. Just Nikki. She claimed her style was somewhere between Sheryl Crow and Dolly Parton, whatever the hell that meant. Owen knew better than to argue taste or style with Rachael/Nikki. A year into their marriage, she'd developed this mysterious Euro Trash accent. It freaked Owen out because Nikki/Sarah had been born and raised in Morgantown West Virginia. She'd also developed a taste for a German Chemicals Rep named Claus she had met while Owen had been out on the road for a six week tour of the West Coast and Canada. Owen had come directly to JESUS JONES from Divorce court. Even though that was years ago, give or take a few thousand brain cells Owen remembered exactly what he had ordered.

“Hey man, Gimme two cheeseburgers and some burnt fries. Oh yeah. And lemme have a fresca and a Darvon.”

Owen used laughter like a shield. He always found it amazing that Charlie Chaplin had written the song “Smile”. The ultimate armor. When Owen had been a Theory and Harmony student at Julliard he had analyzed Chaplins song three ways: harmonically, lyrically and spiritually. It was that last part that had really fucked up his Theory and Harmony Prof.

“Ya know what I think Professor Brite. I think you gave me a C- because you are threatened by me.

“ Mr. Love certainly you don't……”

“You just couldn't give me an F But you found something worse didn't you? You gave me a C- you pretentious little cum chugger!”

“Now Owen, I can certainly understand your…….”

“It never entered your mind that just because Chaplin or for that matter Mozart or Hank Williams were genius they could also be totally, spiritually bankrupt. You don't wanna believe it and you are envious of the fact that you cant go there and I can. I know the truth! You don't and you can't deal with it!”

That was the day Owen quit Julliard , quit studying Theory and Harmony. That was the day Owen stopped playing classical piano, traded his Martin 0018 for a ‘56 Tele and a Vox AC-30, kept his mouth shut and went on the road.

2:53pm. In L.A. there's a place that claims to have the worlds best cheeseburger. Actually, there are dozens of them there. First of all, show biz people in L.A. don't eat Cheeseburgers. They eat each other. At least that was Owens truth at the moment. The charismatic savants will pose by a burger but they definitely don't swallow. Point number two: The claim is utter bullshit. Courtney Love being seen on E! Entertainment, riding her Harley to the best cheeseburger in the world is anti Christ advertisement. He might have to work with them but enough is enough .“Anyway,'” Owen thought, “The last meat she had in her mouth definitely wasn't a cheeseburger.”

What sat in front of Owen was the genuine article. The Holy Grail. Sitting there on a virginal white mini platter, nestled among a perfect nest of overdone fries. Super sour pickle chips anointing the top. There sat the Cheeseburger. Owen had found thru the years of coming to JESUS JONES, that it almost didn't matter how he dressed his burger. If he was in a ketchup mood he was known to go thru half a bottle per burger and fry unit. Some times a white trash burger was in order. Major mayonnaise followed by ketchup mustard and a goodly shot of Texas Pete Hot sauce. Some times the way they did it in certain parts of Texas was the way to go. Double mustard. And not that bullshit fancy kind. Plain bright yellow mustard. The color yellow not found in nature.

Ultimately Owen found it was all about the burger. Kinda like Gods word. It wasn't about speaking in tongues, not eating meat on Friday, fasting, going to church on Wednesday, crawling on your knees to some plaster Saint, sitting Shiva, or any hundreds of the forms of baptism that existed. No. It was all about communing directly with your higher power. And right now God and Owen were sharing a cheeseburger.

3:05pm

The door to JESUS JONES lurches open. There standing in the doorway, blocking almost every bit of late afternoon Nashville light stands, somewhat tentatively, J.C. Doubletree. All five foot seven, three hundred and thirteen pounds of him. One of Nashville's Legendary song writers. Just ask him.

“OWEN BY GOD LOVE!!!!!!! Szat you? Shit! I been missin you! Hey! Ester! Whut color panties you wearin? Never mind. Ill find out later. I think Id like two cheeseburgers, double fries and a pitcher of Bud. Just a Little something' to hold me over till Mama puts dinner on the table. Hey man! You hear ‘bout them finding a box with Jesus' brothers bones in it? Jesus' brother!? That's like bein' Frank Sinatra Jr. on steroids! Haw Haw Haw Haw!”

Owen had grown used to the “Doubletree entrance”.

“Hey Tree. What up? You look a little crispy.”

“Man! You aint agonna believe this shit. Hey Ester ya better gimme a bowl a chili while I wait.

“You need to slow down J.C. Your sweatin right thru your overalls.”

“Too much fun my brutha, too much fun. Me n' Bumpus was writin' yesterday and we couldn't come up with shit so we decided to take a lil' break. Man! I aint even been home yet. Mommas gonna have my ass! Any way, me and Bumpus got higher than Hitler's gas bill I tell Ya! HAW HAW HAW!!!!!!!!!!!”

J.C. absentmindedly started pulling fries off of Owens plate. When he reached for the last two bites of Owens burger, Owen very deftly Wrapped J.C.s Kielbasa fingers with the back of his knife. J.C. hardly reacted. He just started ladling steaming hot chili into his still conversing mouth. Owen was in awe of the way J.C. DoubleTree could consume just about anything. Owen recalled a few years ago after coming off of The Garrisons third farewell tour . He had spent the good part of an afternoon observing a pair of humming birds at his window feeder. There they were, floating in air at the little plastic flower feeding tube, relentlessly sucking down prodigious amounts of sugar water. What had amazed Owen the most at the time was the fact that these teeny little humming birds were shitting while they were eating. Shitting and eating. Eating and Shitting. Simultaneously. Owen thought if he were Hindu he might suspect these were Rahjas reincarnated as humming birds to set their gluttonous cosmic balance sheet straight. By this time J.C. was into his second cheeseburger, tearing off Herculean bites. Oblivious to the fact that a righteous river of ketchupmustardmayonaisehotsauce was starting to well up in the folds of his overalls bib.

“By the way Tree congrats on your latest number one.”

“Love, I amaze myself sometimes. I really do. Course its my first hit in about three years, but lemme tell you my brutha, my goal is to die unrecouped. HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Suddenly J.C. Doubletree started coughing and hacking uncontrollably. Bits of cheese burger went sailing thru the air. The empty pitcher of Bud was Knocked over and landed with an unbreakable glass thud. Owen started beating J.C. on his round blubberized back.

“Woah back there J.C.! Yer gonna have a stroke right here! Chill out. Here. Ester brought you some water. Drink some.

“Water! Fish fuck in water! Gurgle..cough..cough.. Gimme a beer!”

As soon as J.C. was seized by choking it was over.

“Well, gotta go. Mommas havin pork chops for dinner. I got to go to my A..A.. meeting tonight. Makes Momma proud. Guess Ill be pickin' me up another one of them white chips again. I swear, I got enough of them to have me a poker game. Haw Haw Haw! Ill check out yer panties later Ester. By the way, How you ddoin Owen?”

“well Tree Ill tell ya. Not so gu……………”

“Well got to go. I believe I might get me some pussy tonight. I havent seen my dick in three days.HAW HAW HAW….Hey! Them are the best cheeseburgers on the planet! I believe Im gonna write a song about em. “Cheeseburger Boogie!” HAW HAW HAW HAW………….

And with that J.C. Doubletree was gone.

Owen used to court Katie with cheeseburgers from JESUS JONES. It was better than flowers as far as Hack was concerned. Katie had acquired the name Hack from the deeply prodigious cough produced by her frequent asthma attacks. Katie always came home depressed after a visit to her Asthma specialist but a JESUS JONES cheeseburger could raise her spirits. For a while anyway. The Doctor said Katie's Asthma was quite dangerous and needed constant monitoring. The problem was Katie hated doctors. Ever since third grade and Dr. Kaufman. Katie hated doctors. Owen had just gotten his first cell phone. He had stopped going out much but sometimes he just had to get out to breathe living air. Somehow the kind of Amp he would be using on the next tour didn't seem to matter as much as before. The cell phone was big and clunky. but when he went out he wanted to make sure Katie could always reach him. They had a game they would play when Katie was feeling good .

“Hello?”

“Hey hotshot .”

“You O.K. Hack?”

“Awesome, fabulous. Cough… Never better. Baby needs something.”

“What does baby need?”

“She needs it hot. She needs it now.”

“you want fries with that?'

“ No. Just the burger. Extra mustard. Hurry.”

“Yeah? Well if you kick off before I get there, I'll never speak to you again.”

“Ya know if you ever get tired of playing music, you have a huge future in comedy.”

“Mocking me Eh? Somebody's feeling better.”

“Hurry up Hot Shot.”

Owen was so very angry at Hack for dying. He could barely forgive her. So unnecessary. So very fucking unnecessary. There she was. On the floor in the kitchen of their rented home in Sylvan Park. Lying there like some giant child's discarded Barbie doll. A look of surprise on her still opened gray green eyes. No soul left but still the reflection of another's. A mango colored rescue inhaler under the kitchen table. The telephone receiver lying close by.

After the funeral they all gathered at JESUS JONES. Katie's parents even came. J.C. Doubletree and his plump Bank teller wife Carol Ann were there. All the girls from Katie's Pilates class. Katie's Gay brother Jeremy and another half dozen close friends. Nikki had even threatened to come. She said she had written a song for the occasion and she wanted to premier it at this event. J.C. had somehow convinced Nikki that a larger venue would be more respectful of her work. Once Nikki agreed she had suddenly begged off paying her respects to Owen and showing up altogether.

Owen had ordered a cheeseburger but never took a bite. It was like he had gone deaf. Like cotton had been stuffed in his ears. And his heart. People came up to him to say their regrets and he responded but it was automatic. He was under water. It felt like the time he and Katie had gone diving in Bon Aire. Her asthma prevented her from diving, but not Owen. He'd been down a little too long and had gotten narced. He had felt queasy, a little dizzy, disoriented and somewhat stoned. That's how Owen felt that day at JESUS JONES. Sitting there wearing his best black Manuel suit, staring at his cheeseburger and talking under water. It would be two years before he could cry. Today was the day.

J.C. had been gone about ten minutes. Owen felt it coming. Like a rainstorm in the distance. Heavy weather approaching. He could feel it in his face. An ache. A bitter taste in his mouth like some kind of metal. First an odd sort of smile and an odd laugh. Then came the tears. Big round salty tears. They rolled down his face and soaked his T shirt. He did not try to hid them or wipe them away. “You Can't Stop The Rain.” One of J.C.s songs. “Well, the fat fuck was right.” Owen thought as he let two years worth of sadness, loneliness, and regret out into the world. Regret that reached beyond Katie's Casket, beyond all the missed opportunities, the blame; the resentments; Rachael/Nikki; that lost twenty six year old guitar player with a big future ahead of him. The shit. All of it. Owen sat there staring it all down. Tasting it. Finally feeling it. “So let it in and let it out.” like the Beatles had said. And it felt good. Right there in JESUS JONES. It felt good.

“Esther, being the consummate professional bar maid that she was, knew there were times you let your patrons alone and times when you didn't.

“You O.K. Owen?”

“ah… Yes and no. Kinda sorta. yes and no. Mostly yes I guess.”

“J.C. step on your toe?”

“Naw.”

Esther wiped her small hands on the greasy bar towel as she regarded Owen Love.

“Life's a bitch and then ya die.”

“Oobla Dee Oobla Da.”

“Some days you eat the bear and some days the bear eats you.”

“You Can't Always Get What You Want”

“Oh shit Owen. I never met anyone that can speak in song titles like you.”

We'll it could be worse. I could be a mime with Tourettes.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Even I don't know what that means.”

“Well then is there anything I can do for ya darlin“?”

Owen looked into Esther'.s thousand year old eyes. He glanced around the elegantly wasted interior of JESUS JONES. A four second eternity passed. Then he turned back to Esther, heaved a big sigh and said,

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