Johnny Q was bothering the coffee drinkers again, a ritual he thought he'd left on the shoulder of his past, before his career had risen to that indefinable next level. It was something he'd sworn off, and yet, like a junkie who is lost without a good methadone clinic, Johnny Q had backslid into an old bad habit.

So, there he stood in the corner, one knee gently moving to a self-imposed beat, playing a song from his latest album, a song he had performed on National Public Radio, a song that was favorably reviewed in Billboard magazine, a song he'd played in front of crowds in clubs from L.A. to New York, and even across the pond in Paris, a song that had wound up in an independent film that played on the Sundance Channel from time to time--it starred that chick who used to date that guy in the White Stripes.