“But he’s done.”
“He’s done,” Richard agrees. There’s a moment where they both kind of nod to each other with unspoken understanding. I get the feeling of a tragedy barely avoided. Whatever “Dimebag” is, we definitely dodged a bullet by missing it.
“What about Chloe. Is Chloe around?”
“No. No Chloe. I haven’t seen her.” Again, I get distinct businesslike impression from Richard, as if this is all quite serious. From context, I gather that Chloe, Dimebag, and fiddling all refer to musical acts that may or may not be trying out material in rehearsal mode even while the club is closed — presumably in preparation for next Friday night — but I can’t tell where Richard falls in the grand scheme. He doesn’t look like a musician or even much of a fan. Danny owns the place on his own, so Richard isn’t a partner. He has the manner of a screener — someone placed at the door to intercept and evaluate all comings and goings.
“Who’s here then?”
“Gavin and Freddy.”
“Gavin’s here?”
“Gavin and Freddy,” Richard repeats.
“Can we come in?”
Richard looks at me. He starts high, goes low, then slowly moves his eyes high again. The once-over isn’t lecherous. I get the feeling I’m being scanned, as if for weapons or evil motives.
“Yeah, I guess,” he says and steps aside.
Richard closes the door and stays behind us. I glance back to see if he has a stool where he awaits visitors, but he walks away. We either got lucky that he was there to answer Brandon’s knock or Richard was surveilling somehow, even though I get the impression that surveilling isn’t his job, if he even has one.
“Richard Spencer,” Brandon explains, watching my gaze. “He wouldn’t have been here when you were here last, I guess.”
I decide not to comment on the fact that Brandon shouldn’t know when I was here last, or that I used to come here at all. It’s not hard to figure out, but it’s also not the kind of thing you don’t know if you’re not interested enough to look.
“No. I don’t know him.”
“Everyone thinks he’s an undercover cop or something.”
We’re walking a dim hallway between the door and the main part of the bar, toward the stage. When I look over, I can’t catch Brandon’s expression or get him to notice mine.
“How can he be undercover if everyone knows?”
“They don’t know. They think. It’s possible he’s just a nut. He seems to have shown up in town two or three years ago and immediately failed to be inconspicuous. I will say that if he is undercover law enforcement, he’s terrible at his job.”
“And he hangs out at a closed bar?”
“Danny gave him some token job because he thinks he’s interesting. Not the first time Danny’s hired someone based on a wild hair or a soft spot.”
Brandon slightly pauses around “soft spot” and I get the impression there’s a deeper story there, but I don’t ask. It’s strange to think that I’ve never met Brandon before last week, given that I used to see bands and hang out at the Overlook at the sub-twenty-one nights and shows. But maybe he didn’t have the beard back then. I look up, trying to imagine what he’d look like shaved. Those eyes make me wonder. His face seems like it should be soft, whereas the beard only adds an unnecessary edge and distance. It’s like he — not Richard Spencer — is the one trying to hide.
We walk into the main room, which takes me back. Whatever renovations Danny is having done, they haven’t changed the place’s appearance on the inside any more than things have changed on the outside. There’s still the same small-and-intimate stage to one end, occupied by a man who’s milling about with a guitar. The stage looks strange to me because when someone is on it, the house lights have always been down. But the bar is bright right now, a set of multicolored Christmas lights surrounding a sprawling back-bar mirror. Bottles are lined up around it, all polished-looking and somehow dust free, their silver siphons sparkling in the overhead lights.
I know this room. I’ve heard so much great music here. I didn’t drink because I was too young, but I spent many late evenings steeped in the setting, making my father nervous, in the few years before I went away. I was always with a group of mixed-gender friends, always safe, never walking the streets in this good part of town alone after dark. But Dad was still probably overly permissive to let me out that late so often — just one of a few ways he may have spoiled me without meaning to, because I was his little girl and he couldn’t help it, because I didn’t have a mother and he wanted me to be happy.
I look over at Brandon.
“You have a meeting tomorrow, don’t you?”
He nods.
“Do you have time for this?” Meaning being here. With me.
“It’s only ten.”
Yes. And the club is closed, so it’s not like we can get carried away in the momentum of the evening and stay all night.
Unless we get carried away in the momentum of the evening. And stay together all night.
“Watch,” he says.
I think he’s drawing my attention to the man onstage, but I jump a little when I feel his hands on me — not on my hand or shoulders, but actually right on my hips. I glance where he’s looking and see a broken bottle on the floor. I wonder how it got there if the club isn’t open.
Brandon steers me around it, his manner casual, as if we’re supposed to be together — as if he guides me like this all the time. It’s forward of him to touch me like this, but once I feel his hands I don’t want it to stop. I let him guide me to safety, five seconds away. And when the hands leave, I still feel them.
I want them back. My head is buzzing, but not from the wine.
Brandon pulls a chair from one of the empty tables, which were usually cleared to widen the dance floor. He’s holding it out for me, so I sit. But he takes my arm when I do, as if I’m frail and need support. I don’t. But I take his help anyway.
Brandon sits beside, rather than across from me. The table is small, and my bare upper arm is practically brushing his starched dress shirt. He’s rolled his sleeves up sometime during the walk, and while his eyes are elsewhere, my arm seems to move on its own, and now they’re touching. His forearm is slightly tan, and I can see the muscles move as he taps a finger on the table. It’s a working man’s arm on a future executive’s body, as if he hasn’t outgrown his roots.
Eventually, the man on the stage sees us, not quite front and center but a row of tables back. He was pulling a stool into place in the stage’s middle with quiet confidence, but now he looks a bit taken off guard.
“Look who’s here,” the man says, smiling slightly. He looks somewhere around our age, maybe right in the middle. He has a curiously handsome look — a mix of sculpted bones, fine lips, and heavy, masculine brows. But there’s more on his face than beauty. I can almost see a cloud above him.
“Were you going to play?” Brandon asks.
“I was.”
“Don’t let us stop you.”
“It’s just an acoustic version of something I’m trying out.”
“Try it on us.”
“It’s not ready.”
“Gavin,” Brandon says, his voice both knowing and firm.
I don’t really understand what passes between the two men, but Brandon’s simple statement of the performer’s apparent name carries obvious weight that I can’t see or hear. I get the feeling of an old argument or at least an ongoing one, in which Brandon thinks he knows best — and Gavin, against his will, reluctantly agrees. It’s the way Dad used to tell me I needed to study when I wanted to go out, and being a good girl deep down, I had to admit he was right.
So Gavin, onstage, takes the stool and lays a beautiful blond-wood guitar across his lap. The house lights don’t dim, and the stage lights don’t change to give him a quiet spotlight. There aren’t any amps, not even a mic. It’s just us and Gavin.
The song is beautiful. I’ve never heard it before, but it sh
ifts something deep inside me. The lyrics aren’t especially sad, but still I find myself tearing up. I brush moisture from my eyes, minding my makeup, halfway through. Brandon looks over and gives me a knowing smile. There’s something he’s saying to me, but about Gavin and his song as well.
I listen until the final note then sit there somehow wounded. I don’t understand my reaction. But when people say you can hear an artist’s soul in his music? Yeah. That’s what Gavin’s song does to me.
He sets down the guitar then approaches our table. Brandon introduces us. Gavin doesn’t sit, and I get the distinct impression it’s because he’s embarrassed.
“Amazing, Gavin,” Brandon says.
“It’s just an adaptation.”
“It’s a good adaptation. Tell me you’re rehearsing so you can play it when the place reopens.”
“I can’t. It’s one of Grace’s.”
“Doesn’t make it not worth playing. In fact, that makes it more worth playing.”
I look from one man to the other. The air still has that curious feeling of empty. I feel unseated. My heart is yearning for something, but it doesn’t know what. Something vague and ephemeral maybe, like the emotion I heard inside the song. I look at Brandon to snap me out of it, but the feeling only grows stronger.
“Not yet,” Gavin says.
“She wouldn’t want this,” Brandon tells Gavin. “This. Here. What you keep doing to yourself.”
“I know.”
But there’s not much more to say, apparently, because Gavin makes vague little motions as if he needs to get back to pressing business. Finally, Brandon decides to grant mercy and tells Gavin thanks, he’ll see him later. I also thank Gavin, feeling more deeply than I maybe should, and shake his hand. He gives another of those sad smiles and leaves, not even retrieving his guitar from the stage.
“That man,” Brandon says, shaking his head.
“What about him?” I ask. “What’s his story?”
I feel something. I look down. Brandon’s finger just brushed mine by accident. Because I’m the girl and can get away with such things, I put my hand over his, feeling the roughness of a hard life under my palm. It’s supposed to be a gesture of reassurance, but we both know it’s not. My heart hammers hard enough in my chest to make me almost dizzy, and I fight the urge to make a telltale swallow.
“What is it, Brandon?”
Instead of answering, he leans in. Just a little.
I lean in too. Then I feel his other hand on my leg. It’s not too much, just enough. At any point we could back off, laugh, and pretend this is all nothing.
“What is it?” I ask again, my voice quieter.
His hand, on the table, turns over and squeezes mine. We move closer, and there’s nobody in the closed club’s main room to see.
Brandon’s phone vibrates. He breaks contact and straightens, and I’m left feeling naked, my breath too short.
He turns the phone to show me the screen.
“From Bridget. She and a friend returned my truck to the lot.” A friendly, no-big-deal smile, as if we hadn’t just been inches from kissing. “Isn’t that nice of her?”
“Peachy,” I say.
“I guess I’d better get you home.”
I straighten the rest of the way up as Brandon rises, the moment gone. But my body missed the message, and I can still feel my pulse everywhere at once.
“Come on,” he says, leading the way.
I follow, hot and bothered, unsure whether I’ve just been saved from something foolish or denied something wonderful.
CHAPTER 23
Riley
We’re out the door and back onto the street when Brandon stops under a street light. The sidewalks aren’t deserted but are fairly still; it’s a summer evening in Old Town and there’s plenty still going on, but much of it is indoors around the Overlook’s corner. A few people pass us, and I try to focus on each one. I imagine them as people who know my father, who know me, and whom I need to prove wrong. I was eighteen when I left, yes. But now I’m twenty-two and have a degree. I’m ready to move on. To become more. And no matter what Mason James thinks, I can.
“What?” I ask him.
He looks momentarily uncomfortable then glances up the street, toward the restaurant, presumably toward his truck — which, until five minutes ago, I’d assumed was a car.
“Maybe we should get you an Uber.”
“Can’t you take me home?” I shouldn’t have said that because it sounds demanding and perhaps a bit whiny, but I’m not quite ready for this evening to end. It should, by all measures. But I want more time. More chances for happy accidents like what almost happened inside the club.
“I have that early meeting.”
“But it’s just past ten.”
He sighs, then looks back at me and says, “It’s not a very nice ride.”
“What?” Then I understand. “You mean your car?”
“My truck.”
“Right.”
He looks so uncomfortable. I want to take his hand and, as in the club, tell him that whatever it is, it’ll be all right.
But instead of saying anything, he walks ahead. I scramble to keep pace.
“I had something come up,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been meaning to get a new car. But I had something come up.”
I look ahead. There’s only one parking lot in sight, and just one truck in the lot. Even from here I can see the rust. The thing is dark gray, but it might once have been black or even blue. It’s difficult to tell in the scant light, but it’s not hard to see that’s the subject of Brandon’s worries.
“Oh,” I say. “Of course.”
“Some stuff with Bridget. I had to help her out.”
He’s embarrassed. It breaks my heart. I want to smile, but can’t bring myself to do so lest he think I’m being patronizing.
“I told you about my friend Moochie when you asked about the Johnny Rotten picture, right?” I say.
“No.”
“And his car?”
Brandon gives a confused little shrug. “No.”
“It was a huge brown shitbox Buick. Because it was so messed up to begin with, he wasn’t picky about running into things. Like parking meters.”
I can tell I’m on thin ground, bringing up a crappy car story that makes it clear we both think his truck is crappy, too. But Brandon laughs a little.
I could tell him more — how Moochie used to Super Glue troll dolls to its hood and roof, for example — but I decide to stop while I’m ahead and keep things simple. So I grab his hand without thinking and say, “I like your truck.”
“It’s my work truck.”
“You should see my ‘work car,’” I say, which is ridiculous both because I only have one car and because it’s cluttered, but in great shape. “Come on.” And this time, I lead him. It’s a few steps before I realize I’ve been too familiar and let go of his hand, keeping close, smiling without making it too apparent how much I’m enjoying his company.
But Brandon, looking over, is quiet. It’s not vehicle shame now, though. It’s something deeper. Something animal. The smile leaves my lips, but now I want to walk even closer.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Enough time has passed that the first glass of wine, at least, should be leaving my system. But I still feel intoxicated. I want to touch Brandon, even knowing what a bad idea it is for us both. We could never be together. We’re not a good fit, and we’re from backgrounds different enough to be opposite. He’s too old for me. He works with (for!) my father. And if I embarrass myself in front of a man who might one day be my boss, I’ll only confirm all that Dad’s thinking. What everyone, I imagine, is thinking.
But by the time we climb into the truck, a tense quiet has settled between us. I’m afraid to look at Brandon. He seems afraid to look at me. I must appear angry, but the soul of Gavin’s sad song has rooted in my heart, and I’m anything but. I feel myself drawn towa
rd Brandon. And unless I’m mistaken, I can see him fighting the same thing from his end.
I sit. I strap in. I don’t know what to do with my hands, so I fold them in my lap. I don’t know where to look, so I turn my eyes to the dashboard, the floor, the CDs in the door pocket.
“I told you it was dirty before we got in,” he says, a bit too harshly, because he must think my survey means I’m judging.
“I know.”
“I didn’t expect I’d be driving anyone.”
“Except Bridget,” I say.
He throws me a look. Again: almost angry. Not angry at all.
“How do I get to your place?”
I tell him.
“That’s way up in Cherry Hill.”
“Yes,” I say, because it should be obvious and already established. He knows I live with my father for now. I just got home from college. And everyone knows my father lives in Cherry Hill, or at least they should assume it, based on his income and status.
“It’s going to take us a half hour to get there.”
“About,” I say.
“And a half hour to get back.”
“Maybe you should get me a cab after all,” I say, near to snapping. It’s hard for me to move with this full, inflated feeling throughout my body, but I swivel over and unclasp the seatbelt anyway. Every movement feels dangerous, as if I’m a bomb about to go off.
Brandon pushes the truck into reverse then backs up while I’m still unbuckled. I snap it back in, the issue apparently decided, and stare out the window.
Within a few minutes, the lights of Old Town surrender to fields. Street lights vanish. I keep looking out the side window, but there’s nothing to see, not even a moon. I could look forward, but there’s nothing there, either. And I’m pretty sure Brandon is mad at me, so I don’t want to catch his eye.
It’s okay. I think I might be mad at him, too.
I look over. He’s looking at me out of the corner of his eye. He flicks his stare forward again, and we sit in the dark cab, lit only by the instrument panel.
I reach out to at least turn on the radio. But nothing happens when I start pushing knobs and buttons.
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