In the end, with arguments and consultations of their phone calendars, we sorted out an emergency session to gather ideas, mid-morning on Saturday at Shanny’s house while her in-laws were in town and could spend time with her daughters.
We all shuffled up to the front door and I locked up behind them, still not sure it would work. I had never written a song, either. Not afull song. And the idea of writing something real, lyrics I would have to stand in front of the world andsing—
I watched the band skidding across the ice to their cars in their Chuck Taylors and boots, laughing, celebratory, hopeful.
Alex came out of the kitchen. “Floors?”
“Floors,” I said. That was the deal. The floors in exchange for the stage, the storage. The apartment, I guess. I didn’t mind. My whole body was still humming at a high wattage. I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
“So?” I asked. “What was Marisa bothering you about?”
“I don’t know. I was too busy.” He looked around the pub, but everything was in order.
I wasn’t sure that was the entire truth. “Should you get home, Alex?”
“I should get home,” he said, as though he’d just thought of it.
Ned emerged from the kitchen, one of our to-go containers in his hands, the ugly gray Earth-friendly kind I forced Alex to buy.
“Late order?” I asked.
“These food delivery apps are going to put us out of business,” he complained in a thin, needling voice. “They canceled after I’d already started cooking.”
He seemed nervous—and rightly so, I thought. I glanced at Pascal, who had probably had to cover for Ned tonight, along with Alex. He was looking at his sneakers. I waited for Alex to say something about Ned’s dereliction of duty, but he was unlikely to come up with the words on his own. I’d have to let it go for now.
Alex and the guys headed out, and when I heard the dead bolt turn, I stood up, stretched, and started turning the chairs upside down on the tables, the highlight reel from the show replaying in my head. The crowd reactions, the applause, the praise of what Bern had said. Thesting. I couldn’t wait to talk it all over with—
Joey.
All the exhilaration of the show, of Bern’s number in my pocket, collapsed. What was Joey’sdeal, actually? Ned had been so sure he’dcome tonight, and I wanted to spare any hope. But I was a little sick of wondering.
I went to the bar and picked up the phone. I had learned Joey’s sister’s number over the last week, almost but not dialing it several times. And now I almost but didn’t dial again.
It was three in the morning. You couldn’t call a normie house in the suburbs on tavern hours.
Someone knocked at the door as I hung up.
“We’re closed,” I yelled.
I could see the dark outline of someone peering through the circular window of the pub’s front door. Alex had missed the lock on the vestibule, I guess, and now I would have to get it, or by morning, it would be an outhouse.
The dude at the door started pounding with a fist.
Drunks, man. But, hey, at least it wouldn’t be a junkie, suddenly revealed to be my mother.Thiswas a new feeling, knowing where she was. Knowing exactly who she’d turned out to be.
At the door, the guy rattled the door handle.
“Closed, sir,” I said firmly, adding a few versions in Polish and Spanish, just in case. “Move along.”
There was a pause, the dark outline of him disappearing. Then came a crash as the guy ran at the door and threw his full weight at the dead bolt.
“Get out of here before I call the cops,” I yelled, my raw voice pitched high and squirrelly.
The back door, hanging broken. The wind hadn’t done that. I scrambled for the phone again, dialing nine, one—
A bang as the vestibule door swung closed. I looked up, and the porthole window was again a full circle.
What the hell wasthat?
