Jeff pulls his guitar around to play the second song, something I have never heard before but which evokes a familiar emotion: the irresistible melancholy of longing. Encountering this kind of sublimity is so overwhelming that it makes me want to capture it in an image. Discreetly, I take a single photo, theclickof the shutter buried in the reverb. Then I abandon the camera and give myself over entirely to the moment. Over the course of the set, Jeff sometimes leans against the wall, like he’s fiddling around in his own living room, casually being a genius. Sometimes he cradles his guitar closer to his chest, turning its face upso he can gaze upon it with more attention, as if it were a lover.
When the set ends, I look over at Nisha. Her face is streaked with tears.
“I think I just saw god,” Nisha says.
For once—and just this once—Nisha is not overreacting.
“Go talk to him,” I urge her. “Do it now, before he gets too famous.”
At the front of the room, Jeff is already being swallowed up by the crowd. Nisha moves, zombie-like, into the fray.
I peel myself off the ground, unsticking my dress from the unswept floor. When I stand, my knees buckle underneath me. My legs have fallen asleep.How much time just passed?
“What’d you think?”
The guy in the suit. Over the past however long, I had been so fixated on the music, and the musician, that I’d almost forgotten he was just above me.
Earlier, I could tell that he was handsome, if out of place. Now I see that he’s unbearably hot—and also, somehow, intensely familiar. As if I’ve previously seen the way his forearms flex under his rolled-up shirtsleeves, and already know how a section of his dark hair falls, curling over one eye. Like I’m familiar with how the corners of his mouth turn downward, not up, when he smiles, which makes it seem like he’s harboring a secret I’m desperate to be in on. As though I’ve already heard the deep rumble of his laugh. And felt the weight of his body pressing me up against a wall.
It doesn’t make sense. But to question it—I don’t know where to start.
“I thought... I don’t know what I thought,” I say. “I have nothing to compare it to.”
“In a good way or a bad way?” he asks.
For a moment, I wonder if I have the future of Jeff Buckley’s career in my hands. “Definitely in a good way. I don’t think he’s signed yet, but if he’s not, he should be.”
“I agree.”
I shift on my feet, still trying to get the blood moving in my legs. I touch the back of the man’s chair for balance, accidentally brushing against his suit jacket, which he’s folded and neatly draped over the back. His eyes shift to my fingers, then trail up my arm, my shoulder, my neck. I force myself to blink.
He nods at the red-haired girl. “You ready to go, Cat?”
“What time is it?” Cat runs her hand over her head.
He checks his watch. Up close, I see that it’s a scuffed Timex. Not fancy after all. “Seven fifteen.”
“Dinner’s not until eight. Dad can wait.”
Dad. My gaze darts between them.
“The express is running local,” the guy says. “It’ll take an hour to get up to Park.”
“So you don’t have a limo,” I start. When they look at me blankly, I add, “So you can whisk Jeff Buckley away and offer him a million-dollar record deal? With a golden tablespoon of coke as a signing bonus?”
Cat cackles and elbows the guy. “I told you, you look like a fucking suit.”
“Well, I am one, for the summer.”
“Not record-label people, then.” I feel foolish, out of sorts.
I look out the window. The limo is gone. So are the musician and his gear, I discover as I glance around the room. Patrons are slowly making their way out to the street, into the hot, real world.
I feel a flicker of panic. I’m not ready to go back out there. I’m not ready to face the impending school year—or the fact that I desperately need to get a job this semester after spending the summer doing nothing other than sunning myself in Tompkins Square Park and sneaking photographs of the leftover eighties punks, their mohawks drooping in the heat. I’m not ready to replace the feelings this night elicited with the avalanche of things I need to do.
“I’m definitely not cool enough to be a record-label person,” the man says. “I have a temp gig at my uncle’s investment firm.”
“Which means he’s basically working for free,” Cat cuts in.
