Eve put on a CD. Jimi Hendrix began quietly playing as the bowl and lighter got passed around the room.
The gig had gone well. Grunge music had been infiltrating nearly every nook and cranny of America, but in the West Village alternative rock still mattered. I’d have been happy to play the gig under any circumstances, but I found myself truly liking High Noon’s songs. This, I couldn’t help thinking, was a band with a future. After the first song, once it became clear to the other guys that they didn’t need to worry about me missing cues or rushing tempos, everyone seemed to relax.
“There’s a chance,” Fred said to me afterward, amid the handshaking and back-slapping, “that Ian will stay in California permanently. So if things work out for all of us this summer …”
“That’d be great,” I said.
“No guarantee, though.”
“Sure,” I’d said. “I understand.”
When Fred returned to the apartment, he carried the dog back to his bedroom, explaining that Pete was deathly afraid of small dogs.
“Dude, I’m allergic,” Pete said.
For the next hour we talked, the nine of us. We smoked, and we drank the beer that was in the refrigerator, and we ate slices of the pizza that I don’t recall anybody ordering, and Mark, the bassist, his face freckled and hair in dreadlocks, made an impassioned defense of pineapple as a topping until someone pelted him with a napkin.
Our conversations involved the whole group but also smaller numbers, and we talked not like strangers but with the warm, easy feeling of old friends.
Sara exhaled a stream of smoke, her body shrinking into a deep sigh. As far as Jeffrey knew, she was in the computer lab working on her Shakespeare paper. She caught my eye and winked. One of her Texas gestures. Before leaving for the city, she had changed into a tighter pair of blue jeans and a black tank top, cut just low enough. She had stood at the rear of the bar at first and watched us play a couple of songs. But eventually she merged with a group dancing closer to the stage, the day’s annoyances appearing to have slid away.
She sat on the floor now, leaning against the sofa, boots kicked off, her hands clasped around her legs and her eyes closed. I took a good look at her and wondered if after three years, Jeffrey still felt the pleasure of arriving someplace with a woman who lit up a room. Like looking at an optical illusion, I could still see the Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, but I could also see the young woman I’d come to know. Somebody who wasn’t larger than life. Just a friend with a red bug bite on her ankle and fingernails bitten down to the quick.
I asked her if I might make an observation.
“Shoot,” she said, without opening her eyes.
“I don’t think that anything your teacher said means that she doesn’t think you’ll be a great writer someday.”
“Thanks, Will,” she said.
“Maybe you just need more experience. And in the meantime, she’s offered to help you make some contacts. I’ll bet you she doesn’t make that offer to too many of her students.”
“Maybe.”
“I’m guessing like one or two a year, if that.”
The hint of a grin. “Possibly.”
“So she probably thinks you’re talented, and she’s doing what she thinks is best for your career.”
She opened one eye and looked at me. “I’ve always liked you, Will.”
I assured her that the feeling was mutual.
Our numbers dwindled as the Hendrix CD ended and a Black Crowes CD began. The pizza was gone, and yawning became contagious. Gradually, people peeled themselves off the floor, bade farewell, and descended the stairs to whichever part of Manhattan or Brooklyn they called home. “See you soon,” they all said. I liked that.
Then it was just the four of us: Fred, Eve, Sara, and I. Fred let Garfunkel out of the bedroom. The dog clicked its way over to us and flopped onto its back so we could scratch its belly. We fussed over the dog for a while, and I looked at my watch.
“You two should stay,” Fred said. “I’ve got plenty of room.” His sister shared the two-bedroom apartment, but she was in DC visiting her boyfriend.
I thanked him but declined.
“We can at least help you carry your drums downstairs,” Eve said, and yawned.
“Go to bed,” Sara said. “We’ll just stay for a couple more songs, sober up a little, and get going.”