Vivien turned toward the sound of her name, shouted loud enough for her to hear over the bohemian crowd packed into the late-night, smoky, backstreet club. She squinted into the gloom and caught sight of a grinning, shirtless Charlie Raven, both arms raised over his head to catch her attention, a lit cigarette dangling between his long fingers.
She wound her way toward him between writhing bodies, protecting her wineglass as best she could from spillages because she couldn’t afford to buy another drink on the pittance Louis had paid her so far. Not that she was about to ask for more. The fact that she was here at all felt like pure magic, that of all the people in all the world, Louis Brockman had happened to walk out of Hammersmith Underground station and hear her busking in the rain. He’d stopped in his tracks, raindrops running from his slick hairstyle to gather on his eyebrows, watching her until she’d finished for the day, buying her coffee afterward and changing her life in the course of an hour. Come back to New York with me, he’d said. Sing in the band I manage, he’d said. The original singer had got return-to-college last-minute cold feet but Louis already had dates booked across the United States for the band. Give me a year and I’ll make you a star, he’d said, and Vivien had believed every word. And she still believed him, even if the reality was proving far less glamorous than the picture he’d painted for her back in that steamy café in London. Not that Viv needed glamour. Louis had thrown her a rope and hauled her from the cold soup of London, living the fraught existence of a girl fresh out of the care system and loved by precisely no one, and she planned on clinging to it until her palms bled.
“Got you,” Charlie said, reaching out and catching her hand to pull her toward him. “We’re over here in the corner.”
He turned away, still holding on to her hand, pulling her behind him as the crowds parted more easily for him than they had for her. She kept her eyes on the python tattoo slithered around his neck and between his shoulder blades, its head disappearing into the low-slung jeans tight on his skinny hips. He was the drummer in the band, louche offstage, wild the second he landed behind his drum kit. In the few short weeks since she joined the band, she’d already noted the way girls flocked around Charlie Raven, his mischievous energy and crooked smile difficult to resist. She was attracted to him herself, but not enough to get involved. This was her one shot, no guy was standing in the way of that.
She glanced at the stage as they passed by, swallowing a mouthful of wine as fuel because they were due up there in half an hour. Charlie’s drum kit was already in place, Felipe’s battered blue guitar leaning against a speaker. She wasn’t nervous. She simply couldn’t wait to get up there. The sensation of being front and center felt like being fired into the sun from a cannon and she craved it with all of her being. The Lower East Side club was the last one in a succession of similar small-time venues Louis had lined up for them in the city, all of them late night and packed out, all of them undercut with tension and pulsatingly, knife-edge sexy. Back in London, Vivien had eked out an existence from scant busking funds, a stone-cold bedsit and no one to turn to. Here she was part of something glorious, needed for the first time ever, and she threw herself into it headlong.
Charlie let go of her hand once she was among the band. As usual there were various hangers-on: Madonna-inspired girls in mesh vests over ballgowns and pearls, punk rock boys in leather and eyeliner, everyone high on cheap booze and marijuana and the rebellious wind of change blowing through the city.
Felipe, the band’s lead guitarist, caught her eye and touched his fingers against the rim of his fedora, looking at her wineglass over the top of his mirror shades.
“What are you drinking?”
She bit the inside of her lip, feeling gauche. “White wine.”
He rolled his eyes and reached for her glass, upending it on to the floor.
“Have a proper drink. We’re doing Bloody Marys.”
He refilled her glass full to the brim from a pitcher on the table, the contents dirty red and gloopy when he handed it back.
Viv sniffed it. “Smells like tinned tomatoes.”
“Come on, Vivien,” Felipe said, leaning against the wall. “Get with it.”
She tasted it, a small sip, and wrinkled her nose at the sharp hit of vodka followed by the unexpected savory twist of Worcestershire sauce, all awash in thick canned tomato juice. In years to come she’d learn to embrace a well-made Bloody Mary, but this wasn’t that, and she all but gagged trying to get it down.
“You like it?”
“I do not,” she said, shuddering as she took another huge gulp.
Charlie looked across and smirked, cupping his hand around a half-smoked spliff to relight it. “If you puke that lot up onstage it’ll be fucking spectacular.”
These guys were the people she’d spent most of her time with since arriving in New York, either practicing or performing, and they were forming a bond, of sorts. She couldn’t say she actually liked them much yet, but there was comfort in the familiarity of their presence at least. She figured they’d probably save her in a fight, grudgingly, something which never felt more than an exciting breath away in the grungy, anything-goes backstreet clubs they spent most of their waking hours in.
Felipe laughed as he refilled Viv’s glass with more red sludge. “It would look like you’re actually fucking dying, internal organs splattered all over the front row.”
“My kind of show,” Charlie said, holding his smoke to the waiting lips of a girl leaning against him. “Hey, isn’t that your brother?”
Felipe followed the direction of Charlie’s nod and lifted his hand in greeting. Viv took advantage of the distraction to tip the disgusting contents of her glass into a huge potted plant behind her and then turned back to find herself face-to-face with a stranger.
“This is my brother, Santo. I got all the looks, obviously,” Felipe said, droll. “Santo, this is Vivien. She’s from London, don’t you know?” He delivered the last line in a terrible English accent, making Viv sigh and roll her eyes as she stuck her hand out on impulse.
“It’s just Viv,” she said, gazing up into Santo’s face and liking what she saw there.
His surprised gaze held hers as his fingers closed around her hand, and Viv floundered for something else to say as she registered the warmth of his touch, the slant of his cheekbones, the dimple in his chin when he smiled.
“Hi, just Viv,” he laughed and glanced at her empty glass. “Can I get you another drink?”
Relieved to find Felipe had already turned away to talk to someone else, Viv nodded. “I’ll come with you to the bar.”
* * *