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 shifts 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.