The Unsinkable Greta James(67)

She rarely watches her own performances, and there’s something strange about seeing this one now. She feels both immensely proud and also wildly distant, as if it doesn’t belong to her anymore. As if someone else made that track. Someone else sauntered across that stage and absolutely crushed it. Someone else took a formal bow at the end, and then—as the applause continued to grow—waved at the crowd as she walked offstage.

Someone else. Surely it had to be someone else.

“Wow,” Ben says when it’s over, and Greta sets the phone down. The waiter appears behind them with their desserts: a slice of cheesecake for Ben and a strawberry tart for Greta. She tucks in right away, but Ben is still watching her. “That was…it was…”

“Really nice?” she suggests, and he laughs.

“And then some.”

She reaches over for a forkful of his cheesecake. “Isn’t it weird?” she asks once she’s done chewing. “Achieving your dreams?”

“How so?”

“It’s like, if I’d shown that to my twelve-year-old self,” Greta says, gesturing at the phone, “she would’ve lost her mind. To be playing up there in front of all those people?” She shakes her head. “It would’ve been a total dream come true. Just that one song alone. Did you feel the same way when you published your book?”

“I guess so,” he says thoughtfully. “But after watching that, it feels…quieter.”

Greta laughs. “But if twelve-year-old Ben could see you now, what would he think?”

“He’d be pretty psyched I’m in Alaska,” he says with a grin. “And he’d think the book was cool. But that kid was also kind of a nerd.”

“The odds are so crazy, right?” she says, taking another bite. “To actually make a go of it. To be one of the best. It doesn’t matter if you’re a guitarist or a writer or a soccer player or whatever. It’s all so unlikely.”

“Until it’s not,” Ben says, and she smiles at him.

“I remember a few years after college, this hotshot manager came to a gig I had at a bar on the Lower East Side. My best friend, Yara, was playing keyboard with me then, and I told her that all I wanted was for this guy to sign me. I didn’t care if anything else happened after that. I was waiting tables at the time, and I thought I just wanted some validation—some sign that this was all going somewhere. That would’ve been enough, you know?” She looks out the window at the perpetual dusk. “Yara—she laughed at me. She said, ‘If you sign with him, you’ll want to make a demo. And if you make a demo, you’ll want a label to pick it up. And if a label picks it up, you’ll want to hit the charts. Nobody ever wants just the one thing.’?” She turns to Ben, who is watching her intently. “And she was right.”

“So what do you want now?”

She smiles. “What a question.”

On the phone’s screen, the algorithm is suggesting the next video: Greta James Loses It at BAM. She watches Ben’s eyes fall on the words, then flick away again.

“You’ve seen it,” she says, “haven’t you?”

He’s quiet for a moment; then he nods. “I looked you up that first night.”

She reaches over to switch off the phone, and Ben leans forward.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, “I don’t think it’s as bad as you think. It was real and it was human and you should never apologize for that.”

“Thanks,” she says in a voice full of emotion as she reaches over to take his hand. They’re still sitting there like that, eyes locked, when Greta hears her name being called and looks over to see Eleanor Bloom.

She’s waving as she approaches them, her huge earrings swinging like chandeliers. “There you are,” she says as Greta disentangles her hand from Ben’s and stands to give her a hug. But a few feet short of the table, Eleanor stops dramatically, her eyes going wide. “You look just like your mother in that dress.”

Greta glances down, disoriented. “She never wore anything like this.”

“You don’t remember her when she was your age,” Eleanor says as the rest of the group makes their way over: Todd and Davis and Mary, followed by Conrad, who is wearing his one good shirt, with its wrinkled collar under a sports coat.

Ben smooths his tie as he stands up. “Hi, I’m—”

“Jack London,” Eleanor says, beaming. She winks at him, and Greta realizes she’s a little drunk. They all are. “We know.”

“Oh, well—” he begins, but Davis cuts him off.

“This looks mighty romantic,” he says, surveying the half-filled wine glasses and the two place settings arranged side by side. “Anything you care to tell—”

Mary thumps him in the stomach, and Davis coughs. Greta takes the opportunity to hand back his phone, which he tucks into his jacket pocket with a grin.

“I’m glad you’re having fun,” Mary says to Greta. “Did you try the duck?”

“I did,” Ben says cheerfully. “It was just ducky.”

Greta lets out a sudden laugh at this and promptly realizes she’s drunk too. She glances over at Conrad, who has been standing behind the others, his eyes bouncing from the floor to the window to the table in an effort to avoid her, and she can’t help feeling a little disappointed after their breakthrough this afternoon. But at last he looks at her and—with a strained casualness—asks, “Anything new with you?” and it clicks.