The Leavers(58)

The club was a one-bedroom apartment with two tables piled with poker chips. There was a large TV with a basketball game playing on mute, a counter with buckets of beer. Daniel gave his five hundred to a woman in a black suit and waited for a seat. The other players were all men, of different races and ages, and he was one of the best dressed. He approached a table, ready to play.

IT WAS THE DEADEST time of morning, before sunrise, when the street sweepers and garbage trucks had yet to emerge, and Daniel sat on a bench along the East River, wind blowing in an unsynced delay, hitting his face seconds after it rippled over his coat. At the beginning of the night, so many hours ago, when he left the restaurant, he’d had a hat, but lost it along the way. He’d lost the Carlough College essay as well, the one he had meant to deliver to Kay and Peter, though it was saved on his computer. He could e-mail it to them if he wanted.

He wanted breakfast, coffee, but was out of money. The men had been tougher than they looked. He’d known early on that he was in over his head, but kept playing despite their suppressed excitement. They thought he would lose so much he would break down, and they were waiting for the big show, his inevitable unraveling, but each loss felt like shucking off another weight and removing an uncomfortable article of clothing, so that by the end of the night he wasn’t crying but grinning. When he left, he heard one guy say to the other, “Wacko.”

He felt a savage euphoria. The night had confirmed his failures, and he’d freed himself from having to fight his inability to live up to Peter and Kay’s hopes. He didn’t want to go to Carlough, wasn’t ever going to be the kind of guy Angel respected, some law-school-applying moral citizen. God, it was great to be himself again.

From his bench he could see winking lights on the water and make out flashes of ships as they moved toward the ocean. He heard the distant bellows of boats, purple, low and soothing, nautical mating calls. This was where he used to come with his mother, walking from the Rutgers Street apartment, and once she had told him that when she was a little girl, she had loved going to the river in Minjiang. “We would watch how the waves went off into nothing and that was the place I wanted to go,” she said. “Far, far away.” He never asked her who we was.

The sky pinkened at its edges, white clouds marbleizing into pastels, and the night broke into patches. Daniel’s toes curled inside his boots. Well, she’d done it. She’d gone far away from him.

The sun tore the night into orange and yellow streaks. The river became blue and glassy. A wave of anger broke over him, and he wanted to talk to her, tell her how angry he was.

He dialed the number. The phone rang, but by the fifth ring he knew she wasn’t going to answer and he relaxed. The woman on the recorded voice mail message didn’t identify herself by name, but he recognized his mother immediately. Her voice was reedy and trumpety, yet her tones were clipped and plucked, a flawless-sounding Mandarin he didn’t remember her having before.

He left a message with his name and number. If she didn’t call him, it would be all the evidence he needed.





Nine



Daniel knew before they finished the first song that they would kill it, that he had arrived at the sweet spot when he was no longer conscious of being onstage. They had practiced plenty and he hadn’t drunk tonight, but the secret was more than that, it was believing in it, even if the songs were crappy and overwrought. At the end of the set he awoke to find himself onstage with Roland, covered in sweat, the room vibrating around him in sheets of violet and lavender, a roar of cheering and clapping.

When they returned to the floor, Daniel felt hands thump his back and shoulders. He heard voices he didn’t recognize. “Damn, you can play.” He followed Roland’s head through the crowd, stopping every few feet to be complimented by someone else. Roland caught his eye and grinned. Daniel was a prizefighter, surrounded by his entourage after a landing a KO. He’d scored a comeback. He’d fucking showed them.

At the bar, waiting for Javier and his band to go on, Daniel recognized Hutch, the Jupiter booker, in a beige canvas coat and faded dad jeans. Someone else intercepted Roland, and Hutch said to Daniel, “Didn’t think you had it in you after the last time.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

“I like what you guys did with the sound. Maybe the vocals and drums can be amped up even more. Push that distortion, up the reverb, you know.”

“We’ll see. Thanks.”

Roland’s friend Yasmin, of the theremin and melodica and strange, yowly songs, who always called him Darren or David, or one time, puzzlingly, Thomas, punched him in the arm and said, “Daniel, great job.”

“First time you got it right,” he said, smiling.

People wanted to know what other bands he’d played in, how long he’d known Roland. One guy, whose pupils were so black and enlarged his eyes resembled marbles, told Daniel that Psychic Hearts sounded like pork chops. “Hold on, my friend’s here and I want to say hi,” Daniel said. “I’ll be back.” It felt good, being the one making the excuse to get away.

WITHIN A WEEK, EVERYTHING changed. He and Roland lined up several more shows, and Hutch said he’d come to the one on May 15, at a space out in Gowanus, and that if things went well, he would keep them in mind for any openings later this year.

Summer was coming, the city delirious with warmth, the air damp and metallic, and Daniel’s phone chirped incessantly with messages, what was going on that night, what had gone on last night, and even if the music he was playing was not the music he wanted to play, even if it meant he no longer had time to work on his own songs, at least he was playing something, going to shows and parties, charging drinks and car services to his credit card, wincing each time he swiped but telling himself he’d worry about it later, that right now, it was worth it to live a little. Because he had done it. He’d reached Peak Coolness. At a secret show in a Bushwick basement, watching a band who sang lyrics about animals written in this complicated sonnet-like poetry style, or drinking on a Sunday afternoon with Roland and Javi and Nate while listening to a Lithuanian metal act, he would look around and think that this was no second-tier upstate wannabe party, this was the real deal, and it was only a matter of time before the life he had been waiting for would finally happen.