Tease (Songs of Submission #2)(10)

CHAPTER 5

I poked my head out into the restaurant. Darren was at the bar with a huddled group. I recognized them: Theo, Mark, Ursula, Mollie, and Raven. Darren was Mister Popularity. He could bust out an inside joke with anyone he met on the east side. He had an ear for language and a way of listening that gave him a vocal “in” with whoever was in earshot.

I didn’t see a girl I didn’t recognize, so he either came without her or I knew her. I deliberately didn’t look at the table by the warm speaker. I didn’t want to see if they’d shown or if it was a table full of assistants getting drunk on the company dime. I didn’t want to see an empty table with a big “reserved” card on it. I didn’t want to see anything at all; I only needed to feel.

I’d been drawing off the energy from my night with Jonathan for two weeks, and after that afternoon at the Loft Club, I felt renewed and concerned. I couldn’t let myself depend on him getting me all hot and bothered so I could sing to the throb between my legs. I had no idea how much longer he’d drag me around by the panties, but it surely wouldn’t be long enough to make a career.

Rhee stood by the door at the opposite side of the room, hair up, a big smile her default setting. A black woman in her forties, she didn’t look a day over thirty. She winked when she saw me and tilted her head to the table by the warm speaker, which I couldn’t see from where I stood.

It was go time, as my dad would say.

The management always put fifteen minutes at the beginning of the schedule for the talent to walk around doing a meet and greet. My disdain for that type of gig had evaporated when I realized what shrewd businesspeople ran the operation. My job wasn’t to fade into the background as I’d originally thought, but to make the diners feel as though they’d walked into a place where they were known, and special, and wanted. The goal was repeat business, and though new customers were encouraged, the management found people who came back regularly were better tippers, better customers, and better friends than a constant stream of trend followers.

Gabby was already improvising something on the piano in the center of the dining room. Her eyes were closed. She wouldn’t even know it was time to start until I put my hand on her shoulder in twelve minutes. Darren was in the middle of an earnest discussion with Theo and Mark, and I broke in to greet them.

“You guys,” I said to Darren, Theo, and Mark as a group, “please look like I’m cheering you up when I sing, okay? You’re talking like you’re at a funeral.”

Theo, who had Maori tattoos crawling up his neck despite being a skinny Scottish dude, pointed an unlit cigarette at me. “You tell him to get his sorry ass over to Boing Boing Studios. He’s a man without a band. It’s a crime.”

Darren rolled his eyes, and I put my hand on his arm, speaking for him. “He told you he wants to mature as an artist before selling his ass to the man, right? He told you he wants to develop his process before he starts playing for other people’s glory?”

“Oy,” Theo said. “My ears hurt with this.”

Mark cut in. With his narrow-lapel jacket and horn-rimmed black glasses, he couldn’t have been more Theo’s opposite. “You need to get in your ten thousand hours, buddy. That’s the rule. You can’t master an art in under ten thousand hours. Documented. You can’t develop a process in a vacuum. Bank on that.”

Darren looked at me with his big blue eyes. Poor guy. He and Gabby had enough to live on from their inheritance, but they couldn’t do much more than live. The cash flow they enjoyed seemed to keep them from doing the things they needed to do in order to grow.

“Darren, try it,” I said. “Be a studio musician for fifteen minutes. You’re making a big deal over nothing.”

Over Darren’s shoulder, I saw a face I recognized, and though I took a second to put a name to her face, she knew me right away and waved, smiling.

“Thank you,” Theo said. “Nicely done, lassie.”

But my mind was on the woman in the green dress. “I have to go,” I said, making my way to her.

Before I got half a step away, Darren grabbed my arm and whispered in my ear, “Behind you, at a deuce up front. Kevin.”

“Fuck.”

“Bad idea,” he said.

“Can you get rid of him?”

“Nope.” He smiled at me, our faces close enough to kiss. I’d left Darren for Kevin almost two years before, and though he forgave me, he’d never forgotten.

“Fuck. What do I do?”

“You go and act like this is your room.”

Right. This was my room. Kevin was the interloper. I stood up straighter and continued toward the woman in the green dress: Jonathan’s sister.

“Theresa,” I said, “hi. I’m so glad you came.”

She kissed each of my cheeks. “I had to, of course, since I was the one who told Gene about you.”

“Oh, it was you,” I said. “Thanks again, then. I had no idea you worked at WDE.”

“I run the accounting department. Not glamorous, but it keeps me busy. This is my sister, Deirdre.”

Deirdre stood close to six feet tall, and she wore jeans and an Army surplus jacket. Her auburn curls stuck out everywhere, and her eyes were as big and green as the emerald isle itself. They were also glazed over, with lids hanging at half mast. She was drunk, and dinner hadn’t even been served yet.