Bar Crawl(8)

I watched her car drive away before I turned for mine. I drove to the warehouse where we practiced and beat the hell out of the drums all afternoon to try to work out exactly what it was I wanted…from Frankie and myself.





Frankie


The wind ravaged my hair as Bradley and I walked up the wooden steps to the … upper deck of Upper Deck Bar and Restaurant. I told myself I didn’t care.

“So, let me get this straight,” Bradley half-shouted over the wind, “we’re here to see Last Call play.”

I nodded as we moved toward the bar. “Yep.”

“Because CJ asked you to.”

“Yes.”

“When he stalked you at work and then demanded you have lunch with him.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic.” The shock of CJ’s face appearing amongst the books in the library and again out in the parking lot was fresh in the flutters of my stomach.

“But,” he continued, ignoring me, “you don’t care about him.”

“Right.”

Bradley twisted his lips before ordering something that sounded as impossible to make as it was to say. Turning to me, he shook his head. “Okay, whatever you say.”

Bradley rarely conceded on major issues regarding me and men. I knew that wasn’t his last word. I ordered my vodka soda—the least calorically expensive thing that wasn’t crap beer—and put my hand on my hip. “Just say whatever it is you meant to say instead of okay.”

“He likes you.” Bradley wiggled his eyebrows up and down.

“He likes everyone.”

Bradley retrieved our drinks from the bartender, handing me mine, which I sipped gratefully. “Then why are we here?”

Truly I was stumped as to why, really, I found myself drawn to CJ’s request to see him play. It’s not that he had a ton of mystery to offer—he seemed to lay everything out for anyone who would look. Still, my mind kept wandering back to earlier in the day when he plucked that hard-bound, second edition Robert Frost collection from the dark wooden shelf, and his lips moved around the words. I didn’t know which poem he’d read from, but that almost didn’t matter. It was Frost, for God’s sake.

“I told you about the poem, right?”

Bradley nodded. “Twice. Once this afternoon and once on the drive here. Well, three times, now, I guess. How do you know he was even reading from the poem? Maybe he was just mouthing random words to make you think he was reading it.”

I twisted my lips. “Don’t think I hadn’t thought of that. It’s just…”

“What?” Bradley grinned as his eyes lit up.

I sighed. “He looked at a specific page, you know? He didn’t just randomly open the book… he’d held that book before, I’m sure of it.”

“Well,” Bradley sighed, “you are the book whisperer.”

It was true. Ever since my first job stocking shelves at a national bookstore, I’d learned how to match people with their books. Sometimes it was tricky—like when an uptight classical musician holding a historical novel on cellos also grabbed a graphic novel with superheroes on the front of it—but I learned the signs eventually. There was always a “tell” people had that led me to the books they’d choose. The young mom in expensive yoga clothes, sporting a nose ring, wouldn’t be in the Health and Fitness or Children’s sections, for instance. You’d find her in Self Help.

I’d say I have a 90% success rate with reader-book match. One thing I knew for sure was that CJ had read from that book before, more than once. And, even if for no reason other than my own morbid literary curiosity, I wanted to find out why.

Suddenly, the chatter around us—and even the wind, it seemed—snapped to a quiet with the clacking of sticks.

“One, two, three, four!” It was CJ’s voice. Unmistakably. His voice carried the tinny rasp of a seasoned smoker, though I’d never seen him with a cigarette in his mouth.

As the crowd hushed and jostled into position, I noticed the stage was set up slightly differently than it was at Finnegan’s. CJ’s drum set was a bit more forward, and he had a microphone in the center of it, allowing him more vocal options, it seemed. I’d only heard him sing once before, and that was the first night I’d noticed him several months ago—long before he’d hit on me.

Honestly, I didn’t know a ton about music other than what I’d read in books. I appreciated music to listen to, but never had the urge to pick up an instrument. Musicians had always fascinated me, though, and one thing I did know was that it was rare to have the drummer sing much at all, let alone lead.

Last Call seemed to favor ‘90s alternative, which beckoned an internal conflict against my preference for everything else from the ‘90s. While I watched CJ masterfully morph into Kurt Cobain with a drum set as he sang “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” though, I thought I’d better go home and update my playlists. ‘90s rock was sweaty and sexy, according to my inability to stop staring.

I know we were there specifically to watch him play, but I was still struck dumb. I couldn’t stop staring at his hands as they seemed to move independently from his body, insanely rapidly across the drums. Then there was his mouth. Sometimes, when he held a long note, the edges of his mouth would curl into a wicked looking smile as he clenched his teeth and drowned out the note with a growl.