A Visit From the Goon Squad - Jennifer Egan [19]
We sit on her rug, the uniforms across our knees. Alice wears ripped jeans and drippy black eye makeup, but her hair is long and gold. She isn’t a real punk, either.
After a while I go, Why do your parents let us come here?
They’re not my parents. They’re my mother and stepfather.
Okay.
They want to keep an eye on you, I guess.
The foghorns are extra loud in Sea Cliff, like we’re alone on a ship sailing through the thickest fog. I hug my knees, wishing so much that Jocelyn was with us.
Are they right now? I go, softly. Keeping an eye?
Alice takes a huge breath and lets it back out. No, she goes. They’re asleep.
Marty the violinist isn’t even in high school—he’s a sophomore at SF State, where Jocelyn and I and Scotty (if he passes Algebra II) are headed next year. Jocelyn goes to Bennie, The shit will hit the fan if you put that dork onstage.
I guess we’ll find out, Bennie goes, and he looks at his watch like he’s thinking. In two weeks and four days and six hours and I’m-not-sure-how-many-minutes.
We stare at him, not comprehending. Then he tells us: Dirk Dirksen from the Mab gave him a call. Jocelyn and I shriek and hug onto Bennie, which for me is like touching something electric, his actual body in my arms. I remember every hug I’ve given him. I learn one thing each time: how warm his skin is, how he has muscles like Scotty even though he never takes his shirt off. This time I find his heartbeat, which pushes my hand through his back.
Jocelyn goes, Who else knows?
Scotty, of course. Alice, too, but it’s only later that this bothers us.
I have cousins in Los Angeles, so Jocelyn calls Lou from our apartment, where the charge won’t stand out on the phone bill. I’m two inches away on my parents’ flowered bedspread while she dials the phone with a long black fingernail. I hear a man’s voice answer, and it shocks me that he’s real, Jocelyn didn’t make him up, even though I never supposed such a thing. He doesn’t go, Hey beautiful, though. He goes, I told you to let me call you.
Jocelyn goes, Sorry, in an empty little voice. I grab the phone and go, What kind of hello is that? Lou goes, Who the Christ am I talking to? and I tell him Rhea. Then he goes in a calmer voice, Nice to meet you, Rhea. Now, would you hand the phone back to Jocelyn?
This time she pulls the cord away. Lou seems to be doing most of the talking. After a minute or two, Jocelyn hisses at me, You have to leave. Go!
I walk out of my parents’ bedroom into our kitchen. There’s a fern hanging from the ceiling by a chain, dropping little brown leaves in the sink. The curtains have a pineapple pattern. My two brothers are on the balcony, grafting bean plants for my little brother’s science project. I go outside with them, the sun poking into my eyes. I try to force myself to look straight at it, like Scotty did.
After a while, Jocelyn comes out. Happiness is floating up from her hair and skin. Ask me if I care, I think.
Later she tells me Lou said yes: he’ll come to the Dildos gig at the Mab, and maybe he’ll give us a record contract. It’s not a promise, he warned her, but we’ll have a good time anyway, right, beautiful? Don’t we always?
· · ·
The night of the concert, I come with Jocelyn to meet Lou for dinner at Vanessi’s, a restaurant on Broadway next door to Enrico’s, where tourists and rich people sit outside drinking Irish coffees and gawking at us when we walk by. We could have invited Alice, but Jocelyn goes, Her parents probably take her to Vanessi’s all the time. I go, You mean her mother and stepfather.
A man is sitting in a round corner booth, smiling teeth at us, and that man is Lou. He looks as old as my dad, meaning forty-three. He has shaggy blond hair, and his face is handsome, I guess, the way dads can sometimes be.
C’mere, beautiful, Lou actually does say, and he lifts an arm to Jocelyn. He’s wearing a light blue denim shirt and some kind of copper bracelet. She slides around the side of the table and fits right under his arm. Rhea, Lou goes, and lifts up his other arm for me, so instead of sliding