Party Girl_ A Novel - Anna David [47]
After about twenty minutes, or maybe two hours, I realize that my body simply isn’t going to be coaxed into anything akin to sleep. I seem to have perfectly regained the use of my limbs, however, and as I stomp into the kitchen to get out my last pack of Camel Lights from the carton I bought last week, I decide I want to be around people. The idea is both radical and terrifying, and when I discover that the carton is actually empty and I already smoked the last cigarette from what I thought was my second-to-last pack, I feel even more convinced that companionship will be my salvation.
I decide to walk to Barney’s Beanery, this bar down the street that was built in like the 1920s and looks it. When I get there, I make my way directly to the bar, where I ask for an Amstel Light, a shot of tequila, and a pack of Camel Lights. I’m so eager for the tequila that I don’t even wait for the goateed bartender to deposit salt and a wedge of lemon: I just shoot it down and chase it with a long gulp of beer. And then I scan around the bar, noticing a table filled with these big, brawny guys wearing USC shirts and hats. My eyes dart around furtively, first to the other side of the bar, then to the people gathered around the karaoke microphone, then to a group of girls making their way in through the back door. Eventually, I leave the safe perch I have at the bar and, deciding that the most practical move for me right now is to look around for someone who has coke, start walking from table to table.
I go up to the USC table; tap a tall, kind of pale guy on the shoulder; and ask him if we met through Gus. I know we didn’t but I can’t think of anything else to say and I need something.
He shakes his head but smiles. “Is Gus your boyfriend?”
Now it’s my turn to shake my head and smile. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I say.
The guy introduces himself as Simon and asks if I want to sit down.
“Why not,” I say, as he moves over. “My friends aren’t here yet.” Technically, I think, I’m not lying. None of my so-called friends are here.
Once I slide in, Simon’s friend returns with shots of Goldschlager and I expertly bullshit them about how Goldschlager actually contains specks of gold from the days of the California gold rush. It’s something I remember some guy telling me in a bar in San Francisco when I was too drunk to tell him that I thought he was full of it. But Simon and his friends—a Josh, a Todd, and, I think, two Johns—seem to buy it and next thing I know, I’m chatting reasonably comfortably with them and we’re all exchanging anecdotes about getting busted for drinking in high school.
As I finish up a story about getting drunk before performing in Hair my junior year, Simon returns from the bathroom, leans over, and whispers in my ear. And I know before he opens his mouth exactly what he’s going to say. I swear, I’m better than any drug-sniffing trained dog when it comes to zeroing in on the nearest users in the vicinity.
“I left a few rails for my friend on top of the windowsill over the first stall in the men’s bathroom,” Simon says as he winks at me. “Why don’t you take them?”
Simon’s being so generous that I decide I can absolutely forgive his terrible Guess jeans and cheesy wink. I nod and slide out of the booth silently.
I’ve used men’s bathrooms about three thousand times in my life—all those times they’re empty when the women’s one is full—so I know how to just stroll in there as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. The bald guy peeing in the urinal doesn’t seem to have as much experience with this as I do, however, so he looks at me in shock, but I shrug, whisper, “The women’s line was