Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [93]
“Loitering,” Marcus replies, smiling slightly, wishing Jessica were here to hear him say it.
“That’s nice,” says Lola, clearly not listening. “Listen, I’ve got sort of a wager going.”
“A wager?”
“Yeah, a wager. And it involves you.”
“Me?”
Lola has already taken him by the elbow and is leading him toward the sign at the entrance of a room that encourages guests to PLAY HERE. “Can ya sing?”
And before Marcus can answer, he is muted by the sight and sound of a blue-haired granny appropriately attired in a blue-sequined TRUE BLUE SPECTACLE T-shirt.
“Somewhere down the road … Our roads are gonna cross again …”
“We took over the place!” shouts Lola. “We turned Karaoke Tuesday into Barry-oke Tuesday!”
The stranded members of the Tristate Chapter of the Barry Manilow International Fan Club have indeed taken over the bar and the interactive gameplay arena. They have pooled their resources and have paid off the DJ, who for the under-the-table price of $250 was bribed into letting the BMIFC use their own backing tracks.
“What does this have to do with me?” Marcus asks.
“I bet Adele that I could turn anyone into a Can’t Smile girl—or boy, in your case!”
“A what?”
“It’s a Barry tradition dating back to the early eighties, when he would bring a girl up onstage to—”
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” hisses the crowd, eager to hear True Blue Spectacle bring her song to its dramatic close.
“Look,” Lola says, sticking a knotty finger into Marcus’s chest. “All ya gotta do is get up on that stage and sing a few bars of ‘Can’t Smile Without You,’ and I win the bet.”
This strikes Marcus as a fair request. At Princeton, always at Natty’s prodding, usually as a diversion during stressful midterm or final exam weeks, Marcus has participated in wagers that were far more complicated and possibly injurious to one’s health. The Fall of ′08 Bet You Can’t Drink a Blenderized Taco Bell Cheesy Double Beef Burrito, Caramel Apple Empanada, and Mango Strawberry Frutista Freeze While Arguing Why George W. Bush Is the Greatest American President in History comes to mind. (Marcus won … barely. And it wasn’t the value-menu smoothie that posed the biggest challenge to his regurgitative reflexes.) Though he’s anxious to return to Jessica, he knows this will be one hell of a story, one that would totally justify waking her up.
“Look, Lola …”
“SHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
Marcus shuts up to give the song the reverence it deserves.
“You be-e-e-loooooong.” True Blue stretches out the word, looking heavenward, before completing the line in a lilting, surprisingly plaintive alto. “To-o meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”
The crowd goes wild. Those who can leap to their feet, do. True Blue modestly averts her eyes, curtsies. When she looks up, she catches Lola’s eye, claps excitedly, and motions for her and Marcus to join the rest of the Tristate Chapter of the Barry Manilow International Fan Club at the front-and-center table before the stage. This table is trashed. There are glasses decorated with half-sucked orange halves and spiky crescents of pineapple. Glasses foamy with machine-mixed coladas, daiquiris, and margaritas. Glasses swishing with pink and white but never red wine. Glasses thick with the Barrytini (vodka, maraschino cherry liqueur, chocolate liqueur), the official cocktail of the Barry Manilow International Fan Club.
The Tristate Chapter of the Barry Manilow International Fan Club is getting shitfaced tonight.
“Drink up,” Lola says, handing Marcus a glass full of what looks like a chocolate milk shake. He takes a long pull. It tastes like a milk shake, too, but with a battery-acid afterburn.
“And now,” the DJ is saying, “we’ve got Barbara singing ‘Looks Like We Made It.’”
Barbara pushes herself up from the table, leaving a trail of FANILOW sweatshirt glitter in her slow-moving wake.
“This is a very sparkly crowd,” Marcus observes out loud, already feeling the loosey-goosey effects of the Barrytini.
Hands are extended, names are offered, but Marcus forgets them all as soon as he hears them. They are all pleasant middle-aged women