Then Came You - Jennifer Weiner [66]
“How are you doing?” he asked me.
“Fine,” I said.
“Busy?”
“Not really.” I’d been looking at Victorian jewelry that morning, gorgeously worked, ornate pieces, necklaces and engagement rings, the kind of thing I’d want for myself—small and special, the opposite of India’s ostentatious rock.
“You sound busy.” Darren himself sounded vaguely insulted. I softened my tone, reminding myself that he was a messenger, albeit a messenger in goofy glasses, and it wasn’t his fault that India was a liar. A thought occurred. “Would you like to go to a concert with me?”
“What, like a date?” Now he sounded surprised.
“As friends,” I said firmly. I wasn’t interested in Darren, with his limp handshake and his hipster affectations. In addition, he knew exactly how much my father was worth and probably how much I was, too, and, while it wasn’t as if this information was some big secret, knowing that Darren had access to specifics made me want to keep him at a distance. I didn’t like him ... but I didn’t like the thought of traipsing through Hoboken by myself, either, and all of my friends had put in their time at my brother’s performances.
“You got a man?” he persisted.
“None of your business.”
“Taking that as a no,” he said cheerfully, and, over my protests, told me he’d meet me in front of my apartment at nine o’clock Friday night.
“So what’s the band called again?” he asked as we walked along a sidewalk in Hoboken.
“Dirty Birdy,” I said, keeping an eye out for broken glass and dog excrement. “They were Cöld Söre for a while. With umlauts.”
“But of course,” Darren said.
“But then the bass player left, and they reformed, and now they’re Dirty Birdy.” The band was third on the bill, not scheduled to go on until midnight, which, realistically, could mean much later than that. Darren, who still seemed to be laboring under the misapprehension that this was a date, took my arm as we navigated past a puddle of what looked like vomit. It was nice having him with me, sort of like having our old golden retriever, Mittens, loping along at my side.
I looked at the doorways, then down at my iPhone. “It should be right here. The club-slash-coffee-shop is called Drip, and I checked the address before leaving my apartment.” But there was no sign on the plain red door, no number, nothing to indicate that there was a business behind it.
Darren looked at my screen, then looked at the door. Then he knocked. The door swung open. Smoke and loud voices poured out into the street, and a muscled bouncer held out one tattooed mitt. “Ten dollars,” he said.
Darren peeled off a twenty. “You need a sign,” I told the bouncer, who looked at me like he didn’t understand English. “Seriously,” I said, twisting through the crush of bodies, pulling my earplugs out of my pocket and hoping against hope that there’d be something as pedestrian as a table in the place. Fat chance. There were no tables in sight, just a bar that ran the length of the room, a couch upholstered in hideous paisley sagging against one wall, and a makeshift stage up front.
“What can I get you?” Darren asked.
“Whatever,” I said, trying not to sulk, or yawn. The room was hot and crowded, crammed with people who all seemed to be having more fun than I’d ever had in my life. Girls with glitter on their faces and tattoos on the smalls of their backs swigged from cans of Pabst and Coors, waving their arms in the air and swinging their hips as they spun around in tiny circles.
“Beer?” he asked. “Wine? Sloe gin fizz?”
“Vodka and tonic,” I said. It had been my parents’ summertime drink. In the Hamptons, they’d carried thermoses of V and Ts to the beach. I was ready for the worst, but the drink came in a clean glass, frosty on the outside, with a thick wedge of lime balanced on the rim. I took a sip, watching the girls dancing, trying to decide if they were high.
“Not bad,” Darren said, as Dirty Birdy finally took the stage and launched into their cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” “Is that your brother? He’s really good!”
I nodded, wondering