Chapter Eight
Chapter Eight
“There’s no Jessi Jetski or Jessi Nakamura mentioned on any of my friends’ friends lists on Facebook. Or on my friends’ friends’ friends lists.” Anisha sat back and took her hands off the keyboard of her laptop. “And no accounts for either of those names on Instagram for people who look anything like your Jessi. Do you want me to just start asking people? I could post something just to see if anyone I know knows anything?”
Allie shook her head. “Let’s keep looking on our own for a bit longer before we start announcing things to your entire social media following. I don’t want Jessi to think I’m publicly stalking her and get all freaked out. I already feel weird about friending Mimi on Instagram.”
Mimi had been fine with the request, of course. It turned out that her account was mostly just photos of her backyard garden and chicken coop. Allie had sent her a message asking whether she knew where Jessi was, wondering whether that would be all it took. Disappointingly, Mimi responded that they’d lost touch completely after she’d moved to Oregon. Allie hadn’t had the heart to communicate much more after that. The chickens were cute, though. They all had the names of female rock musicians. Joan Jett bore a striking resemblance to her namesake.
She’d told Mindy that she wanted some time to think about taking over the café before she made a final decision, but didn’t tell her about the search for Jessi. Mindy had been trying for years to convince her to do something to “get closure” for her feelings about her band. She didn’t know how her aunt would react if she knew that she’d finally listened to that advice when it was coming from someone else’s mouth. To be fair, though, Ryan was a lot more friendly about the whole thing than Mindy had ever been.
Seated on the floor of Ryan and Anisha’s apartment, she absentmindedly smoothed over the short, silky strands of the faded blue area rug with her left hand while scrolling through the results of Google searches with her right. On the coffee table, Anisha had laid out a “working breakfast.” Yogurt, nuts, all manner of fresh fruit and some ridiculously delicious caramelized apple turnovers that she’d gotten up to bake before Allie arrived. Ryan had to be at work at ten, so they’d agreed to meet early. For his part he was very prepared, his small notebook filled with scrawled ideas and leads.
“You want more coffee, Allie?” Ryan eyed her empty cup as he stood up from where he’d been sitting on the couch. A whole hour of him searching New York/New Jersey punk Facebook groups had yielded not a single lead. Allie shook her head. The two cups of strong coffee she’d already inhaled were making her heart jump around as it was.
“Ryan, can you put that yogurt back in the fridge? It’s been sitting out too long.” Anisha waved her hand at the end of the table.
Ryan picked up the yogurt but stopped to shake his head at Anisha before taking it anywhere. “It can sit out. It’s made for the desert.”
“Hummus!” Anisha shouted at him, the unexpected outburst causing Allie to jump. “ Hummus is made for the desert. You get that wrong every single time. Honestly, what would you do if you didn’t live with me?”
“Die of food poisoning, apparently.” Ryan headed toward the fridge.
Allie giggled at the two of them, and then took a moment to finish her yogurt, fruit and pistachios, and let the spoon clatter into the empty bowl. “Okay, I’m looking at this little punk club in South Orange. Ryan, did you see this one? The Top Drawer?” Ryan came back to the living area and sat on the couch behind her. The rough denim of his jeans rubbed against her bare elbow. She leaned into him slightly, relaxing her body toward him so her arm pressed against the length of his leg. He was leaning over her, looking intently at the screen on her laptop. Allie was hyperaware of every point of contact between her body and Ryan’s. She breathed in his scent—eucalyptus and pine—and worked hard to keep her face neutral and her mind focused on the task at hand.
“See, right here under ‘Bookings’?” She poked her finger at the lower left corner of her screen. “It just says ‘Contact J,’ but the email is [email protected].”
Ryan nodded. “Could be Jessi Nakamura, Top Drawer! Is that what you were thinking?”
“I mean…” Allie shrugged. “It’s a long shot, and I still don’t think she’d use her real name, but it’s worth checking into, I guess? Jessi would be an awesome club booker. She was always the one who was the most interested in new music.”
Allie and Jessi always sat in the two front seats of their tour van. Allie drove; she was the only one of all of them who had a license and was brave enough to drive the van on the highways. Mimi and Ayla often slept in the back during night drives, but Jessi stayed awake and kept Allie company, picking music from the overflowing box of mixtapes that they kept in the footwell. Jessi played DJ, changing tapes and selecting certain songs, sometimes coming up with her own particular theme for the trip—songs that matched up and flowed from one to the other. Allie would let the music wash over her as she stared straight ahead at the highway. Often, she’d be so lost in thought she wouldn’t notice when one song ended and another began. It felt like meditating. In those moments, she was strangely at peace. The seemingly never-ending roads stretched out before her in the dark.
“I’ll email that address and ask if it’s Jessi,” Ryan said, swiping his fingers across the screen of his phone.
They hadn’t had any more promising leads yet, but Allie enjoyed these sessions with Anisha and Ryan, who were both now as invested as she was in the hunt for Jessi Jetski.
After another quiet half hour with all three of them chasing various dead-end leads, Allie was ready for a break. She picked up her empty water glass and walked a loop around the room, trying to loosen the tension in her shoulders. She stopped near the kitchen counter, staring at the cluttered bulletin board that hung high above the sink. It was crammed with photos of Ryan and Anisha and notes that one of them had written to the other. Inside jokes, photo booth strips, and crudely drawn cartoons depicting one or both of them, all pinned haphazardly over top of one another. Allie felt lucky that the two of them had muscled past her defenses and were now regularly in her life.
“Hey, Allie, come here. I’ve got something to show you,” Ryan called to her. She turned around to see him disappearing through his open bedroom door.
Anisha sighed. “Allie’s not going to fall for your rudimentary pickup lines. She’s too smart for that, you ridiculous man.”
Allie blushed a horrifying shade of red and was grateful that Anisha was still staring at her computer screen and Ryan was now out of view, deeper in his bedroom. She filled her glass quickly and drank from it, giving her face time to return to a normal color. Should she follow Ryan into his bedroom? Her feet felt frozen to the kitchen tile.
“Har har har,” Ryan scoffed at Anisha as he resurfaced. “Not a line, obviously.” He smiled at Allie. The word obviously made her heart sink. They stood staring at each other in silence for another moment before he snapped out of it and spoke.
“I wanted you to see this!”
In his large hand, he held a small xylophone. The kind children play with. Allie remembered having one as a child. Her father taught her to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
“Ah yes.” Anisha nodded after looking up only briefly. “The xylophone that matches your maturity level.”
Allie giggled, walking back into the living room. “It’s, uh…nice?”
“I sense that you are underwhelmed. But hang on.” He walked back over to the couch and moved the plate of pastries aside so he could set the instrument down. Taking a small wooden mallet from the breast pocket of his shirt, he knelt in front of the xylophone and cleared his throat theatrically. “Ready?”
Allie sat back down, laughing. “As I’ll ever be.”
Ryan took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he started playing a melody on the instrument. It was simple, but catchy.
“That sounds familiar,” Anisha said. “What is that from?”
Allie knew right away.
“Play it again,” she told him. She sat on the edge of her chair, facing him, her body leaning forward, eyes on the mallet and the rainbow-colored metal bars of the xylophone. Ryan played the melody again, perfectly, and it immediately brought the lyrics to Allie’s mind. She started singing. Her timing was perfect. She knew the song as if it were her own heartbeat.
Ryan’s voice joined her on the second line, and she automatically slid into harmony. He looked at her, his eyes wide.
Her arms were covered with goose bumps. Ryan winked before turning his focus back to the instrument. They sang the rest of the verse as he played and then fell into an awed silence, the final note of the xylophone ringing through the apartment.
“Was that…Madonna?” Anisha finally asked.
“?‘Borderline,’?” Allie and Ryan said in unison. Both nodding.
“I didn’t know you could sing!” Allie felt almost high with the excitement of musical collaboration, even for one verse of one song. She’d missed it.
Anisha helped herself to another pastry and leaned back into the pile of cushions on the sofa. “Ryan’s a great singer! He thinks I can’t hear him when he’s in the shower, but I totally can.”
“Why do you have to make literally everything weird?” Ryan asked, his cheeks coloring slightly. Anisha smiled and shrugged, unconcerned.
Allie felt as if firecrackers were exploding in her brain. “Ryan, we have to record that! It’s perfect!”
Ryan smiled. “Not gonna lie, I was really hoping you’d let me join your one-woman show.”
“Well, you just aced your unsolicited audition. I’ll do some bed tracks, and then you can come over and we’ll work on it.”
Ryan stood up and hopped from foot to foot, grinning. “Just say the word and I’m there!”
It was all Allie could do to keep from swooning. The harmonies, the simple but poignant song lyrics, the endless possibilities of how she would record and mix the song. It was the perfect way to wind her project down, now that she was almost finished. She hadn’t been this excited about anything in a long time. How had she been managing, living day by day, a few blocks from this apartment and these people, and just…not known? She was so grateful to have them in her life. So grateful that she couldn’t help the whisper of a worry that they might somehow leave her.
She shook that worry out of her head and concentrated on the excitement of the present. “Oh! I keep forgetting to ask: do you two want to come to the café’s Thanksgiving dinner? It’s two weeks from now. Mindy does it every year, a few weeks before actual Thanksgiving. Free food for friends and family. We’re technically closed, but Mindy invites the entire world, so it’s always packed.”
“Will I get to meet George?” Anisha asked. She’d started coming into the café periodically but had somehow always managed to miss George. “I’m starting to think he’s Ryan’s imaginary friend.”
“George will definitely be there.” Allie nodded. “I can seat you beside him. He will love you, that’s for sure.”
“Just don’t steal him from me,” Ryan said. “You’re already trying to steal Allie from me, with all your snacks and helping .”
Allie’s stomach flipped. She bit back her smile at the thought that she was his to steal.
Anisha stuck her tongue out at him. “Obviously you need to up your game if all your friends like me better.”
Ryan laughed and headed back to his room with the xylophone.
Allie closed her computer and slid it into her tote bag, grabbing one more apple turnover to eat on her way home.
“Thanksgiving at Mindy’s sounds fantastic. Do we bring anything?”
“Just booze,” Allie answered. “And even then, everyone always brings extra, so it honestly doesn’t matter. We handle all the food. Mindy, Ren and I go full-on for a few days, getting everything ready. It’s actually one of my favorite weeks of the year.”
“Any buyers for the café yet?”
Anisha’s question stopped Allie, who had been on her way out the door. She’d told Anisha and Ryan about Mindy’s plans to leave, but Anisha was the only one who seemed comfortable checking in with her about it.
Allie sighed. “Nothing yet. Mindy’s willing to let me take my time to decide if I want it, as long as there’s no other buyer offering. She’s not aggressively trying to sell it, either. But I think her patience has an expiry date.”
“I trust you’ll figure it out.” Anisha’s words were always soothing to Allie. Somehow, talking with her about these big things made them less scary instead of more. But as someone who had spent ten years avoiding her own feelings, she still felt herself occasionally resisting it.
“Thanks.”
Ryan reappeared. “Do you want me to walk you back, Allie?”
He always offered and she always refused. “Thanks. I’m good. I want to listen to ‘Borderline,’ like, twenty times on the way home.”
“I support that. Let me know if you need anything else from me.”
“I will.”
She waved to both of them and let herself out, her steps light on the stairwell as she plugged in her headphones and pushed through the door out onto the cool, sunny street.