Chapter 9 #3
And kissed her. A dizzying, electric kiss that was just about enough to inspire Zoey to take to the slam-poetry stage herself.
Fuck it. Fuck it all. She kissed him right back, leaning up on her toes, her lips finding his, hungrily, insatiably. Nick’s fingers cupped her cheeks in a way that was both sure and gentle, and she let herself disappear into the moment.
Kissing him was all that she wanted. All that she could think of.
‘I’ve wanted to do that for so long,’ he murmured. ‘I’m sorry, I should’ve asked. Is it all right if—’
Zoey kissed him again, removing any question from the equation.
‘Oi, couple in the stairwell, can it,’ came a voice over the loudspeaker. ‘You’re making the CCTV blush.’
‘Wow, we’re in Foucault’s Panopticon,’ whispered Nick. ‘C’mon.’
‘And in front of your dog, too,’ added the disembodied voice. ‘Dogs can’t consent.’
Nick led a blushing Zoey down the last few steps to the tiniest performance space she’d ever seen.
It was about the size of the stand-up comedy room from her anxiety nightmares: a microphone on a tiny podium in front of three narrow rows of folding chairs.
A few small groups perched awkwardly about, doing everything in their power not to sit in the front row.
Zoey waved awkwardly at a guy she recognised from the Whole Foods on Burnside.
‘Hey, it’s Tony’s Chocolonely girl.’ The guy nudged his friends as he pointed at Zoey. ‘She’s the one who got me onto it.’
One of them gave her a thumbs up. ‘Fair trade for life.’
‘Yeah, but Moonstruck, anyone?’
The little group started arguing at length about chocolate.
‘Is this where we die?’ whispered Zoey, trying to change the subject away from her Tony;s Chocolonely addiction.
‘In the event of a fire, then probably,’ said Nick. ‘Although I did notice the convenient fire-hydrant placement out front.’
A portly guy in a floor-length cardigan pounced on them with a laminated menu. ‘Good evening! How are we for cocktails? I really recommend a cocktail. Two if you’re performing. Three if you’re just listening. Assuming you’re taking the MAX like responsible drunkards.’
Zoey squinted at the menu, which looked to have been printed at the C.C. Stern Type Foundry Museum. ‘Um, two … chocolate martinis?’
Cardigan Guy disappeared into a side room, reappearing moments later with two plastic picnicware cups brimming with a chocolatey mess of a cocktail.
‘Wow, strong,’ said Nick, as he sipped through a striped paper straw.
‘You’d better chug it before that straw disintegrates,’ said Zoey. ‘Biggest issue I have at the smoothie shop.’
‘If that’s the worst you’re dealing with, you’re doing just fine.’
Zoey shrugged. ‘It’s not quite what I told my school guidance counsellor I’d be doing, but it leaves plenty of time for reading. And walking around listening to audio lectures. Also the people-watching is unrivalled.’
‘Almost as good as the riverfront market?’
‘Fewer trumpet-playing unicyclists and sepsis-inviting kayakers.’
The lights flashed awkwardly, strobed a few times, then dimmed. There was a squeal of feedback as Cardigan Guy grabbed the microphone. Alice whined.
‘People and folks and Australian cattle dog,’ announced Cardigan Guy. ‘Thank you for coming out on this fabulous Thursday evening. Shout-out to our mime for xir excellent advertising, too.’
‘Fucking mimes,’ whispered Zoey, stooping to pat Alice.
Nick nodded. ‘I’m on your side here. Although I did read Marcel Marceau’s biography in order to understand the enemy.’
Well, damn. This was just too much. How was Zoey supposed to resist a handsome lumberjack who was also well read? She knew that not all that glittered was gold, but it was very hard to look past said glitter right now.
‘Moment of truth.’ Nick nudged Zoey with his knee as the first poet was announced. Zoey quivered at the warmth of him against her.
A ghostly-looking guy in a wide-brimmed hat and clothes apparently ripped straight from a graveside widow sloped up to the stage.
He muttered into the microphone for a few minutes, then bobbed his head and returned to his seat in the row behind Nick and Zoey.
The audience clapped thoughtfully, even though there was no way anyone had understood a single word.
Next up was a girl who delivered an impassioned performance in what Google Translate informed Zoey was Esperanto.
Third was a trio dressed in dad-core outfits who disinterestedly passed the mic between them like detached Beastie Boys.
‘Shit,’ said Zoey, when Cardigan Guy waved the mic around looking for his next victim. ‘We’re the only ones not performing. Should we be performing?’
‘I’m happy to buy you another chocolate martini, if that’s what it’ll take.’ Nick held up a finger at their festive emcee.
‘It’s probably a cult, and this is how they get you.’
‘The Cult of Poetology, huh.’
Fortunately, they were given a reprieve from performing, which was a relief, as Zoey was having horrific flashbacks from her high-school performance in The Merchant of Venice.
Just then, a skinny individual lurched down the stairs, stumbling over to the podium and grabbing the microphone from Cardigan Guy.
They were green-tinged in the cycling lights, which the AV guy was having an absolute blast with.
Or didn’t know how to work. (It was definitely one of those two.)
The new arrival swayed on the spot, blinking slowly.
Then, at last …
‘Brraaaiinnns,’ came a tortured voice over the microphone. A pause. ‘Brraaaainnns.’
The final ‘s’ was a sibilant hiss that devolved into a screech of microphone feedback, and the audience clapped their hands over their ears. Well, except for a girl in an Oscar the Grouch onesie who was already wearing giant headphones, and who looked quite triumphant about her pre-planning.
‘Gotta protect your hearing,’ she shouted.
‘Just incredible delivery, don’t you think?
’ marvelled a guy in a bucket hat and a scarf so large it might have been a bedsheet.
A glossy tag on a lanyard proclaimed him to be press.
‘So spare. So elegiac. So tortured. And that exit – what a way to ensure the moment lingers when you yourself cannot. Ooh, that’s a good line.
Hang on. Let me record that as a voice note. Hey, Siri?’
Zoey met Nick’s eyes. He was clearly trying as hard as she was not to laugh.
The brains poet shambled offstage and back into the little room where the chocolate martinis were apparently being produced. (Zoey caught a glimpse of chocolate topping, the fast-setting type that hardened on your ice-cream.)
‘Okay, we need to get out of here before we’re called upon,’ said Zoey emphatically. ‘I can’t do it. I just can’t. Even as the resident grump, I cannot bring myself to speak in that cadence. It’s unnatural.’
‘C’mon.’ Nick grabbed her hand and led her back up the stairs. Alice trotted along beside them, nosing open the front door and letting them out into the warm night. And what would’ve been fresh air, except for the guy peeing by the side of the building.
‘Hey! I’m peeing here!’ he grumbled, as Zoey tried to avert her eyes.
Nick wrapped an arm around her and scooted her off to safety. ‘I’ve gotta say, that was the best twenty bucks I’ve ever spent.’
‘The dollar-to-cringe ratio was exceptional,’ agreed Zoey.
‘What’s with the whole brains thing, though?’ Nick asked. ‘It keeps coming up. Darina said it, although that was probably a head injury talking.’
Zoey frowned. Nova had shouted something about brains, too, hadn’t she? But Opal had said that was a band. And also a weird, possibly ironic nickname she used for her ex. It was probably just a coincidence.
‘Who knows,’ she replied. ‘It’s probably just hit the zeitgeist, through TikTok or something. Like Skibidi Toilet and 6-7 and whatever else the kids are into these days. I’ll ask Terriffany. She’s pretty good at keeping track.’
‘I’ll await your report. I mean, it’s probably just a Baader-Meinhof thing, where once you’re on the lookout for people saying brains, it’s all you hear.’
Fair, thought, Zoey. After all, she’d spent her whole life on the lookout for fellow brains. And now here she was, on a date with one.