Chapter 43 All the Lonely People
All the Lonely People
The Twist ’n’ Shouters!
A one-night event at a club in the deep Valley.
That’s where they were headed in Mia’s venerable Acura.
On the drive over, she updated Evan on Peter (big into science, crush on a girl named Lola, heartbreakingly graduated from superhero-themed school supplies) and her stint in San Francisco (under-resourced, rampant property crime, balancing incarceration and rehabilitation).
“And what’s been going on with you?”
“Not much,” Evan said.
Mia scratched at her hairline and stared through the windshield.
Evan’s dread mounted as they neared the venue. Parking was plentiful. The air tasted of a distant forest fire. He came around to open the driver’s door for Mia and offer his hand.
She wore a fitted royal-blue cocktail dress that hit just above the knee, a slight flare at the skirt accentuating her curves.
A small strap purse with a subtle metallic sheen picked up her dangling silver earrings.
She was in pointed toe-pumps with medium heels, so he proffered his arm and she took it.
A high ponytail strictly bound her hair, a new look for her, all that curly wildness wrangled into sleekness, her fine features on stark display.
A sparse line had formed at the venue.
The bouncer checked IDs with his head cocked back and an aura of constrained I-might-have-to-beat-your-ass-later threat.
The prison-ink cross at his temple sometimes stood for white supremacy but sometimes didn’t.
Evan watched him engage with a black couple ahead of them in line but noted no variation in his behavior.
He checked Evan’s fake but real driver’s license, a perfect artifact from the unimprovable Melinda Truong, and then Evan and Mia were inside.
Folks milled around a bar to the right, and booths and tables were scattered across two levels framing a dance floor and stage.
A DJ warmed up the room, a few people dancing.
The place was maybe half full, but given the size of the building, it looked more empty than not.
Evan noted emergency exits, perches in the lighting rig, faces and body language, compiling and filing, contingency planning.
“Would you like a drink?” Mia asked.
He scanned the offerings. They had Absolut, Smirnoff, and SKYY Blood Orange. Alas. The pours were heavy. Thick plastic cups, no doubt a security measure. Since he wasn’t eight years old, he refused to drink from a plastic cup.
“No, thank you.”
Mia got a Bombay Sapphire and tonic and they sat at a cocktail table at the fringe. He felt rudderless. It struck him that he was unaccustomed to being anywhere without purpose.
The crowd was variegated. Hair crimped and curled, a half dozen college girls in bright dresses bounce-bopped with one another, glimmering like tropical fish and shining with youth.
A stylish guy picked at the edge of their dance circle with half-decent freestyle moves, waiting for an opening.
A young married couple were locked in their own fête à deux, the wife staring at her man with a look of devoted longing that would’ve put Elizabeth Barrett Browning to shame.
A white dude wearing a kerchief do-rag and a wifebeater spun in a crazy whirling solo dance, veins popping in his arms. At a front table, an ancient biker king with a troll face sat proudly, dense of beard and shiny of head, his ladies up and dancing by their chairs.
A dude with a scowl and a grunge ’stache hustled along the dance floor’s perimeter, displaying on his arm the girl with the best, best hair, a glowing golden blonde—the alpha couple supreme.
An entourage followed them like Lorenz ducklings, the future bridal party.
Every interaction a negotiation, every face a story.
So many combinations—a buck leading a herd of does, a doe holding flirty court with a herd of bucks.
A gentlemanly seventy-year-old with a face like a brown paper bag helped keep a nervously laughing twentysomething on beat, teaching her dance steps with respectful care.
She was cute as hell, wide hips and a huge beaming smile that stirred something in Evan’s cells, the beat of a deep-buried genetic drum.
A confusion of instincts—attraction versus a need to protect.
She was only a few years older than Joey.
He turned down the volume on the drumbeat.
“Would you like to dance?” Mia asked.
He looked across the table at her. In comparison to the girl on the dance floor, she was a woman: vastly more powerful and attractive for it.
Evan didn’t dance.
He said, “No, thank you.”
Mia slurped at her gin and tonic. The straw was robust, designed for rapid imbibing. “So,” she said, “how ’bout them Dodgers?”
He looked at her blankly.
“Remember when I told you that you wouldn’t make it through a single real date with me?”
“I’m not very good at this, am I?”
“No,” she said, and brushed a wisp of hair off his forehead. “You’re atrocious at it.”
“Fair,” he said. “Let’s start over.”
“Okay. What’s new with you, Evan?”
Her smart-ass intonation made him smirk. Still, no natural response came to him. He thought about Devine vomiting in the master suite, the foursome of rapists roaming New York, the high-school extortionist he’d nearly drowned in an aboveground pool a few hours ago.
“I got new boots,” he said.
“I noticed about the boots,” she said, amused. “And was going to ask about said boots.”
He stuck his foot out from the table and waggled it.
“They are excellent,” Mia said.
That was precisely what they were.
“What else?” Mia asked.
“I’ve been going by a new code name.”
“What’s that?”
“Mr. Cobbledick.”
She guffawed, covered her mouth. “I mean, can you even imagine? I could barely get through the parent-teacher meeting with a straight face.”
A feedback whine cut off their conversation, and then the band was announced to distracted applause and a few lonely whoops.
The curtain came up and there they were: the imitation Beatles.
The mop-top wigs were terrible, heads flopping back and forth as they opened with a stunningly prosaic rendition of “Love Me Do.” The music was mercifully loud, nearly sufficient to eclipse the out-of-tune vocals.
George, the oldest, was the clear leader of the band.
During the chorus, he roamed the stage, frowning and signaling to his bandmates and the sound guys, calling for adjustments that had no discernible effect.
Softening into middle age, John was a middling talent who’d probably had the third-best voice from his high school back in the day, no doubt drove the girls crazy playing proms. His Lennon glasses were lensless.
Paul looked five years past his prime, rouged cheeks highlighting his round face to young him up.
He was mustering his residual talent as best he could, but his voice was mostly shot, the strain lending it a decidedly non–Fab Four rasp.
Ringo looked to be two steps out of music college, Berklee or USC’s Thornton perhaps, and it seemed to be dawning on him in real time that this was what an entertainer’s life looked like.
The most skilled, he played with a barely suppressed fuck-my-life depressive rage, eyes knifing off into the middle distance as his hands flicked the drumsticks robotically.
As the band rolled into the next set, the prix fixe dinner arrived, all courses in rapid succession—wilted salad, stringy asparagus, potatoes with grainy innards, chicken slimed in fatty skin. Evan poked and nibbled and then opted for strategic rearrangement on the plate.
“Let’s hear it for Ringo!” George said, clapping overhead. “C’mon, that’s all you got for Ringo?”
The food, the drink, the music, the dancing—there was nothing outstanding anywhere in sight.
And yet everyone seemed to be having fun.
They were drinking and drinking and drinking their well booze from thick outdoor cups, nodding along glassy-eyed or dancing out of step.
Evan did not understand. Speaker static crackled at intervals throughout “Please Please Me,” and he was starting to feel ill and was not sure what he was doing here or how to remain here.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Mia glance over at him, concerned.
“We have T-shirts and CDs for sale at the booth,” George said. “They make wonderful Christmas gifts.”
“Christmas!” John shticked. “It’s February!”
“Late Christmas gifts.”
A sole lady in the audience laughed, a dry cackle.
“We’re gonna take a quick break—but we’ll be back soon for a … Magical Mystery Tour!” John airplaned his arms at a tilt, wiggled his fingers, and flew himself off the stage. The others followed, except for Paul, who hopped arthritically off the platform and approached.
Mia rose to receive him, and he kissed her on both cheeks. “Hello, honey. And thank you for coming to see us.” His affect, completely different offstage.
“How’s Phil?”
“Been home three weeks. Doing better. Still drinking through a straw so it’s smoothies, smoothies, smoothies. But thank you. You are our legal goddess.” He looked askance at Evan. “Who’s Mr. Man here?”
“A friend.”
“Friend?” Paul shook his head. “Foolish, foolish man.”
He swept off rather grandly, disappearing backstage.
“His husband,” Mia said. “Beaten with a tire jack leaving a club.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?” she said. “I prosecuted the offender. He’s serving seven years. And they won a fifty-thousand-dollar settlement in civil.”
“Seven years? Fifty K? That’s it?”
“That’s all we could get. And all the defendant had.” Mia fanned a hand around the room. “This is the world I live in. Where I have to make decisions about the law. Where I negotiate small victories for people like Phil and Sam. In the everyday grind.”