6. Adrian
Adrian
Iwas three songs into my second set when I noticed Jacks had stopped moving.
He hadn’t stopped working. Jacks never stopped working; but he was standing at the far end of the bar wearing an expression that screamed “quiet internal calculation.”
I filed it away and kept dancing.
Then Benji appeared out of nowhere with a bottle in each hand.
“Jacks,” he said.
Jacks looked at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Delivering messages,” Jacks said.
“Between?”
“Adrian and—”
Benji set his bottles down with care. “Between a mostly naked man on that bar and a guy at that booth who has not checked his phone once? Do you not find this unusual at all?”
“I, uh, well—”
“You might be the world’s least efficient postal service.” Benji shook his head.
Jacks straightened. “I’m a barback. What do I know about postal delivery?”
“You are currently a messenger for two adults who are talking about a ferret and a dog instead of setting a date for dinner or something more normal.”
“The dog is medically relevant,” I called down from the bar.
Benji looked up, rolled his eyes, then picked up his bottles and walked away without another word, which, for Benji, was somehow worse than anything he could have ever said.
Jacks looked at me.
I shrugged and gave him nothing.
He went back to stocking glasses and filling ice buckets.
I finished my set the way I finished all sets—giving the room everything it had coming.
The last song was as good as the first, because the room deserved that and so did I.
When the music wound down, I stood at the edge of the bar for a second and looked out at the crowd as regulars shoved dollar bills into my leg band.
My eyes flicked to the booth by the door.
Brendan was watching the end of the set with complete, unhurried attention, no part of him somewhere else. When the last beat dropped and the room came back to itself, he picked up his drink, shot back what was left of it, and then looked straight at me from across the room.
Two seconds passed, maybe three.
Then he reached for his jacket.
I dropped down off the bar and handed Benji an empty Fanta can. I moved through the crowd toward the booth by the door, past the regulars and the post-set noise and Benji saying something behind me that I chose not to hear.
By the time I got there, the booth was empty.
Brendan’s jacket was gone, but his glass was there, completely empty.
His bill was there, too, tucked under the glass with a pen lying across it.
It was one of his branded vet clinic pens with an elongated wiener dog that stretched almost from clicker to ballpoint.
The name and phone number of the clinic was printed in neat white lettering inside the dog’s outline.
I picked up the bill and stood there for a second.
Then I turned it over.
On the back, in clean, steady handwriting that somehow looked exactly like I would have guessed, it read,
For personal use only. Not for puppy emergencies.
And below that, there was a number.
I read it twice. Then I looked at the door. Then I looked at the number again.
My left-cheek dimple came out before I could stop it, which was fine because there was nobody in this corner of the bar to see it except Dante at the door, and Dante was reading his book and exercising his considerable gift for minding his own business.
I took out my phone and photographed the bill so I wouldn’t lose it. Then I stood there for another moment in the space where Brendan had been sitting for the past two hours, watching me work, sending notes through Jacks with a completely straight face.
“Be careful,” Benji had said.
I thought about a man who kept to his booth by the door and took his time and wrote things down clean and steady and left before you could catch him at it.
Yeah, I thought. I should be careful.
“He left his number.”
I spun so fast I nearly knocked Benji over. He stepped back, a fresh Fanta in hand, already open, which meant he’d been planning to come over here regardless of what he found.
“I know,” I said.
“On the bill.”
“Benji.”
“Just making sure you found it.” He handed me the Fanta, looked at the empty booth, then back at me. “Jacks delivered eight messages tonight.”
“Nine,” I said. “The last one was about bread theft versus shoe theft and whether one constituted a more morally coherent position than the other.”
Benji blinked at me, his mouth open yet uncommitted to words. Then he managed to ask, “You had a philosophical debate? Through Jacks? While performing?”
I shrugged. “It was a good debate.”
“Adrian.”
“He had valid points about the bread.”
“Adrian,” he said again, the way he said things when he wanted them to land. “You just crossed the entire bar to get to that booth.”
“I did.”
“In your Speedo while covered in sweat . . . while the crowd is still here watching your every move.”
“Yes.”
“For a man who’d already left?”
My head ducked enough for my hair to fall across my face. I pushed it back but didn’t look up. “That’s . . . accurate.”
Benji picked up his tray, started to turn away, then turned back. “What does the note say?”
I thought about telling him it was personal, about folding it and shoving it into my pocket and heading to the back to change and letting Benji’s very considerable imagination fill in whatever it wanted.
Instead, I handed him the bill.
He turned it over and read it, then he handed it back without a word, turned, and walked three steps. He stopped . . . again.
“Adrian,” he said, without turning around.
“Yeah.”
“Text him tonight.”
“It’s late.”
“For the love of God, he just left. It is not that late, and you know it.” He started walking again. “Text him tonight,” he called over his shoulder, “and don’t say anything about the dog.”
The crowd swallowed him before I could argue.
I stood before the booth by the door and looked at the number on the bill and listened to the room doing what the room did on a Saturday when everything had gone the way it should’ve gone. It was warm and loud and full of people who’d had a good night.
Without thinking, I sat down in the booth.
I sat in Brendan’s booth.
And I held out my phone I didn’t even remember grabbing when I stepped down from the bar.
Me: This is Adrian. Not a puppy emergency.
I put the phone face down on the table, picked up my Fanta, and waited.
The bar moved around me in its Saturday way, some of the guys checking out the dancer in his Speedo sitting out in the open.
I was basically naked every night, but oddly, never felt exposed while dancing on the bar.
Sitting there, in Brendan’s booth, I felt every inch of my exposed skin, every eyeball scanning me, every smile and leer and . . . shit. I felt it all.
Outside, Tampa was doing whatever Tampa did after midnight. Mofongo was probably asleep in his crate at home. He’d be asleep on my foot within minutes of me walking in the door.
And there I was, in glorified underwear, waiting on my phone to—
My phone buzzed.
Unknown Number: Glad to hear it. How’s Mofongo?
I smiled without meaning to. Then I realized I hadn’t saved Brendan’s number in my contacts and quickly did so, giving him a name that seemed appropriate.
Me: I should be home in half an hour. I expect a thorough tongue bath, possibly a piddle, likely both.
His response came back in under a minute:
Puck’s Dad: Classic beagle behavior. They’re very committed to feet.
Me: Is that a medical assessment?
Puck’s Dad: Entirely clinical.
Me: Look at you, Mister MD.
Puck’s Dad: That’s DVM, if we’re being proper.
Me: I’m sitting on a vinyl booth in a sweaty Speedo. Please, let’s be proper.
I looked up at the bar, at the room I’d been working for two hours, at Benji moving through it like he’d been born to it, at Jacks behind the bar with his quiet competence, at the warm light and the noise and the specific feeling of a Saturday at Barbacks when everything had landed right.
Then I looked back at my phone and typed without thinking.
Me: Brendan.
Puck’s Dad: Yeah.
Me: You left before I got down.
A pause, longer than his other pauses.
Puck’s Dad: I know. Sorry.
I looked at that for a second, then typed:
Me: Don’t be. What you left still has me smiling.
I set my phone down, picked up my Fanta, and sat there for a few more minutes, watching the bar wind toward closing. When my phone buzzed again, I let it sit for a moment before looking.
Puck’s Dad: Are you working next Saturday?
Me: I’m always working Saturdays. They’re our best nights.
Puck’s Dad: Save my booth for me, please. Tell Jacks I’ll take a whiskey neat.
I grinned as I finished my Fanta and went to change.
The bar kept doing what the bar did.
Somewhere across Tampa, a man was reading a text with a ferret on his shoulder and a plant on the windowsill, and three weeks was nothing, really.
Three weeks was practically tomorrow.