He thrusts his hand out toward Madeline. "You must be Madeline."
She doesn't shake, but rather places her fingertips into his palm as if this were a Merchant Ivory film. "Charmed, I'm sure."
Yikes! Is Madeline trying to put on the sex appeal with Rob Shachtley, whose wife died only seven years ago?
"Likewise." He kisses her where the Fedora girl left a glow-in-the-dark stamp.
Sexual tension?
He turns to me. "I have to go, but do you two want to hook up after the show? Coffee? A drink? Truth or Dare?"
"Yeah, let's," I say as Madeline lights a cigarette.
"It'll take me a while to get out of here, so I'll meet you." He stands. "I'll sing you a song. What do you want me to sing for you, Sybil Weatherfield?"
I know there's something I should be doing with my hands. " 'Sister Golden Hair'? 'Rhinestone Cowboy'?" I hesitate, staring at the ceiling. "I got it. 'Rhiannon.' "
"Let me think." He puts his index finger to his lips and closes his eyes. He opens them. "Uh, no. When I sing a Beatles song, it's for you." When he smiles, I blush. Second time he's made me blush.
Madeline drags on her cigarette while we agree, over loud music, to meet at Café Michelangelo on Bleecker.
"Listen for the Beatles," he tells me, leaving. "That'll be for you."
Before he gets out of earshot, I call after him, "Hey, Rob?"
"Yeah?" He turns his body around. The girls nearby watch him walk. The music seems to blare.
The girls stare at him. He doesn't seem to notice. He must notice. "Who's the skinny guy who always sells CDs at the shows?" I ask, pointing to the stairs. It's just an excuse to talk to him. Realizing this, I feel silly and self-conscious. I tell myself I have a boyfriend. I tell myself Madeline doesn't detect anything out of the ordinary. I tell myself I'm really interested in the mysterious identity of the skinny guy by the stairs.
Rob, looking past the audience, checks out the skinny guy. "Oh, Greg. Sound engineer/manager/record producer extraordinaire." He lowers his eyes to mine. "Dave's wife's little brother. He comes in from Boston a couple times a month." He pauses. "He does the flyers."
"They're great flyers," I say.
The machinations of rock 'n' roll. When he turns away and I find myself looking at him like the other girls, I blush again. I check out Madeline.
She watches him too. "He's fatter up close."
"You think? I don't think so. Maybe a little." Now I'm so red that I probably look like I'm about to die from a rash.
Glass Half Empty takes the stage: Rob Shachtley in a pink suit with a guitar and Dave Stomps in a black suit at drums. They look like an overturned box of Good & Plenty.
Listening to rock 'n' roll is like scratching a bug bite till it bleeds. Just when Madeline and I master blasé, he breaks into "Love Me Do." I remember in the Laundromat how he said I didn't want to be his love slave. That's what he said.
Am I being pursued? What does he want from me? I don't want to be just another groupie, just another girl.
I listen, trying to look unmoved. My cheeks can't redden. No standing on my chair. It's a rock 'n' roll moment, and anyone who's ever had one knows it's precious: a flash, a split second, like a Korean launderer, a nonfat berry muffin. It's like a memory of picking apples in an orchard or putting your cat in a stroller when you're three. A rock 'n' roll moment is about being there and not somewhere else, missing it.
The show ends when Rob summons up images of a wraith-like woman sipping from the Fountain of Youth at gunpoint.
The lights come on, Madeline places money under a glass, and we walk through the Fedora to exit. People press in and smile at someone visible just over our shoulders. It's easy to be claustrophobic now. I've lost whatever it was I had, and now there's an odd sensation that, in the midst of my efforts to get out of the Fedora with Madeline Blue— who will always be cooler than I, even in pajama bottoms— I'm somehow off.
"Good set," Madeline says on the street.
Fedoraphobic, I draw my jacket tightly around me. "It's freezing."
We walk west. "What do you know about Dave?" she asks.
"Nothing. Only what you know."
As we pass Washington Square Park, about ten homeless guys create a gauntlet for us to walk through. "Smoke? Smoke? Smoke?" We keep going.
Café Michelangelo is muted and dim, the colors of peacock feathers and the Italian Renaissance. Furnished in antiques, it's a torrent of curled iron chair legs, round marble tables, and stained wooden fixtures spread beneath mirrors, long and thin, short and stout, beveled, opaque, and crystal-clear. A veritable house of mirrors on Mona Lisa muted-color walls, Sistine Chapel ceilings. The dessert case is bright with cheesecakes lit up like a lost ark, chocolate layer cakes unsliced behind translucence. Just sitting on a hard-backed chair with a red velvet cushion makes me want to sip espresso and talk about Plato.
Rob arrives twenty minutes after us. "Dave's doing the dirty work." He hangs his coat on the back of his chair. "Kissing girls, speaking to Entertainment Tonight. John Tesh is full of questions this evening."
Our waiter has an Italian accent. Madeline haggles with him over the ingredients of a caffé Americano, which isn't on the menu. "I'm desperate for one," she whines. "It's only espresso and water." When he leaves, having agreed to try his best to make one, she expels air from her lungs. "He's gorgeous. God, is he gorgeous." She puts her chin in her hands and whines, "I don't know what I'm going to do."
Rob and I don't comment. When the waiter returns for our orders, Rob says, "German chocolate cheesecake."
I study the menu. My stomach growls, but I doubt anyone hears.
"What do you want, Sybil?" Madeline puts her menu on top of Rob's.
I feel her staring. "Probably just a drink."
"What have you eaten today?" She glares at me with hot eyes.
The waiter freezes over his pad of paper. Rob doesn't move either.
"I don't remember." Okay, so I had one cup of dried cereal, a few slurps of skim milk, alfalfa sprouts with a splash of balsamic vinegar, and an orange. Quartered.
"Get a salad," says Madeline. "Sybil's like Kafka's 'hunger artist.' "
"I'm broke—"
"We'll split one—"
"I don't have any money."
Rob breaks in, apparently sensing discord. He picks up a menu, opens it, and scans. "You like goat cheese?" He peeks out from behind the menu. "Goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes?"
"Yes, but— I just want coffee." I shake my head decisively.
Rob points to something on the menu, showing our poor waiter. To me, he says, "I'm buying."
"You didn't have to do that," I say when the waiter walks away.
"I'm a rock star." He raises his eyebrows and leans forward. "I've got the money."
Madeline, deadpan but delighted, says, "She starves herself all day." She smiles in my direction and adds, "You need the protein."
" Thank you for sharing with our new friend." I'm mortified.
Rob leans back. "Let's get it all out on the table so we can be done with it."
The waiter brings us iced water. "I'll be right back with your caffé Americano," he tells Madeline. She winks. We watch him go.
"Who wants to start?" asks Rob happily; he's downright cheery.
"Madeline wants to know about Dave Stomps," I say.