Grace Grows (5 page)

He grinned. “So come see me Monday nights.” He pulled a chair up to our table and wrote the address on a napkin. The guy at the counter was watching us. “It’s this bar on Bleecker.”

“That’s my neighborhood,” Peg said. “And my night off.”

“Cool. I play from nine thirty to twelve. Hey, what’s your name?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “this is Peg.”

He gave her his hand. “Hey, Peg. Grace, what’s your favorite song?”

I hate surprise questions like that. Impossible to answer immediately. Options must be reviewed. Choices considered.

“Um . . . can I tell you later?”

“Yeah. Think about it and let me know.”

“My favorite song is ‘Take Me to the River,’ ” Peg said.

“Awesome, I know that song,” Tyler said.

“So if I come see you, you’ll play it for me?” Peg smiled.

“Definitely.”

“Tyler,” the guy at the counter with the laptop said.

“Right,” Tyler said. “That’s the boss.”

He stood up, took a towel out of his apron, and flicked an imaginary crumb off our table. “See you Monday,” he said, with that smile of his. And then he was off.

new faces, old songs, hungry girls, and the importance of apostrophizing

I met Peg at her apartment and we walked the few blocks to the bar on Bleecker. Except for some girls sitting next to the stage, the place was pretty empty. Edward and a blond man who looked like he might have been the model for Michelangelo’s
David
were waiting for us in a booth.

The beautiful man’s name was Boris. It disoriented me. With that name, he should be hulking, bald, have lots of nose hair, and deliver unmarked packages to remote warehouses in exchange for suitcases stuffed with cash. He should have a surprise bionic hand that could crush your windpipe in seconds. Unless you were Daniel Craig, in which case Boris was, eventually, toast.

“Hi, Boris,” I said. “What do you do?”

“I’m a neuroscience research technician.”

A likely story.

I went to the bar to get beers and felt hands on my shoulders. Warm, firm hands that made me want to sink onto a stool and fall into a cozy, drooling doze on the bar. I shook it off and turned around. Tyler.

“Oh, hey,” I said.

“Did you think of your favorite song yet?” he asked.

“Oh, gosh, I’m still working on that. I have it narrowed down to eight possibilities.”

“Can you just tell me a couple?”

“Well. . . .” This felt strangely private. A little embarrassing. “I like old songs.” No need to tell him I almost minored in music of the sixties and seventies at Brown. Old music was my escape for most of my teen years, to an extent that many of my Grunge-loving friends just didn’t get.

“Me, too! Like what?”

“Like, well, there’s this song I used to hear on the classic-rock radio station my mom listened to. I have it on my iPod.”

He nodded encouragingly.

“ ‘Bell Bottom Blues.’ ”

He staggered back a step with a hand to his heart. “No shit! Derek and the Dominos. I love that song!”

“But I’m not sure that’s my all-time favorite,” I hastened to add.

He dug his cell out of his pocket, checked the time, and pulled me with him toward the front of the room. The stage was by the windows. “Why don’t you just give me your whole list?”

“Well, maybe I’ll write a few down.”

I went to the booth and he went to the stage.

He started on the piano. After two amazing, original songs, Peg looked at me with wide eyes. “He is really talented. There should be more people here.”

“Nobody knows about him,” I said.

Then he sat on a stool with the guitar and, wearing a harmonica in a neck-brace thing, played a blues song I’d never heard before.

“Dang,” Edward commented, “he sang that like an old black man.”

“That you’d like to have sex with,” Boris added.

“Yes,” Edward said. “Although his hair is almost a deal breaker.”

“That could be fixed,” Boris said. “Reshaped.”

“Be patient, he’s growing it out,” I said.

Then Tyler winked at me and said he was going to play something he’d just written called “This Sign.”

The melody was playful and so were the words; it sounded like the soundtrack to a sunlit afternoon. I was charmed. So, I realized, were the six girls sitting at the tables by the stage. They were visibly into him, despite his choppy hair.

“Tell me again how you met him?” Peg asked.

“He walks my neighbor’s dogs.”

“Those girls look like they want to eat him,” Edward said.

They did. And he looked very comfortable with that sort of attention.

On his break between sets Tyler spent some minutes chatting with the girls. Then he pulled two chairs up to the end of our table for himself and a big galoot of a guy, who turned out to be his infamous friend-slash-stylist, Bogue.

Bogue sat in the chair next to me. I had thought Tyler looked young, but Bogue looked as if he was about seventeen, like one of those beefy, sweet kids from high school who was on the football team
and
in the drama club. He even had a semi-buzz cut and a bit of an adolescent skin condition.

I offered him my hand. “Hi, I’m Grace Barnum.”

“Oh yeah, Grace, I knew it was you. You look just like Ty said.”

I darted a glance at Tyler, who was listening to Peg effuse about his playing. “What did he say I looked like?”

“Small. Sweet. Curvy. Soft eyes. Long dark hair. And I, uh, I think he also used the word ‘edible.’ Or words to that effect.” Bogue turned pink, but he leaned toward me and plowed on ahead in a slightly slurred, seductive whisper. “And I have to say, I agree.”

Bogue was quite the smooth, drunk operator. His face was now bright red. Adorable! Or maybe I was a little tipsy, too. I scooted closer and gave him a friendly peck on the cheek. He grinned.

“What are you doing, Bogue?” Tyler said. He and Peg were looking at us.

“Just following the biological imperative, man,” Bogue said.

“Why don’t you follow it right on out of here.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bogue said.

“You’re gonna worry,” Tyler said.

“When you do what?”

“You don’t want me to show you.”

“Come on, show us,” Boris threw in.

A girl came and tapped Tyler on the shoulder. He stood up and moved away with her and while they talked he pulled out his cell and added a number.

“Oh, sure,” Bogue said. “He can score a hookup, but I’d better not even try in the same space. New city, same old shit. I don’t know why I still hang out with him.”

“You two do seem kind of different.”

He looked at me with interest. “How so?”

“Well, ‘biological imperative.’ I think Tyler would say the same thing differently.”

“Yeah.” Bogue grinned. “He’d call it ‘the urge to fuck and run.’ I’m way more educated. Not to mention classy. Do you want another beer?”

“No thanks,” I said. “He’s lucky to have you. This would be a hard city to come to alone.”

“No shit. He probably wouldn’t even have come if I hadn’t dragged his ass here. I told him it was time to spread the musical love in a much wider radius than Pennsylvania, see if he could make something of it. I told him I’d learn what to do and be his manager even, but already he’s found someone else. Asshole.”

“So what do you do? Have you found a job yet?”

“I’m looking. I’m gonna get a beer, be right back.”

Peg went to the ladies’ room and Edward and Boris left to meet friends at a bar down the street.

Tyler finished with the girl and came and sat on Bogue’s chair. “Her name is Jennifer. She offered to start a street team for me with those other girls.”

“What’s that?”

“I guess they’ll hand out flyers for my gigs, try to get people to come. Hey, can you help me create a Facebook fan page? I don’t have a computer.”

“I guess I could try . . . I don’t know much about it. Let’s ask Peg if she—”

“Come on, we’ll figure it out. When can I come over?”

“I—well, I need to check my schedule.” I stood up. “Can we talk about it later? I have to get going.”

He seemed genuinely disappointed. “Can’t you stay?”

“Not this time, I’m sorry.”

He moved back to let me out of the booth. “Next time, then. I might have something special for you, if you give me that list. Why don’t you text it to me? I’ll give you my number.”

“I think I have your number, actually.” I knew I did, buried in Big Green. Now bookmarking
The Age of Innocence.

He got his cell out. “Okay, give me yours. I promise to only use it twice a day.”

My stomach was starting to hurt.

“Grace?” He was waiting. I gave him the number.

A couple of mornings later I stepped outside my door to go to work and did an ungainly, windmilling slide across the floor, just catching myself on the banister before I ate honeycomb tile. Had Mr. Rojas just mopped, or what? I searched for the telltale shine and found that the instrument of my near wipeout was not gray mop water, but a lethal calling card—a slick little bit of lamination from Pocono Community College.

Tyler’s picture on it stopped me cold. He was shaggy-haired, grinning, a dimple in one cheek. Cocky. Completely adorable. How could anyone be that photogenic in a college photo ID?

The card had apparently been paper-clipped to a scuffed piece of notebook paper I found nearby on the floor. I opened it up and sat on the stairs in an attempt to read his execrable handwriting. It was a poem. Or—of course!—the words to a song.

this sign

would you like to take a walk with me

hold hands see what we can see

come back and take a cup of tea with me

suns leavin would you like to stay

I didn’t expect it to go this way

but theres all sorts of games that we can play if you stay

I wanna be with you rain or shine

theres nobody elses heart on my mind

and if I went lookin, lord, I’d never find this sign

theres nothin out there that we can do

but look at each other without a clue

and what if the others thinkin I love you?

well I do

The charming song he’d played Monday night. I read the words again a couple more times.

Maybe I could tutor him on apostrophe usage.

drinking at work: the dream and the reality

Ed and I had a meeting with Bill about the third-grade reading book we were developing. Have I mentioned that Bill is distractingly orange? Too much self-tanning lotion, maybe, or too much carrot juice. It kind of clashes with his blond brush cut. Also, by the way, Bill never smiles. Ever.

“So here are the issues,” Bill said.

We were still settling into our seats. I pulled out a legal pad and uncapped my pen.

“We need to add someone old to one of the stories. Maybe in the one about the Latino kid who goes Rollerblading in the park. Make it his granny who takes him, instead of the teenage brother.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, “the thing is, that story is an excerpt from a Newbery Medal–winning book. The brother is important to the little boy in the plot. I don’t know if the author—”

“He’ll change it for our text. Tell him we can’t use the story, otherwise.”

“The author is a woman.”

“Right. All the more reason she’ll agree to change the brother to an old lady. Okay, next.” He consulted his notes. “Get rid of the ice cream sundae in the story about the kid who loses her library book. Change it to fruit salad.”

“Fruit salad.” Ed wrote it down. “So, she knows she’s going to get in trouble for losing her book, and she uses the last of her allowance to treat herself to
fruit salad
, before she tells her parents?”

“Yeah, it sucks,” Bill said. “But we can’t have foods with no nutritional value in the stories. Too many little fatties will be reading them.”

Ed kneed me under the table.

Bill looked at his notes. “And one more thing. We’re dead in the water with California if we don’t have an equal number of male and female characters throughout the book.”

“We do!” I said vehemently. I knew this for a fact. “Forty-nine of each!”