Miss Misery (11 page)

“Andre,” Cath said to the skinny black kid as he slid the fader to the left and Wire's “The 15th” started to play, “this is David.”

Andre slipped his headphones off. “Hey,” he said in a voice far too deep and exhausted for such a small frame. “I know who he is.”

“You do?” Cath looked puzzled.

“Sure,” said Andre.

“I'm sorry,” I said, swallowing another burn of whiskey. “Have we met?”

“Not officially,” said Andre, shaking my hand with a grip as loose as a Hilton sister. “But you were really starting to piss me off at the Dark Room the other night.”

The warmth of the whiskey was replaced with the arctic freeze of dread.

“I wasn't at the Da—”

Cath cut me off. “What did he do?”

“Kept trying to score off me while I was spinning, and then he wouldn't stop requesting Primal Scream songs. Even when I told him it was hip-hop night.”

I felt winded suddenly. And old. “I'm sorry,” I said. “I—”

Cath elbowed me in the side. “He hasn't been himself lately.”

Andre smiled and lifted his headphones back to his ears. “Hey, it's cool. Who has?”

 

Cath and I took our drinks to one of the red couches against the wall as Andre segued into Primal Scream's “Miss Lucifer,” ostensibly for me. I raised my glass to him in mock tribute and he saluted back. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I didn't even like this song.

Cath lit a cigarette. I glanced at Franta and saw that he was smoking too, so I let it go. I crossed and uncrossed my legs.

“It certainly seems as if you've been getting around,” she said.

“It certainly does.” I glanced at my glass and noticed that it was already empty.

“Don't worry,” Cath said, pushing her hair behind her ears. “We'll fix this.”

“We will?” I said, doubtful.

“Sure we will,” she said. And smiled, really smiled at me, for the first time. “It's just…”

“What?”

“Let me fix something else first,” she said, putting her drink down on the floor and rummaging through her bag. “Here we go.” She had a bright orange tin of pomade in her hand and she smeared a healthy dollop across both palms.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Your hair looks fine.”

“I know it does, creepo,” she said. “But yours doesn't.”

She leaned forward and ran the mess through my hair, digging her fingers into my scalp, leaving an electric trail that tingled down to my spine. Her eyes were focused as she twisted and twirled her hands; her face was close to mine, her cheeks smooth. I closed my eyes; the pomade smelled like lemongrass.

After a minute more, she was done. I opened my eyes and saw her lean back with an appreciative look. “Much better,” she said. “You're starting to look more like yourself already.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” I said as I stood up for another round of drinks.

 

At the bar, Franta refilled my glass and poured one for himself.

“Nice kid,” he said, nodding sagely to himself.

“Who?” I asked. “Cath?”

“Yes, yes. Her. The rest of them. These who walk in now.” He pointed behind me and I swung around to see a shoulder bag–slung hipster trio breeze in and make their way over to where Cath was sitting. “They all good kids. So what they play music, make with the cigarettes. All of them, good kids.”

“Yeah,” I said, digging into my wallet to pay. “Most of them are.”

“What about you, David?”

I glanced up. Franta scowled at me.

“What about me?”

“Are you good kid?”

I put some money on the bar. “I try, Franta. I try.”

 

As night fell, the Satellite Heart started to beat faster. Franta let Andre turn the volume up and the dimmers down. The whiskey also had its effect. I found myself talking more, glancing at my watch less. I couldn't seem to remember the world outside of this strange, red little room. And that thought alone made me something close to giddy.

Cath's friends who had shown up were the ones she always referred to in her diary as the VSC. There was her roommate, little Stevie Lau, who wore an electric-blue jumpsuit and vintage Chucks and was Andre's boyfriend—or at least he was this week. There was Debra Silverstein, a hyperactive assistant copy editor at
Vanity Fair
and admitted Anglophile. And there was Ben There, the leader of the crew. He was six foot one and ghostly pale and if it weren't for the rainbow-colored tattoo of a hawk that circled his neck, he'd be indistinguishable from a cadaver, no doubt the victim of a mosh-pit riot he'd incited. Ben There had earned his name for his perpetually jaded attitude and earned his money from his deceased parents. According to Cath, he slept all day in his Alphabet City loft before rising at six p.m. to eat waffles and play Xbox Live. Then he went out and partied until sunrise. Every night.

“So, David.” Ben There smoked theatrically, and everyone shut up at the sound of his voice. “Didn't I see you last night at the Beauty Industry secret show? At the Delancey?”

Cath—long past drunk—let out a high-pitched giggle.

“I don't know,” I said. “What was I doing?”

“Running around the dance floor like a great big crazy person, trying to bum a smoke off of every member of the band.”

I sighed. “Unfortunately, that's beginning to sound like me, yeah.”

Stevie piped up. “How was the show?”

Ben There stubbed out his cigarette, arched his eyebrows sarcastically, and gave Stevie a look.

“Oh,” said Stevie.

When Debra began laying out the various options for the rest of the night—a gallery opening in DUMBO, an hour of free Red Stripe at Rothko, a GoGo Bordello show at Barrio—I leaned into Cath and felt a thrill when she leaned back.

“Cath,” I said. My breath smelled like whiskey but I didn't care; hers smelled like Parliaments. “I've been meaning to ask you something.”

“What is it?”

“What the hell does VSC mean? Does it stand for something?”

Ben There and Stevie announced that the first “part” of the night was up to Debra, but they were not going to miss the
Fader
party that started at three a.m.

“Isn't it obvious?” she giggled again. “They're the Vampire Social Club.”

A wolf howl emanated from the couch across from me.

“Sorry!” said Debra, as she reached for her Sidekick and began typing into it frantically. “I have it programmed to make that noise when someone IMs me.”

“Cute,” I said as the wolf howled again.

These vampire socialites were only a few years younger than me, but I felt like their grandfather. Their very drunk grandfather. I turned back to Cath.

“How did you meet these people?”

“Oh, you know—online, mostly,” she sipped her umpteenth drink demurely through a miniature straw. “Ben There used to hang out in the old AOL punk-rock chat rooms and brag about how unpunk the rest of us were, how we didn't know anything. He started liking me because I bought all the albums he told me to, like Indian Summer and Moss Icon.”

“Yeah, but how did you, like,
meet him
meet him?”

“Oh, you mean IRL?” She laughed. “In real life? I road-tripped to New York when I was seventeen and stayed with him. My dad thought I was visiting Angie in Quebec.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, her eyes shining. “It was pretty wild.”

“You had no problem traveling to another country to sleep with some guy you'd never even met?”

She frowned. “Come on, dude—I'd met him. I mean, I
knew
him. Distance doesn't mean shit online, anyway; he was a hell of a lot cooler than the girls at Holy Cross.” She sighed and looked at the tall, ghostly figure across from us as he smoked and shot down plan after plan from the other members of the VSC. “I think I knew him better then, really. Before I met him. Online he was just more…honest.”

Behind us Andre started playing “Burning Photographs,” the one Ryan Adams song I legitimately liked. I gave him a one-drink salute, which he returned with a sarcastic flourish.

“So are you really going to set up this meeting for me?”

“What,” she said, “the one with yourself?”

“Yeah.”

She lit a cigarette. “Yeah, of course. I already texted him about it.”

“You did?”

“Yup.”

“And what did he say?”

“Nothing.” She exhaled a thin stream of ivory smoke. “He just sent me one of those winky emoticons.”

I sat back. “Great.”

Cath inhaled and her cigarette glowed as red as the room. “You know, for the same person, you two Davids are pretty fucking different.”

Ben There leaned forward. “What are you two little birds twittering about?”

Cath blushed. “Nothing. David just wants to get to know himself a little better.”

Ben There twisted his mouth. “And you're the person to help him do it?”

Cath stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette. “Maybe. Who the fuck knows.” She stood and stumble-stepped to the bathroom.

Ben There watched her until we all heard the click of the bathroom lock. “She's quite the live one, our little Miss Misery.”

“Yeah,” I said, still looking at the bathroom door. “She's something.”

 

Two minutes later, Cath came rocketing out of the bathroom, cell phone in hand.

“He wrote back again,” she said.

I put my latest empty glass down, stopped smiling. “He did? What did he say?”

Cath collapsed on the couch next to me, tossed her phone in my lap. “See for yourself.”

I flipped open the phone and looked at the message there.

I felt sweaty and sick and quickly closed the phone.

“Who's Amy?” said Cath, snatching her phone back.

“She's…” My tongue felt thick in my mouth. “She's my girlfriend.”

Cath raised one eyebrow. “You guys share a girlfriend and her name is Amy?”

Just the mention of Amy's name in this place, on this night, felt like a stomach punch. I was suddenly sober and my ears were ringing. What the fuck was I doing with these people? In this life? When I still hadn't spoken to the person I loved most?

“Whoever this”—just the words sounded crazy in my throat—“imposter person is, he definitely does not know my girlfriend.”

Cath smirked. “How do you know? I mean, if you look the same, maybe she couldn't tell…”

“Stop it,” I said.

“Why are you out with me anyway if you have a girlfriend? Shouldn't you be home with her?”

“She's not there.”

“Where is she? Canoodling with you number two?”

“Stop. She's in The Hague.”

“What the fuck is a Hague?”

“Not
a
Hague.
The
Hague. It's a city. In Europe.”

Cath lit another cigarette. “Lucky Amy.”

I hated the way her name sounded in Cath's mouth—like something small. Something tiny. Something to be mocked.

I stood up. “I have to go.”

Debra looked up from her IM conversation. “You do?”

Ben There smiled lazily. “Better plans?”

“I just…” I felt wild standing there, out of control. I felt a thousand pairs of inebriated eyes boring holes into my body. “I just have to go. Nice to meet you all.” I tripped slightly over the table, then walked quickly to the door. Behind me, I heard Debra's phone howling at the moon.

“Good-bye, David!” Franta yelled from the bar. “Don't go back to Rhode Island!”

I gave a halfhearted wave in his direction, then shot out and into the night. It felt like walking through an airlock—except that outside wasn't outer space, it was another dimension. The air was humid and thick; people's voices were loud and garish; the headlights of passing taxis seemed luridly yellow. I stood at the top of the steps, feeling my heart race in my chest. Feeling strangely guilty.

The door behind me opened and shut.

“So that's it?”

It was Cath, standing at the base of the stairs. I turned.

“Yeah, that's it. I have to go home.”