War for the Oaks (16 page)

"Does that translate as, 'None of your business?' "

Willy seemed to find this uncommonly funny. "Sort of," he said at last.

Eddi stared at him, wondering what to say. She knew she should be annoyed, and even had a vague notion that she was. But it seemed—inappropriate? "All right," she sighed. "I won't ask."

He caught her hand. "Didn't mean to hurt your feelings," he said, rueful and coaxing. Light caught in one of his eyes, edging the iris with pale green fire. The laughter melted from his face as he looked
at her. The intensity that fascinated her so seemed to shine from him like candlelight through alabaster.

"You're very beautiful," he said softly.

That was confusing; she knew she wasn't. She shook her head.

"You don't believe me? For shame."

As a relief from his eyes, she looked down at the hands that held hers—long and pale, smooth, pleasantly cool, with neatly trimmed nails. Stuart had bitten his fingernails.

He raised her head with a finger under her chin, then put both hands around her waist and drew her close. He kissed her as if intending to burn the caution out of her.

She stepped back after a few moments and laughed shakily. "Do that again and you'll have to carry me downtown. That does funny things to my knees."

He laughed, and tucked her arm into his own.

They crossed over to Hennepin Avenue on Tenth Street. Hennepin was still changing from its daytime clothes to evening ones, from office bustle to party strut. Men and women in suits waited for buses that sucked them in and deposited suburban high school kids, dressed for Friday night, in their places.

Willy stopped in front of the painted scenic windows of the Rhinehaus. "Dinner?"

"This is a little steeper than I had in mind."

"I'm buying tonight, so it's my pick. German food." He held the door for her, and gave a little bow, which made her laugh. It also, annoyingly enough, reminded her of the phouka in one of his courtly moods.

"Something wrong?" Willy asked.

"No, why?"

"You frowned."

Eddi shrugged. "Just thinking about—my friend. Back at my apartment."

"Mmm."

The Rhinehaus was atmospherically gloomy. Hurricane candles quivered in their jars, isolating each heavy pine table in its own pool of uncertain light. The corners of the room disappeared, and the few clearly seen details took on the fascination of
objets d'art
. A painted-glass picture of a stag and hounds seemed to billow like a tapestry; an ornate cuckoo clock seemed as full of fluttering as a pine tree sheltering
a flock of sparrows. In the dark air redolent of wine and unfamiliar spices, thought itself was muted and mysterious, and all its sharp edges were planed down.

They ordered things they'd never tried or never heard of, sausages with rich and silly names, hot salad, cold soup, bread as brown as the phouka's skin. They debated the merits of beer and wine with the concentration of executives planning a corporate takeover. They chose mulled wine. The waiter brought it well before the food, and the smell itself seemed to fill Eddi's head with a glimmering haze.

Willy stretched a hand across the table and laid it over Eddi's. She felt a pleasant nervous discomfort. "So," he said softly, as befitted the dark room, "what about your friend?"

She stared at him.

"Back at your apartment," he added helpfully.

"Oh, the—right. What about him?"

"That's what I asked," Willy said, looking patient. "Am I stepping on any toes? Should I expect a nasty scene?"

Eddi wasn't certain, given the phouka, that she could deny the possibility of some kind of scene. But it wouldn't be the sort that Willy meant. For a moment, she wondered if Willy cared whether
she
would be subjected to an ugly quarrel. That, however, was surely splitting hairs. "He's a friend."

"An old one?"

Eddi had a ridiculous itch to tell him the whole thing. She shrugged instead.

"Just wondered. I mean, he does your dishes."

She felt an absurd irritation on the phouka's behalf. "Remember the women's movement? We don't always have to do the dishes nowadays."

That made him laugh. "Okay, I was just making sure. Wouldn't want him to gather his friends and go looking for me."

And his friends would amaze you
. Eddie mentally assured him.

They ordered linzer torte and coffee, and Eddi asked, "What
are
we going to name the band?"

Willy winced and pushed both hands through his black hair. The white streak flashed between his fingers. "Dino Lessons," he said finally, grinning.

"Good God—like dinosaur? Where'd you get that?"

"Something I overheard."

"Well, I don't think so. But it's . . . arresting. How about Love and
Rockets?" Eddi asked, thinking of titles in Carla's comic book collection.

Willy shook his head. "Already used."

"Are you serious? Dirty rats. Gargoyles? No, too metal."

"Mmm. So's Wages of Sin. I don't know. I
still
like Free Beer."

"No," Eddi said firmly. "The Sneakers?"

"Too . . ." Willy made a graceful gesture with shoulders and hands. ". . . frivolous."

"Behavior Modification."

"I kinda like that. Long, though."

"Too long." Eddi sighed. "And not quite it. Well, maybe something will come to us when we know what we sound like. Oh, did I tell you? Carla got us a job."

Willy looked impressed. "When?"

"Good grief, I didn't ask her. It's at MCAD, though, for a student show and reception."

"MCAD?"

"College of Art and Design. You'll like it. And better still, they'll like you."

"Well," he said, "of course. Artists have taste and refinement."

"And musicians have an ego problem."

"Me?" He grinned, and paid the tab with a couple of crisp bills.

Out on Hennepin, the evening had begun. Cars cruised—little imports, shiny pickup trucks, and big American cars with lots of rear suspension and very little muffler. Dance music beckoned from the open door of Duff's. A boy with an enormous mohawk and a girl in a torn jean jacket and engineer boots were arguing with an earnest young man in front of the Church of Scientology. Three black kids in front of the Skyway Theater had a boom box with something funky overdriving the speakers.

"I love this street," said Eddi.

Willy shot her a quick look. "You mean that?"

"Too grungy for you?"

"Not quite, no. But love?"

Eddi stuffed her hands in her pockets. "At night," she said at last, "this is the heart of Minneapolis. Uptown, where we were last night, is maybe its feet, where it dances. Hennepin Avenue is like an artery between them."

They'd reached the corner of Seventh and Hennepin. Eddi pointed
at two high school girls in trendy haircuts and jeweled denim. "When the suburban kids come in for Friday night, or the outstate kids come to the city, Hennepin is where they go. When the college kids want to play pinball, when the guys on the north side want to hang around and check out the women and when the women want to hang around and show off their new clothes, this is it, this is the place to do it." She grinned and pulled her jacket a little closer. "With all those people, all that energy and emotion and—well,
living
, this place ought to have a life of its own by now." She looked at Willy. "Too much armchair mysticism?"

"No," Willy replied. He gave his head a little shake, as if to throw off a mood, and smiled. "Or at least, I don't think so. How much is too much armchair mysticism?"

"Good question. For all I know, it's like chocolate."

"You never have enough chocolate."

"Exactly."

City Center rose up before them, determinedly bland and blankfeatured, hiding three floors of shopping mall under its pink ceramiclike hide. Across the street, Shinder's newsstand was a lively, noisy challenge to the impassive mall.

First Avenue and the street that gave it its name were just a block from Shinder's on Seventh Street. Eddi and Willy shuffled in the outer doors at the end of a short line.

"Isn't this pretty quiet?" asked Willy, with a nod at the people ahead of them.

"It's early. I wouldn't want to be showing up at eleven."

Eddi showed her driver's license to the man at the head of the line, and he waved her through. There was something regal, but not haughty, about the gesture, as if it was backed up by an ungrudging noblesse oblige.

The building was cinderblock painted high-gloss black in an effort to disguise its bus station origins. The double glass doors that faced the street were cloudy with the dust that even a few hours' traffic produced, and smudged with fingerprints. Inside the doors were more cinderblock and black paint, a middle-aged cash register on the counter of a bare, bleak-lit cashier's stall, and a long black wall studded with photocopied posters advertising next week's bands. A little video monitor hung from the long wall, showing rock videos, special color effects, and scraps of old monster movies without the sound.

"Ahem," said Willy behind her.

"Oh, so they let you in, did they?"

His mouth quirked at the corners. "I'm old enough to drink."

"What about dancing?"

"Too old. I'd better just watch."

Eddi laughed and tucked her arm through his. "Come along, Gramps. Check your coat and we'll test that."

Once around the end of the long wall, First Avenue appeared to have unfolded, or possibly transformed entirely, while the visitor's back was turned. The main room played improbable games with one's eyes; its black walls made the darkened room seem infinitely large. Three projection screens rolled down from the ceiling to curtain the front of the stage with enormous versions of what the monitor by the door had shown. A second-floor balcony wrapped around three sides of the room. The center portion, facing the stage, was fronted with a glass wall that reflected the light from the screen and blended it with the light from the balcony bar. Neon on the invisible walls seemed to float in midair everywhere. Over the dance floor was a tangle of colored lights, neon sculpture that ignited in quick rhythmic bursts, and flash pots like little short-lived stars. The sound system made the whole unmeasurable space quake.

"Are we going to play the main room?" Willy asked next to her ear, and Eddi jumped.

"We . . ."

"The band." The screen light reflected in his eyes, too, a velvety green-black."

"Damn straight," she said, and it sounded like the truth.

They went downstairs to 7th Street Entry. It was smaller, and had less to do with illusion than with function. On the black, unadorned stage, Summer of Love had finished setting up.

"Want a beer?" Willy asked her.

"You buying?"

"Yeah," he said cautiously.

"A Dos Equis."

He raised his eyebrows. "And if you were buying?"

"Grain Belt."

"You buy the next round, opportunist," he told her, and headed for the bar.

They sat on the gray-carpeted platforms around the dance floor and
drank from the bottles. "So," Eddi said. "Do you write music?"

"Not really. At least, not well. I'm good at arranging, but—no, not original things."

Eddi studied his face, looking for the bitterness that she heard in his voice. "It's all right. Not everyone does."

"But you do."

Eddi shrugged. "Carla and I make a decent team at it. And Dan Rochelle does great music, but he never does lyrics. So don't worry about it."

Summer of Love kicked off their first set then, with a heraldic blaze of guitar and keyboards. "Come on," she said, and took his hand.

"Umm?"

"They close the bars at one o'clock in this town, son. We've got a lot of dancing to do."

Willy danced the way he made love, or played the guitar—with his whole attention, and that glorious leashed energy. He had the perfect, unconscious grace of one of his own lead breaks. They danced three songs in succession, and fell laughing into each other's arms when the third ended. Willy pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. Then he kissed her. The quick brush of their lips jolted her. From Willy's startled face, she guessed it did something like that to him as well.

"Sit this one out?" he said, his voice a little shaky.

Eddi nodded, and they found a spot on one of the carpeted risers. It was harder to do now; the room was starting to fill up. Eddi sat without speaking, watching the band. She felt a surprising and delectable shyness that tied her tongue and kept her from looking at Willy. The brush of his fingertip along her jawline finally made her turn. He was studying her, his expression thoughtful. After a moment he turned his attention to the stage. Eddi did likewise, and wondered what had gone through his head.

Willy's presence seemed to wrap her in a mist in which every light had sparkling highlights, every sound made music, and music had an effect on all of her senses. In such a haze of wonder, it was hard to discern much detail. They danced, and drank beer, and talked, and all of it was equally absorbing and hard to remember.

At the end of the second set, they went back to the main room, more out of nervous energy than for any change of scene. They stood leaning on the balcony railing, ignoring the current of people that passed behind them. "This always makes me feel as if I'm in a movie,"
Eddi said, looking down at the spangled darkness of the dancers below, the glittering bottles behind the bar, and the empty VIP seats in the opposite balcony.

"As the star?" Willy smiled.

"Oh, always the star." She felt a moment's foolish melancholy, and voiced it: "We're only cast as extras in real life."

Willy slipped an arm around her waist, and she decided perhaps melancholy had its place. His breath stirred the hair around her ear.

Then Eddi heard a familiar voice behind her.

"That was fast."

She turned to find Stuart Kline at the top of the stairs. He had the rumpled look he got when drunk. His left hand clenched on the balcony railing; his right was in his coat pocket.

"Hello, Stuart," she said. She wasn't sure what tone to use, and ended up using none at all.