But the other part kicks in, too.
And you think, One drink. Or, Why not? And maybe, if the music is decent, you feel a little pumped up, you want to move, and you look at your girlfriends—they’re looking, shrugging, trying to see some reason to fit in—and you raise your eyebrows. Usually they raise theirs back in reply. Then—because you’ve been doing it for years together—you slowly move into the crowd, turning sideways to squeeze past people, your hand sometimes reaching backward or forward to stay in touch with your buds, and you aim toward the bar. Fairly often some guy grabs your ass as you pass, and sometimes it’s worse, sometimes you get the air grind—guy’s hands up as if he’s being held at gunpoint, his crotch inching toward you, his breath boozed up and awful—and you skitter forward and make it to the bar and try to shout for a drink. Up and down the bar, if there is a bar, guys glance sideways and send their eyes north and south over you, and you try to ignore them, try to pretend that getting a drink is the most important thing in the world because you don’t want to risk meeting their glance, and eventually one of you, if you’re lucky, makes eye contact with the bartender. Then you shout and he nods and you pull some bills out of somewhere and hand drinks back to your friends, each one immediately sticking the straw in her mouth to take a big sip because you’re going to need it.
That’s where we ended up five minutes after arriving at the party Victor had told us about.
*
At least the room was stylish. That probably made us want to stay. It was a big industrial loft, brick and metal and outsized lighting fixtures, with broad windows that overlooked a canal. The music sucked—it was European techno-pop, with a repetitive beat and a grinding, relentless forward drive—but it was also irresistible. I handed gin and tonics back to Constance and Amy. They nodded thanks and began sipping. I paid the bartender. He touched the bill to his forehead in a little salute and hustled off.
“Any sign of him? Of Jack?” Amy yelled into my ear when I joined them a few feet from the bar.
I shook my head. I hadn’t heard from him, and I wasn’t sure he would show. It would hurt if he didn’t show, but I didn’t want to think about it too much. I had been thinking about him too much, anyway, and had checked the photo of him asleep an unhealthy number of times. I remembered the kiss, and the look we had shared on the platform between the cars. My entire body remembered it. He had the look, the feel, even the size of the man I had envisioned for myself. It was weird to think that, but it was true. If I had gone shopping for a guy who fit me, and all the men from my history had been hanging on a dress rack in a well-lit shop, I would have picked Jack every single time. I could have held him up to me, taken one glance in a mirror, and known he’d fit me.
And I loved talking to him. I felt drunk when I talked to him.
“An amazing room!” Constance yelled at both of us. “Is this a bar or a private residence?”
Amy held her hand out to say she didn’t know, couldn’t tell, didn’t care.
“It’s still early,” Amy said to me.
“It’s almost eleven,” I answered.
She shrugged.
*
So we did the chick thing, which is kind of lame and sort of great. We danced in a triangle, moving a little, sipping a little, drifting slowly into the middle of the floor. It had been a long time, I realized, since we had been out in a club scene dancing. It felt good. The gin began to work, and we did our signature moves: Amy wiggling her butt like a lightning bug and Constance sort of on her toes as if she wanted to reach something down from a high shelf but hadn’t yet decided to lift her arms. It made me smile to watch them. You couldn’t escape your personality when it came to dancing, I knew.
A few guys came up and circled us, dancing and moving, and we looked at one another and opened our eyes a little to ask, Way, no way? They weren’t very cute. When Amy bit down on her straw and shook her head a millimeter, that was good enough to say no. We kept dancing and sipping. The drink tasted weak. The first group of guys drifted away, and we moved a little closer. Then Amy started doing ridiculous dance moves, ones we had seen a guy named Leonard back at Amherst make sometime in our first year. The guy was a mega-geek, but charming in a way, too, and he danced with crazy abandon that we had copied for four years. We did a dance called the Guy Repellent, which you could launch into if someone started dancing with you and you wanted him gone. Leonard had given us that, and that’s the dance Amy started doing to get us laughing. She had mastered it and only pulled it out as a favor to us, but Constance and I both watched her spaz out, people around her trying not to notice. She did it perfectly.
Eventually, Constance grabbed her by the hand to get her to stop, and we made our way to the windows. It was a pretty sight. Light glistened on the canal below and turned the water into a crowd of stars.
“What do you think?” Constance said into my ear. “Do you think he’s coming?”
“I don’t know,” I shouted back.
“Didn’t you take his number? You could call him and ask him what the fuck he’s doing,” Amy said.
“That sounds desperate.”
“It is desperate, but so what? You call for pizza or Chinese food when you want it, don’t you?” Amy asked.
Constance shook her head. I wasn’t sure she had heard the conversation.
“Well, if we’re going to stay, we need more drinks,” Amy said.
“Do you want to stay?” I asked. “We don’t have to stay just for Jack. I didn’t mean it to be like that.”
But I was lying, and they both knew it.
“One more drink,” Constance said. “Then we’ll head out.”
“Have you seen Victor anywhere?” I asked Amy.
Amy shook her head. It was making my throat hurt to talk. I drained the last of my drink and was about to turn when I suddenly knew Jack had arrived. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I did.
Amy bit down on her straw and made a little bucking motion with her head to indicate, There, right there, right behind you.
9
I didn’t turn. I didn’t do anything except bubble my drink with my straw. Amy’s gaze flicked back and forth from whoever was behind me to my eyes. She even tilted her head a little to say, Come on, he’s right there, come on, what are you doing?
My neck started flaming. I took a final sip of gin and tonic. I kept my eyes on the other girls and pretended we had been having a great conversation. I didn’t want him to think the night was suddenly much more interesting now that he had arrived.
But it was, and my neck knew it.