assessment of my inebriation was accurate.
"Hey," said Doug, grabbing hold of me. "Stop flirting with my Groupie Queen. Only when you can snatch the fly with the chopsticks, Grasshopper, can you accumulate the groupies. For now, the student must leave the groupies to the master. "
Doug marched me around the room in a - very bad - mock tango. The jerking motion, combined with that grating buzzing in the air, made me lightheaded. "Is the rest of the gang out there?"
"Waiting with bated breath," I promised. I cocked my head at him. "Shouldn't you be a little more nervous than this?"
"Sure. If I had anything to be nervous about. Which I don't."
I felt just as astonished now as I had at work. Doug knew his own talent, but I'd seen him before shows in the past. While always joking and in a good mood, there had been a nervousness to him before, a private sort of ruminating while he mentally braced himself to put on the best show he could. I knew he'd said the band had hit some sort of peak recently, but the change was dramatic, to say the least.
After a few more jokes and sexual innuendoes, I finally left them. Just like that, the discordant feeling disappeared as soon as I cleared the door. It was like breathing fresh air after a sandstorm. Glancing behind me, I stared into the room, trying to find any indication of what had just happened. Nothing revealed itself. The band had forgotten me already. They were laughing at something else, drinking their beer or pop or whatever, and roughhousing in what must have been some male tension-reliever. Puzzled, I walked away.
Seth had joined the others when I finally made my way back to the main floor. I felt a smile creeping up on me in spite of my concerns. His hair was as unkempt as ever, and he wore a Thundercats shirt.
"Hey," I said when I saw him, conscious that everyone was watching us, apparently waiting for me to pull out my handcuffs.
"Hey," he returned, hands casually in his pockets, posture relaxed and easy like always.
"You know, Doug's wearing a shirt very similar to that."
"I know. I lent it to him."
We all shared a good laugh over that, and Beth turned to me. "You saw Doug? Is he ready for this?"
"The question, actually," I told them with a small frown, "is 'Is the world ready for Doug?'"
A half hour later, they saw what I meant. Nocturnal Admission burst onto the stage, and suddenly all that pent-up energy and enthusiasm was channeled into their music. Like I'd told Doug, I'd long been a fan of the group. Their style combined hard rock with a bit of ska, and the fusion always hooked me. After centuries filled with repetition, innovation was a treat. They regularly performed with flair and passion, making them as much fun to watch as to listen to. My biased affection for Doug didn't hurt either.
Tonight was unbelievable. All of their songs were new; I'd never heard any of them before. And Christ, what songs they were. Amazing. Incredible. Ten times better than the old ones - which I'd hitherto found hard to beat. I wondered when Doug had had time to compose these. He wrote most of their stuff, and I'd last seen them perform about a month and a half ago. He must have had help to write all of those in so short a time. I knew he usually took a while to compose one, refining lyrics over and over. He never treated the process lightly.
And the performance itself...Well, Doug was always flamboyant; it was his trademark. Tonight, I swear, he never stopped moving. Pure energy in human form. He danced, he sauntered, he did cartwheels. His between-song monologues were hilarious. His singing voice surpassed anything I'd ever heard from him, rich and deep. It resonated in my body. The audience couldn't get enough. They loved him, and I understood why. No one, even the people who worked there, could take their eyes off the stage.
Except one.
There, along the far edges of the crowd, was a man casually making his way toward the exit. By his stride and apparent lack of interest, he didn't find Nocturnal Admission as compelling as the rest of us. While this was intriguing enough to draw my own gaze from the band, his attire struck me even more strongly.
If GQ magazine had been around in the days of Victorian poets, he