Anthropology of an American Girl: A Novel - By Hilary Thayer Hamann Page 0,119

height of my eyes. The hips belonged to normal people having normal fun. I wished I were one of those people. I wished I’d left the building when we’d first arrived, when I’d had the chance. I wished there was a way to leave but stay. That’s the appeal of drinking and drugs—leaving but staying. It was good that I didn’t have anything more than a beer. Sometimes you see some girl slooped up against a wall, half-unconscious. Basically she felt the way I did, only she’d gotten her hands on liquor and drugs. I looked around for Mick Jagger. He’d been to the Talkhouse several times. That would be good, to see Mick Jagger—you know, like, not a totally wasted night.

Mark stood. “I’m gonna take a walk,” he said. “Be right back.”

The table felt different without him, uneven, as if missing a critical component. I didn’t know Mark well enough to name the missing part, but I suspected I’d lost an ally.

I stood, saying I was going to take a walk too.

Rob shifted. His instinct was to accompany me, but he had Rourke to consider. Rob would never disappear with me, especially if it meant leaving Kate and Rourke alone together. They could all get up, but Rob would never give up a good table.

Mark was at the jukebox. I walked toward him and looked down into the meadow of luminous tags.

“I knew you’d come,” he said.

I believed him, though I didn’t even know I’d come. Having exercised my freedom, my freedom felt good.

“Pick some songs,” he suggested.

My finger floated above the glass. “M-Five. A-Seven.”

He inserted the quarters, pushed the buttons, then faced out, watching the dancers, not really watching. “That’s quite a dress,” he said, his lips hardly moving.

“It cost three dollars,” I confided, still reading the tags.

“That works out to about a dollar an inch,” he said, looking at me for just as long as he thought I could bear. There was a slippery quality to him, like if you set down an object it would slide. “Next time I see you, I hope you’ll be wearing a two dollar dress.”

He was no more than a foot away, in the near darkness. I looked away.

“He can’t see,” Mark said, cutting straight through to the place I was. “Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Oh, you want him to see.”

Actually, I didn’t want that.

“If you’re uncomfortable,” Mark said, “let’s go back.”

I didn’t want to go back. I wanted to go farther into the crowd; I wanted to embed myself. There was a post between the jukebox and the bathrooms, and I moved to it. I leaned back and the wood pushed between my shoulder blades. Mark propped his arm on the post alongside my neck, facing me, making a barricade between me and all the rest. I liked the wall he made.

The jukebox finished a song, then whirred to a new start. It was the Four Tops.

Bernadette. People are searching for—

the kind of love that we possessed.

Some go on searchin’ their whole life through

And never find the love I’ve found in you.

“Do you know the lead singer’s name?”

“Levi Stubbs,” Mark said matter-of-factly.

I reached for his sleeve. “Listen,” I said, adding his name, “Mark. I love this part. The false ending. The way he screams her name. Bern—a—dette.”

Mark nodded as we listened.

“I’ll never be loved like that.”

He shook his drink, looking into it. “I doubt that.”

I wondered why he was there. There must have been a reason. I asked, “Why are you here?”

“In East Hampton? My parents have a house here.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“You mean—tonight.”

“Yes, tonight.”

“To see you,” he said. “To find you.” That’s when I first saw the eyes. They were gunmetal gray and speckled like the underside of certain fish. His hair was straight and sand colored, long around his face. I eased the glass from his hands and swallowed some of what was inside, coughing up a little cranberry. “Would you like one?” he asked.

“No, thank you,” I told him. “I’ll just share yours.”

The song changed and he drew me to the center of the blackened floor. Before pulling me in, he said something, I wasn’t sure what, but I smiled and held him, laying my head on his shoulder, grateful that he had stepped up and given me shelter when I needed it. Being in a bar is somewhat like being homeless if you cannot be with your friends. You wander and linger and land wherever there’s room and heat, sometimes getting in trouble, sometimes not.

Tell me