to wade through his fucking throat eggs every night.”
“Eww. That’s so gross,” Stephen said.
“I was like, ‘Dude, someone’s going to get sick from all that saliva and phlegm.’ And he says, ‘What are you talking about? ’ ”
“What a fucking dick,” I said.
Lou turned to Jocelyn. “How long were you his girlfriend? ”
Jocelyn was not completely immune to being star-struck, or she never would have gone out with Lyon III in the first place. If Lou Barlow had been Joe Public, she would have told him it was none of his fucking business. “We went on three dates.”
I added color. “And the first one was when he picked her up after one of his shitty band’s shitty shows.”
“He’s got that down to a science these days,” Lou said. He put his hand on my shoulder. “I don’t know jack shit about this guy right here, but I’m sure he’s a huge upgrade from Roger Lyon the Fucking Third. A huge upgrade.”
“And what kind of pretentious fuckwit puts ‘the Third’ at the end of his name? ” I asked.
“An enormous one.”
Lady Sub Pop was sitting alone near the low stage, patiently bored stiff, drinking a can of Diet Coke. She was ready to go back to her chrome room at the Paramount an hour before.
Lou called to her, “Jenna, from now on I want to be called Lou Barlow the Third.”
Jenna smiled, using the last of her A&R man’s daily allotment of phony amusement.
“No, even better, Lou Barlow Junior.” He stood on the rungs of his bar stool and proposed a toast to his new name.
JOCELYN TOLD OUR cabbie we were going to Brooklyn. He groaned like he’d just been told by his boss that he was going to have to take a small pay cut.
“Sorry”—Jocelyn looked at the cabbie’s nameplate display—“Ahmed, but that’s where I live.”
I gave her a look.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “They have to take you.”
I was not so drunk that I couldn’t sense the eighth day of the Seven Days’ War dawning. I distracted Jocelyn by pulling her closer to me on the slippery vinyl seat. I kissed her neck. Ahmed hauled ass toward Houston Street.
“And take the Manhattan Bridge, not Brooklyn,” Jocelyn added for good measure.
Ahmed’s eyes tightened in the rearview mirror.
The cab crossed the bridge the way a hovercraft does gentle sea swells. Jocelyn had her head tilted back far enough to look straight up through the rear windshield. Her tongue and teeth glistened. A sparse constellation made up almost entirely of aircraft shone through the blurry rhythm of ironwork. She started imitating the in-cab recording of Elmo telling tourists to buckle up and not to forget their shit when they left. I kissed her exposed throat.
She giggled.
The sound of the steel-belted radials on the road changed from a sizzle to a wash as the Manhattan Bridge became Flatbush Avenue.
“I like that Lou Barlow,” I said.
Jocelyn had no comment. She lifted her ass off the seat and guided my hand under it before sitting back down. Traffic started backing up right around Junior’s cheese-cake restaurant.
“Elmo says, ‘Keep doing that.’ ”
“LOOK, ROY,” James said, “it’s Ron Jeremy, the king of hardcore! ”
“James, if you only knew.”
“As if.”
“Listen. What do you think about me dropping you off at work so Roy and I can go somewhere in the truck? ”
“Like where? ”
“I don’t fucking know. Isn’t there a mall or a playground near the boatyard? It’s just getting old going up and down this street all the time. I think Roy needs more stimulation.”
James was suspicious. “Can you even drive? ”
“Of course I can drive.”
“I mean legally? ”
As we pulled into the boatyard, Dogshit and two other scruffy-looking guys were drinking coffee and smoking alongside a long elevated red hull.
James let go of the steering wheel and rubbed his hands together like a miser. “That big red bitch is going to cover my nut till Christmas.”
I had one hundred fifty dollars in my pocket Marie had paid me for my first three days of work. I was feeling pretty good about it. I was going to treat Roy to a grilled cheese or something. “How much you make on a repair like that? ”
“Oh, you know,” James said, “a gentleman never fucks and talks.” He reached back over the front seat and grabbed a cooler from the floor. “Does he, sonny boy? ”
Roy giggled.
James reluctantly dropped the keys into my hand. He checked to make sure Dogshit was still way out of earshot.