Perfect Tunes - Emily Gould Page 0,34
a blankness in the eyes that negated the effect of his forced smile.
Callie left her side and moved toward Davey. The bar was full but not packed, and there was a stage area set up with instruments and amps and a mic, as if for a concert. She wondered who was going to speak and what on earth they could possibly say. No one had told her anything about what to expect from this event, or made it seem like she was responsible for doing anything, and it occurred to her now to be insulted by this. Shouldn’t she say something? She had been his girlfriend. Did that matter now at all? There were lots of other women in the bar, and they all looked just as sad and stricken as she did. How was anyone supposed to know that she was different from the rest of these women, more entitled to grieve? Or maybe they’d all slept with Dylan. Maybe they felt the same way she did. She hadn’t even known him well enough to know if his relationship with her was the kind of thing he got into all the time. She had to believe that she’d been special, because otherwise the pain she felt now was so, so extraordinarily stupid and pointless.
Callie came back over to where she was standing and handed her a vodka tonic. It was heavy on the vodka, and the first sip made her feel like she was sinking through the floor of the bar. “Davey’s saying they’re going to play soon, but they need someone to sing. I told him we would do it since we know the words to at least a few of their songs.”
“They didn’t think of this beforehand?”
“They thought they would just play and let the absence of Dylan’s voice be, like, a poetic statement about his loss or some shit. But I told him that was stupid. We’ll sound good with their band, it’ll be a nice way for you to feel close to him, and it will be nice for everyone to see you as part of, you know, his legacy or whatever.”
“I’m freaking out right now, Callie. I don’t want to get up onstage,” Laura said, but as she said it she looked around at the girls in the room. One tall one with a perfect fashion-mullet haircut had a blue leather jacket and pointy matching boots. She was crying streaks of mascara-smeared tears in a beautiful, photogenic way, and someone else with a fancy digital camera was taking pictures that she wasn’t quite posing for, but also wasn’t exactly shying away from. Looking at her, Laura realized that if she didn’t stake a claim to Dylan today, she would relinquish any right to it in the future. It was the last thing she wanted to do, but for future Laura, she had to.
“People are going to get up and say things first, right?”
“His parents are going to speak. I haven’t seen them yet, though. Oh, and your friend Amanda is here. Ryan from the management company tried to make this no-press, but she got in.”
Laura looked around but didn’t see Amanda. Davey and the other members of the Clips were clustered by the bar smoking cigarettes. It was oddly like an ordinary night at Joe’s except that it was happening during the daytime. The buzz of chatter was punctuated by an occasional laugh, and every time that happened, Laura was pierced with a sharp twinge of anger. Dylan’s fucking cremated ashes were sitting on the bar! She shuddered and drained the glass and went to the other end of the bar, far from the creepy photographer, but before she could get the overtaxed bartender’s attention she felt a firm tap, almost a poke, on her shoulder.
Laura turned around to face Daisy, who was wearing a shapeless black dress that had some dog hair clinging to it.
“He cared about you,” Daisy announced, without any preamble. She looked at the empty glass in Laura’s hand and her glassy expression became focused; her eyebrows lowered, and her quivering voice turned hissy. “Yes, by all means, drink up. Lucky you, you have a way of feeling better. That is, if you feel bad. You probably think you feel pretty bad, don’t you?”
Laura tried to figure out what she was supposed to say. They were, after all, at a bar. “I do feel bad,” she managed. The bartender pushed another drink toward her, and without thinking she picked it