“Who?”
“Poetry, dude. Sick rhyme just now from you.”
“Is this poet thing like an inside joke that I forgot about?”
Daniel raised his glass at William Butler Yeats. “You’ll have to ask him.”
The bartender caught his eye. “Another one?”
“And a water,” William called out. The frenzied horns climbed higher while the bass drum drove the feverish tempo. A TV screen above the bar broadcast the happenings in the cavernous performance space, stage tightly packed with brass whipping the crowd into a whirling ecstatic mob. Daniel tried to pick Christina out of the scene. He couldn’t find her but was absurdly happy that she was in there somewhere. William’s voice was loud in his ear. “This is so messed up. What exactly did she say to you?”
The bartender plunked down a beer and a glass of water.
“I don’t remember! There was a zombie movie on TV in the hotel room while she was breaking up with me!” He laughed. “I think it was Return of the Living Dead III. Does that movie have a prison?”
“Do you want to take a walk or something? Just me and you? It’s kind of hard to talk in here.”
Daniel swiveled on his stool to face William. He took his friend by the shoulder, locking them together like clinching wrestlers. “I don’t want you to worry about the trip. I’m not gonna make it awkward.”
“I’m not worried about the trip. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine! Seriously, go dance.”
William hesitated. “Melissa’s up on the balcony. Just so you know.”
“Okay! No big deal.”
“You should come see the band. Don’t just sit here by yourself.”
“I’ll meet you back there. I just gotta go to the bathroom first.”
The movie of Daniel’s life was undergoing heavy revisions. He’d stepped into a tight new script with punchy action, snappy dialogue, and an absolutely killer soundtrack supplied by the legendary Birch Street Wailers, available on all major streaming services. There had always been some question as to the character’s true nature, and if Daniel was offering an honest critique, he’d have to say that moral ambiguity had overwhelmed his script’s earlier drafts. Sequences were drenched in self-loathing, difficult to translate to the screen without relying on gobs of voice-over. The truly sad thing—how had he not seen this all along?—was that self-loathing was just self-obsession dressed up in a shitty costume.
Daniel was on the dance floor with his arm around William. He thoroughly enjoyed giving and receiving hugs and appreciated each new hug on a deeper level than the one before. William was an excellent hugger and never failed to deliver the requisite back pats. Christina seemed a little put off by his desire to wrap all three of them up together, so he backed off and let her dance.
The roof beams rained down, and Daniel moved through the mist. All around him dancers received trombone sermons, their faces contorted into blind ecstasy.
This New Orleans night snapped into the interlocking frame of his movie’s main theme. His character was developing perfectly, riding the sweet arc from navel-gazing chump to guy in control of his life. He felt openhearted and expansive, capable of bottomless empathy. Human beings were forever becoming, so there was no use tormenting yourself over the past. Some of the people giving their bodies to the horns and drums, infusing Riverbend Shorty’s with so much love, had pasts brimming with behavior they weren’t too proud of. But so what? They lived in the same world as music!
He stopped dancing and became an axis of perfect stillness around which the world turned. Christina and William were moving together as one, and it made perfect sense when she palmed the back of his head and pulled him in for a kiss and they winced—watch those front teeth!—and laughed together. William held her hand as she danced away so he could pull her back like a cracked whip, spinning her into his arms.
Daniel grinned knowingly at them, but they were lost in each other’s eyes. Christina and William! Of course! He fought the urge to tell them how much he appreciated what they had and where it was going. It was not an easy urge to fight, because the desire to talk was like a jet engine hitched to his brain.
He followed a bouquet of soapy bubbles as they rose in confident separation to make solo journeys to the distant ceiling. As his eyes moved up past the balcony that ringed the dance floor, he spotted Melissa sipping a vodka cranberry. It occurred to him that now would be the perfect time to convey the things he’d been trying to get across in their Nashville hotel room. Confidence drove his feet toward the staircase. He’d never felt so lucid. If only William Butler Yeats could see him now!
As he climbed the stairs, he pulled out his phone to keep track of what he wanted to say, because it was all coming to him in a great big rush and he didn’t want to forget anything. But that was going to take too long and he didn’t want to stop moving. He put his phone back in his pocket and bounded up the steps three at a time and launched himself into the balcony crowd.
A feathery boa tickled his neck as he brushed past a woman in sequined finery. His hip wobbled a small round table, and drinkers clutched at toppling glasses. Fans spritzed his face with a cooling vapor. His heart hammered along with the brass band’s relentless bass drum. Melissa somehow managed to weave in and out of the revelers without ever moving from her spot by the railing. She was wearing an open-backed top, and the luscious curve of her body nearly stopped him in his tracks.
He would tell her how gorgeous she was. He would tell her that what he appreciated most about the care she lavished upon her appearance was that she was goal-oriented. If only he could have said such clear, concise things to her
