Some Place Better Than Here

Chapter 4: Here Comes My Baby/ There Goes My Baby

4 

Here Comes My Baby / There Goes My Baby

==========DANNY==========

Max's face dropped with drop-dead concern. But I couldn't hear what he was saying over the thrash of music.

When I asked him again, he shouted: "HER ASS."

The table of art-scene-looking girls next to us looked as if they were about to write a vicious blog-post about Max and his patriarchal privilege.

"Ugh, I didn't really get to see."

"Okay. Uh. Well, how were her tits?"

"Decent. Hard to tell under her apron."

"An apron?"

"Yeah. You know, like what people wear when they cook."

"She was cooking?" he asked.

"What? No?"

"Then—why was she wearing an apron?"

"I don't know, man. It's part of her uniform? I dunno."

I leaned on the table, and Max's end wobbled up. Goddamn, I thought. It's one of those tables. We scooted the table over a couple inches, bringing us closer to the stage. It didn't make a difference. We established fixed elbow positions to prevent the insistent wobbling, pretending it didn't exist.

I looked up at the unlit patio lights that swung across the sky. According to local legend, back in the seventies a boardwalk band known as The Tycoons played a legendary gig at The Mansion Club and actually blew the roof right off that pop stand. Ridiculous, right? In actuality, it wasn't much more than a summertime patio bar, but locals loved to indulge and hassle tourists about the myth.

The drummer in the band did some ill-timed lick to close the song. To the untrained ear, it would've been impressive. The crowd, which was as wild as a piece of paper, applauded, and then the lead singer declared that the next song was their last.

"Okay, so finish telling me about this rocket you met, AKA Grocery Store Girl. Like, did you get her number?"

I wasn't expecting that question. It just occurred to me that I had no way of contacting her. Instinctively I reached for my phone, and then suddenly realized that when I got thinking about Mary and her smile like an atomic bomb, I couldn't give a crap about Jess.

"Uh—no. I don't know. It was weird, man. How was I supposed to get her number?"

I had girl—friends. I've had my fair share of drunken make-outs at school dances, and I've been on a few movie dates with some unfortunately uninteresting girls whom I had no chemistry with. You know, the usual. Whenever I talked to girls (for the most part), they were just inbox messages. I never actually asked a girl for her number, you know, like in person.

"Dude, can't believe you didn't get her number," Max scoffed as if he was absolutely peeved with my inability to approach a member of the opposite sex (successfully). But as long as I've known him, he's never taken a girl out, and I've known Max forever. He moved into a foster home at the opposite end of our school district when we were in the second grade. Around the same time it was just Mom and I.

"You at least got her name, right?"

"Well yeah, she had her nametag on."

"You got her name through her nametag?"