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F O U R
- Finn -
I stood in the middle of The Third Policeman with my arms crossed and looked around.
Brian stepped up and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Not too shabby, eh?”
My eyes followed the silver and gold tinsel from one side of the dark bar to the other, my gaze dipping when it came to the Happy New Year banner hanging over the small stage. Beneath it, Jimmy was sound checking our gear. “Sorry I was a Scrooge about the balloons.”
He put his hands on his hips. “You were a Scrooge, but you’re probably right. It’s hard enough to hear orders behind the bar without drunkards ordering rounds in high-pitched helium voices.”
“Everything alright?” I called to Jimmy when I noticed his face was furrowed at his bass guitar.
“Fine,” he said without looking up. “Just trying to decide if I’d be better off with Mary tonight.”
“What’s wrong with Sheila?” I asked, walking over to him. Part of me felt silly calling his instruments by name. The kid wasn’t fucking BB King. Then again, part of me thought it was sweet. Reminded me of the good old days when I, too, preferred instruments to people.
“Her G-string keeps getting loose faster than the rest,” Jimmy explained. “It’s pissing me off.”
I glanced at Brian.
“New Year’s can be unpredictable,” he said. “Mary’s safer at home.”
“She sounded great last night,” I said, nodding towards the white bass. “But there are spare strings in my kit bag if you need ’em.”
“Make it quick, though,” Brian said. “There’s a toilet in the women’s bathroom that needs unclogged, and it’s your turn.”
Jimmy scowled at him as my phone buzzed in my back pocket. I excused myself and headed towards the back entrance to take the call. “Hey,” I said. “Happy New Year.”
“Happy New Year!” my folks cried in unison.
I stepped into the alley behind the bar, wishing my leather jacket had a collar to keep the biting Chicago cold off my neck. “I was just about to call you guys. What are you up to tonight?”
“We’re going to a neighbor’s house,” my mom said. “Same neighbors as last year.”
“The Spanish people who made you eat the grapes at midnight?”
“I didn’t eat the grapes,” my dad said. “And my year turned out fine.”
“Good for you, Dad,” I said, half-teasingly. God knows he had nothing against grapes, just other people telling him what to do and when.
“Why didn’t you tell us you wanted to climb Everest?” my mom asked.
I rolled my eyes and stepped back against the brick wall so a delivery truck could pass by. “I don’t want to climb Everest, Mom. Max wants me to climb Everest.”
“What?” she asked, her confusion palpable. “Why would he want that?”
I understood her bafflement. Despite the strained relationship I had with my brother, we’d done a good job leaving my parents out of it. So while it was obvious to me why Max liked the idea of me freezing my nuts off in Nepal, my parents didn’t get it.
They thought I left the band for health reasons, which was true. Mental health reasons. Like the anxiety I felt from trying to constantly suppress thoughts of punching sweet Maxy in the face. To his credit, though, he did look after them out in Cali, and for that, I didn’t think he was a total lost cause.
“It’s an inside joke,” I said finally. “He’s only daring me to do it because he knows how much I hate the cold.”
“So you’re not going to?” my mom asked. “Because your father and I looked into it, and it’s very dangerous.”
“More than three hundred people have died trying to reach the summit,” my dad explained.
“I don’t think he was suggesting I go to the summit,” I said, hoping they couldn’t detect the lack of conviction in my voice. Surely, he didn’t want me to die up there. Unless things were more fucked between us than I thought.
