“I’m fine,” he says, his voice gruff. “You don’t have to do this. I’m not going to jump off the balcony.”
“Can we just come in for a minute?” I say in my most maternal voice.
He leaves the door open for us to follow him inside, and sure enough, his place is a wreck…a grey and black, extremely expensive wreck, with pizza boxes littering the polished surfaces and piles of drinking glasses and Makers Mark bottles crowding the kitchen sink. Jody walks straight through the living room to take in the view.
“Holy shit, Ben,” she says, taking in the Manhattan skyline. “This is soAmerican Psycho.”
He shrugs. “I’ll have to get nicer business cards, I guess.” He walks up and stands beside me. “I’m sorry if I sounded melodramatic in my texts,” he says, his voice flat. “I’m just depressed.”
“And you’re going to a therapist about it?” I ask.
Ben groans and flops onto his sofa. “What would they even say? ‘Your ex is horrible, and you were stupid for dating her in the first place, and then she waited to dump you until your entire family had flown in for your wedding.’ ‘Yeah, you’re right, Mr. Therapist, thank you. I had no idea I was a loser.’”
I look around at the emptiness of his vast living room. “What do your friends say about it?”
“Which friends?” he asks. “The ones at work who call me the Mormon because I won’t do cocaine with them? Or the ones back in Ohio who think I was dating outside my league and should give up and move home already?”
“Come on,” I say firmly. “Stand up. We’re taking you dancing.”
He sighs. “I don’t—I don’t even—I don’t even know what to wear.”
Jody looks him up and down. “Put on your most offensive skinny jeans and your oldest band t-shirt. Helen is waiting downstairs in my truck.”
“Where are we going?”
“A biker bar on Long Island.”
“They’ll probably beat me up,” he replies dully.
“Good,” Jody says. “Better to have a stranger do it for you than to do it to yourself. Come on, they have great live music, and I know the bartender.”
He looks between us. “Can I shower first?”
“Make it fast,” she says.
“And don’t shave,” I tell him. “The scruff beard thing is working.”
“Yeah, you almost look interesting,” Jody agrees.
He rolls his eyes but slowly walks toward a hallway that must lead to his bedroom.
When he emerges fifteen minutes later, he has scrubbed up into something almost handsome, which Jody and I seem to mutually register and decide not to mention.
No so with Helen, who shouts with delight when he gets into the car downstairs. “My goodness, Benjamin! You look like that Chris Martin fellow from Oasis!”
“You mean Coldplay?” Ben asks flatly as he climbs into the back seat.
“Same thing. Who’s he dating now? Not Gwyneth Paltrow, the other one. The one with that glazed look in her eyes like someone has stabbed her but she’s trying not to react.”
None of us can think of the person she means. Ben shrugs and looks out the window, but he’s almost smiling a little.
An hour later,the four of us are at a Long Island biker bar that, as Jody promised, is having a ‘blues rock’ night, which is as close to West Coast Swing as we could find on short notice. Jody walks in and greets the bartender, a woman with long blond hair and sleeve tattoos who shouts over the music that our first two rounds are free.
“This isn’t a true biker bar,” Jody explains quietly as we take seats at a booth. “The line of Harley Davidsons outside belong to bankers and lawyers from the city.”
“That can be your next step in life, Ben,” I say. “Buy yourself a Harley and pretend you’re tough.”
“I’ll need a raise first. Those things are expensive.” Ben sips a drink. He looks surprisingly cheerful about having been dragged from his home by force. We are tucked into a booth near the bar,watching the band play: four men in sleek white shirts and black ties, looking like they stepped out of a Tarantino movie.
