Page 111 of Antihero

He checked Evan’s fake but real driver’s license, a perfect artifact from the unimprovable Melinda Truong, and then Evan and Mia were inside. Folks milled around a bar to the right, and booths and tables were scattered across two levels framing a dance floor and stage. A DJ warmed up the room, a few people dancing. The place was maybe half full, but given the size of the building, it looked more empty than not. Evan noted emergency exits, perches in the lighting rig, faces and body language, compiling and filing, contingency planning.

“Would you like a drink?” Mia asked.

He scanned the offerings. They had Absolut, Smirnoff, and SKYY Blood Orange. Alas. The pours were heavy. Thick plastic cups, no doubt a security measure. Since he wasn’t eight years old, he refused to drink from a plastic cup.

“No, thank you.”

Mia got a Bombay Sapphire and tonic and they sat at a cocktail table at the fringe. He felt rudderless. It struck him that he was unaccustomed to being anywhere without purpose.

The crowd was variegated. Hair crimped and curled, a half dozen college girls in bright dresses bounce-bopped with one another, glimmering like tropical fish and shining with youth. A stylish guy picked at the edge of their dance circle with half-decent freestyle moves, waiting for an opening. A young married couple were locked in their own fête à deux, the wife staring at her man with a look of devoted longing that would’ve put Elizabeth Barrett Browning to shame. A white dude wearing a kerchief do-rag and a wifebeater spun in a crazy whirling solo dance, veins popping in his arms. At a front table, an ancient biker king with a troll face sat proudly, dense of beard and shiny of head, his ladies up and dancing by their chairs. A dude with a scowl and a grunge ’stache hustled along the dance floor’s perimeter, displaying on his arm the girl with the best, best hair, a glowing golden blonde—the alpha couple supreme. An entourage followed them like Lorenz ducklings, the future bridal party.

Every interaction a negotiation, every face a story.

So many combinations—a buck leading a herd of does, a doe holding flirty court with a herd of bucks. A gentlemanly seventy-year-old with a face like a brown paper bag helped keep a nervously laughing twentysomething on beat, teaching her dance steps with respectful care. She was cute as hell, wide hips and a huge beaming smile that stirred something in Evan’s cells, the beat of a deep-buried genetic drum. A confusion of instincts—attraction versus a need to protect. She was only a few years older than Joey. He turned down the volume on the drumbeat.

“Would you like to dance?” Mia asked.

He looked across the table at her. In comparison to the girl on the dance floor, she was a woman: vastly more powerful and attractive for it.

Evan didn’t dance.

He said, “No, thank you.”

Mia slurped at her gin and tonic. The straw was robust, designed for rapid imbibing. “So,” she said, “how ’bout them Dodgers?”

He looked at her blankly.

“Remember when I told you that you wouldn’t make it through a single real date with me?”

“I’m not very good at this, am I?”

“No,” she said, and brushed a wisp of hair off his forehead. “You’re atrocious at it.”

“Fair,” he said. “Let’s start over.”

“Okay. What’s new with you, Evan?”

Her smart-ass intonation made him smirk. Still, no natural response came to him. He thought about Devine vomiting in the master suite, the foursome of rapists roaming New York, the high-school extortionist he’d nearly drowned in an aboveground pool a few hours ago.

“I got new boots,” he said.

“I noticed about the boots,” she said, amused. “And was going to ask about said boots.”

He stuck his foot out from the table and waggled it.

“They are excellent,” Mia said.

That was precisely what they were.

“What else?” Mia asked.

“I’ve been going by a new code name.”

“What’s that?”

“Mr. Cobbledick.”

She guffawed, covered her mouth. “I mean, can you even imagine? I could barely get through the parent-teacher meeting with a straight face.”