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Michael’s.
Niccolo’s.
John’s.
And mine.
EIGHTEEN
GWENNA
December 31, 2011
11:39 p.m.
I step back inside and am greeted by the sound of “Pumped Up Kicks” coming through the ceiling speakers. It seems the band is taking a break and they’re playing radio. As a musician, I like this song. As a person, I’m not sure. I haven’t analyzed the lyrics or anything, but I’m pretty sure it’s about kids running from a school shooter.
Should I hum along with it?
I’m not sure I can help myself.
I press my lips together as I walk past the bar. The taste of Marlboros in cold weather takes me back to K-ville at Duke. I can smell the mix of stale material—sleeping bags and tents, the whiff of body odor (even though everyone in our tent tried to shower when they weren’t on shift), the lingering pall of smoke and tang of liquor. I can almost smell our textbooks, see our phones’ lights as we lie there like sardines in sleeping bags, trying for weeks to stake our claim to UNC or one of the other tented games. That’s Duke: basketball, and being there for years, that’s what winter is to me.
The memory evaporates as I blink at a brunette who’s planted in my path. She’s tall; I have to look up to see her face, which is oval-shaped, with pretty lips, and framed by brown curls. As I look at her, her brows narrow.
“You’re the model?”
“Huh?” I catch my cheek between my molars. I’m about to ask her if we know each other when she shakes her head and bursts out laughing.
“Sorry! I’m Marina. Where I’m from, in San Juan, there is this big, big billboard. You’re wearing a beige dress?”
I smile, nodding. I remember that shoot.
“And the Alexander McQueen clogs.”
I nod, half-sad because McQueen is dead now, half-impressed because this girl knows her shit.
“Are you a model, too?”
She shakes her head. “The bartender, he’s my friend, he heard you telling someone you’re a model. I want to be one too.”
Ten minutes later, I’m sitting at the bar with Marina, jotting down phone numbers for her on the back of a bottle-cap-shaped coaster.
I’m still there when someone taps my shoulder. I turn, my stomach taking flight, hitting my throat, but it’s just Jamie.
“Let’s go! Do you want to? I spilled beer on myself and I want to go back home before it gets more cold and gross. Nic is coming too,” she says in an excited whisper. “Problems at his house, so works out perfectly for me.” She wiggles her eyebrows, and I glance around the bar.
I don’t see my guy.
“I’ve got this scarf…”
“Stylish,” Marina interjects.
I give her a smile. “It isn’t mine. If I tell you what this guy looks like, will you give it back to him for me?”
“You got it from a guy?” Jamie’s mouth is hanging open.
“Never mind,” I tell Marina. I sigh. “If I don’t see him as we walk to the door, I’ll give it to Nic. Does Nic know the guy who was sitting at our table while we danced? Dark, curly hair?”
