I definitely hadn’t been lonely.
“Your aunts fed me enough for two lifetimes,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “I missed ya, but I wasn’t mad.”
That’s what he said every time.
“You don’t miss me that bad,” I teased. “Although I’m a lot less work now that I’m twenty-eight. I don’t have homework you need to help me with, and I can feed myself.”
Beneath our feet came the steady thud of a bass. When I glanced down, both of us were tapping our heels in time with the beat. Loud, non-stop sound was the backdrop of my childhood, and even now I didn’t mind falling asleep to music. The life of a club owner was a mostly nocturnal one. Me and Mateo would walk home and wake Pop up at 3:00 pm with coffee and a slice of pizza from the shop down the street. And then he’d set us loose in The Red Room with instructions to finish our homework before running the block or terrorizing the bands setting up.
He drummed his fingers on the table, and dust floated up. “How long you think you can stay?”
“A few weeks probably,” I said. “I’ve got a little bit of savings to float me, and job applications out to half a dozen shops across the country. It’s never been a problem to find a job. Bike mechanics are needed everywhere.”
I’d even sent an application to Rusty’s, the famous shop in the Hollywood Hills. They were looking for a mechanic to handle custom builds, the kind celebrities and rich people paid for. It would mean getting my hands on machines that were new, shiny, and interesting. I wasn’t really a “dream job” kind of guy, but if I was, Rusty’s would be the place.
“You could stay longer if you wanted,” he said, not looking at me. “I mean, you know, there’s a room for you. At home.”
I smiled. “You’ll get sick of me in no time. Besides, I’ll get itchy feet like always.”
He nodded but stayed silent. Tapped his fingers some more and then handed me a piece of paper that was wrinkled and worn.
“This the letter?”
“Yeah.”
I glanced down at it, the words and legal language blurring in front of my eyes. Notice of Petition it said at the top. Pop, the tenant, was being sued for the $48,295 he owed in back rent. And per the law in New York, he either paid in fourteen days or he’d be evicted.
He’d been here for thirty-five years. This building was The Red Room.
“Wow,” I said, raising a brow at him.
“You’re tellin’ me,” he said. “Just about shit myself when I opened it.”
“Did you know this was coming?”
He shrugged again. Looked away again. “I do pay my rent every month. But I started not being able to pay all of it back in January. It added up way faster than I thought. Stevie knew I was good for it because he was good people. His son…” He shrugged.
It might not be the most efficient of systems, but Pop was part of a shrinking group of folks in this city who still did business from a place of honesty and relationships. “He was good people,” to my father, meant that rent in the most expensive city in the world could operate on some kind of credit and debit system. Vendors, musicians, performers—Pop still used handshakes and favors. I once saw him scrawl an agreement on a napkin and give it to a sound guy. It wasn’t like I was some big-shot, world-weary traveler. But I’d been out on my own long enough to understand this way wasn’t super common anymore. Maybe in some of the smaller mechanics shops I worked at. But the newer shops, with younger owners, didn’t give a flying fuck if they knew you or knew your people. You paid what you owed. Case closed.
I glanced around at the dirty paint on the walls, the stack of terrifying-looking bills, the old calendars and beat-up equipment. I kicked back on one leg of the chair, trying to think. When I was younger, the overall griminess of this place felt authentic and real.
I wondered why he had avoided being honest with me about how things were going.
“Alrighty then,” I said, forcing a smile. “You and me, we gotta save this place, okay? How hard can it be to find $50k? Or maybe… maybe we need a lawyer or something.”
“Okay.”
I looked back down at the letter, the words swimming across the page. I wasn’t used to being the adult in the room. My dad was stoic, and he handled his shit. I knew things were pretty bleak when I was in middle and high school. Without Mom around, money was stretched thin. I was never hungry, though. Never worried. Pop was Pop. He gave off a whole vibe of competence.
This time, I was legit worried.
The bass line beneath the floor changed up. So did our feet. Without looking up I knew I’d catch him bobbing his head along in time to the music, same as I was. I always caught a couple shows on the road, but never like I wanted. Never like it used to be when live music was my every day.
Maybe tonight could be about a couple of beers, some loud music, and flirting with a pretty woman. Tomorrow I’d start reaching back out to friends here, make some calls, try to find someone to help.
“What are you thinking?” He asked.
“I’m thinking you’re worrying for nothing,” I said. “Let me sit on this tonight, get working tomorrow. Maybe you could sit with me and walk me through how things have been going, money-wise, since then? Show me some of the ropes? I bet it would help jog some ideas.”
He took the letter back and added it to a messy stack. “It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s not,” I said firmly. I stood up, grabbing my bag and helmet. “I’m gonna go set up back home, grab a shower and some food. You need help with the set tonight?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, if you want. Although it’s The Hand Grenades’ weekly set, so they know the drill.”
Now I was actually happy. “I didn’t realize they still held that Tuesday at ten pm slot?”
“I’ll have to wrench it from their cold dead hands.” He smiled, just a little. Ran a hand over his bald head. “Their daughter is a fancy lawyer now.”
I was halfway out the door. Stopped. I knew of Lou and Sandy’s daughters—Roxy and Fiona—but we were never close. Fiona and I were in the same grade but went to different schools. I remembered them as blond, teenaged menaces who scared the hell out of me in a good way. You didn’t fuck with the Quinn sisters. They’d been taught to throw elbows when they danced.
“Which one?” I asked, surprised.
“Fiona.”
“Huh.” She was the more straitlaced of the two sisters. Though I’d also seen her dive off that stage without fear too many times to count. So what the hell did I know? “I’ll keep her in mind as a source of info. See you in a few hours?”
He wrenched over a silver filing cabinet as old as I was, muttering beneath his breath. I hid a smile, chest warming to hear the mangled version of I’m happy you’re home, I love you.
“Love you too, Pop,” I said.
He waved his hand at me, but his eyes were surprisingly soft. “Yeah, all good. Try not to break too many hearts tonight, will ya?”
I slid on my sunglasses and walked backward out the door. “That’s a promise I can’t keep.”
It was a joke and he absolutely knew it. My relationships with women lasted 72 hours or less and were purely sexual in nature. Giving women pleasure was my religion, and I was more than happy to worship whatever lucky lady took me home to her bed tonight.