“All I’m sayin’ is, if you want somethin’, you gotta go for it,” Krissie says to me, herding me toward Blake, who is narrowly wedged in between two burgundy vinyl bar stools with high backs. “If you wanna smooch that mon-syeurr again, just text him. He’s French, right?”
“His dad is French. And he has family there. I think he speaks better French than me,” I say, as Blake grabs my elbow.
“Charli…. Don’t drunk dial,” she mutters in my ear.
“You know what? This week, I decided, WHO CARES about the rules? It all started last weekend when I booty called Shea. I decided, ‘I wanna have sex tonight’. So I called his ass up and said, ‘HAY! Git over here. Now.’ And he did! But…. now I haven’t heard from him all week. Anyway, gimme another tequila. That shit was good.”
Blake and I make eye contact, silently acknowledging that our charming pal has had a bit too much to drink.
“Charrrrrrrrli? Krisssssssssssssie? C’est vous, my beauties?”
We turn to see Alexandra, from last weekend, pushed up against Krissie’s left, as the bar’s crowd thickens behind her.
“Prrrr…”
We exchange warm, loving hellos, hugs and kisses, exclamations, as if we were long lost friends, as is the tendency in New York.
“There’s a party tomorrow,” Alexandra says, doing a Walk Like an Egyptian dance move with her fingers passing her eyes. “117 Dobbin Street.”
“Wait, we live basically on Dobbin Street,” I say. “Where??”
“Some warehouse…. My friend from Oregon is here, and she’s got aaaaaacccciiidddd,” she sing songs, ending with a belly laugh.
“Let’s go!!” Krissie concurs, and Alexandra flags the hobbit-like bartender. I grab Blake’s elbow.
“Let’s have people over before,” I mutter in her ear, “but I’m not doing acid.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
3:34 a.m. Manhattan Avenue
Blake and I are stumbling down Meserole Avenue.
“I’m telling you, 117 Dobbin Street has to be close to our place. Let’s see where it is,” I say, step-slipping in my 1970s burgundy Etienne Aigner boots.
“But, wait, Charli, how was the haircut? With L.B.?” Blake asks, repeating a question she’s asked me about five times earlier in the evening…. Each time I started to tell my story, I was interrupted by various bar happenings.
“I gave him a haircut in our kitchen,”
“I didn’t know you went to hair school…”
“I didn’t!”
“Then why did you cut his hair?”
“I’ve cut two people’s hair. He kept talking about it…. So I offered..” I pause at a corner, looking up at a street sign. “I wanted him to come over.”
“Oooooo…. good call…!”
“This.. ok, yeah that is Clifford Place, but this is Dobbin,”
Blake slows at a lamp post and grabs it with her left hand, swinging around it like a kid on a playground. I look to my left and see a stretch of one story garages and toward us, a low two story building with two gray steel doors.
“What address is it?”
“117 Dobbin….” We cross the empty street diagonally, without looking. The buildings are nondescript, facadeless, dark. I scan for numbers. The steel door on the left had small adhesive stickers just below the peephole, reflective black and white, the numbers on an angle.
“119, so…. is that it?” I say, guiding us to the other door. We inspect it, see no numbers. Blake vigorously tests the knob.
“But so how was the haircut?”
“He said he liked it. It actually looked good. I dunno…. HERE WE ARE!!! Party at Our House TOMORROW!”
“YEaaaaahhhhh!!!!” Blake high fives me and we miss. We try again and we miss again. “Meant to do that,” she mutters under her breath and we crack up laughing and stumble around the corner to our railroad home….
deux mille six 