Good In Bed

by Bromberg, K

  But not the slate between me and one of those guys on stage.

  Two, actually.

  “What can I get you?” a pleasant woman’s voice asked. The crowd crushed the edge of the stage as Trevor marched to the microphone and shouted his introduction.

  His words were lost as I shouted back to the server, “Amaretto sour, please.”

  And then—the opening chords of their first song made my table shake, with Sam the maker of the room’s heartbeat.

  Drummers are mysterious creatures who seek the erratic microbeats of authentic life layered between the macrobeats of society. Sam’s hands were always tapping. Did they move in his sleep? Were his dreams filled with the nuanced undertone of beating movement?

  What did those hands seek?

  With his hands in constant motion, how could I let him know my body should be the one place where those fingers could be still?

  His hands moved like a poem, the left one tapping out a line, the right one pausing at the perfect moment to communicate emotion. Hot and sweaty on stage, the band moved as one organism.

  Trevor sang lead vocals. Electrifying, tall, muscled, and taking the crowd to a new layer of existence—and everyone willingly followed.

  Joe stood quiet in the background, playing bass, providing the undercurrent of emotion that allowed Trevor to fan the flames inside all of us.

  Liam played guitar like a man strumming a woman’s body. He seemed to make love to the instrument in a way that I could admire from afar, but that never quite caught the essence of me.

  Oh, no—that was all in Sam’s fingers, his forearms, his muscled shoulders, the obliques that twisted to play each part of his drum set as if it were my body.

  In a way, it was.

  A well-practiced hand slid my drink in front of me, a cardboard coaster under it advertising some local dot com dating service—Good Things Come in Threes.

  Half a drink later, I found myself immersed in the fever of their song. And in my own delusion.

  My imagination knew few bounds when it came to the taut rope that pulled me in two directions: one, to the carefully calibrated side of me that protected and planned to make sure that no uncertain variables could sway me from being centered and grounded.

  And then there was the other side, the one where my imagination ran wild. That was the side pulled tight in a tug of war by Sam’s fingers.

  I was deluding myself if I thought there was any hope of protecting myself now. I was here, right?

  “You want another one, honey?” the cocktail waitress shouted over the fray of the end chords of Random Acts of Crazy’s famous song “I Wasted My Only Answered Prayer.”

  I nodded. Taking risks wasn’t part of my nature, but what the hell—a second Amaretto Sour wasn’t going to kill anyone, was it? Drinking was new to me. I’d only been legal for the past year, turning twenty-one late, after all my friends, with this damn August birthday. A year of drinking under my belt (at least legally) meant that it was still a novelty.

  Besides, I could walk home.

  Alone, of course. My boyfriend these days was molded pink plastic, with stamina that lasted as long as two energized D batteries.

  The crowd roared as the song ended, and there pranced Trevor, larger than life, the women in the crowd eating out of his hand. He was a fine, masculine specimen onstage with jeans that were tight in all the right places. All the guys had changed so much since high school, since I’d seen them at their debut.

  Changed for the better.

  Sam raked one of those beautiful hands through his auburn hair, and while I couldn’t see his eyes because of the bright lights onstage, and the shadows that added to the mystique of the set, I knew that those green-and-amber-flecked irises were still the same.

  He stood, and the evolution in his body made me gasp, scaring the waitress who had come by with my drink.

  “You okay, honey?” she asked, bending down, making eye contact. Short, brown hair. Tight, wrinkled lips, like a smoker’s. Kind, ocean-green eyes. She was as skinny as I was lush, and about my mother’s age.

  I looked back at the stage, but Sam had turned away, now listening intently as Joe spoke animatedly to him.

  “I’m fine, I just... they’re so good.”

  “You mean they’re so hot,” she said in a conspirator’s voice, nudging me gently with her elbow. “You’re not the first one in this room to think about taking one of them home, hon,” she said, her heels click-clacking as she hurried off to deliver more drinks.

  I laughed politely when she turned back and winked at me, because that’s what you do, right? When someone makes a suggestion that taps into your inner world of fantasies and says something that isn’t quite appropriate for public, casual talk.

  And yet every word she said was true.

  Sam

  “Trevor fucked a chicken?” I could barely hear anything Joe was saying to me onstage, my ears ringing, my hands throbbing, but I heard that.

  “Would you guys let it drop?” Trevor growled.

  “No, just a French kiss,” Joe teased. “After he proposed.”

  “What?” I shouted.

  Trevor waved his hand dismissively in Joe’s direction. “It’s a bad joke.”

  “No,” Joe argued, “if I’d said you thought she was too fowl-mouthed for you, that would be a bad joke. Bawk bawk.”

  Groans all around.

  “Watch for a song about Mavis,” Joe added as we stepped off the stage and walked back to our dressing room. Dressing room was far too fancy a term.

  Alcohol-infused dump filled with eau du vomit was closer, though still kind.

  I slumped into a couch that sagged so close to the ground I might as well have been riding in a pimped-out Civic. My ears were ringing and hands on fire.

  Ever since Trevor disappeared and Joe went and rescued him in Ohio, the band had felt... different. Richer and fuller in some ways, with Trevor writing some of the best lyrics he’d ever come up with. Whatever had happened to him in Ohio had transformed him.

  I knew about Mavis the Chicken and started laughing, a little slow on the uptake.

  “Maybe she could be our mascot,” I said.

  “I’m your mascot!” an excited voice chirped. And then the hair appeared, followed by those bright green eyes.

  Darla.

  Getting together with Joe, Trevor and Liam for practices and new song development had always been fun. We had our friend Joyce tagging along sometimes, and the rotating girlfriend of the month for whichever one of us was dating someone.

  Beth had been mine for almost a year. That ended just before graduation when she questioned how serious I was about life. I guess having a homeless boyfriend with an undergrad degree in Political Science from a state university and nowhere to live except his friends’ couches didn’t fit with her image of what her future needed to be.

  “You take your music too seriously,” she had said in that final conversation.

  “I do take it too seriously, because it’s serious.”

  “I am what you should take too seriously.”

  My silence had made her stalk off, muttering a slur of profanity that beat out any sorority chick’s drunken ramblings on TMZ.

  And so we were done.

  Good. It was good that we were done because life is a hell of a lot easier when it’s just you. Just you and the drums and whatever crappy job you have to work to get by.

  Getting back to Darla.

  She was unlike any girl I had ever met. Big and curvy and wild and sweet, in a ragingly sarcastic way that made her one of the guys.

  Sort of.

  Trevor planted a kiss on Darla’s cheek and mouthed “thank you” as she handed him, then Joe, a cold bottled water.

  “You want one?” she asked me, so friendly and open.

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  Trevor slunk out after her, hands all over that nice, round ass, giggles filling the hall.

  Then silence.

  Then a moan.


  I wasn’t getting that bottled water, was I?

  Joe watched them leave, an amused half smile over his face. “Listen, man, remember how I got waitlisted for Penn?”

  How the hell wasn’t he jealous?

  “Earth to Sam.”

  I shook my head, lost in that thought. Sharing one woman... I got it in principle, but in reality I struggled to understand how Trevor and Joe shared Darla.

  Joe didn’t even like to share his potato chips.

  “Yeah.”

  Getting into the University of Pennsylvania Law School was Joe’s wet dream.

  “They called.”

  “No fucking way, man.”

  “Yeah.” Joe nodded. “I can’t believe it, either.”

  It was late July, in the middle of the worst of the Boston summer, and everyone I knew who was going to law school, med school, or getting their MBA, was settled.

  “But you’re going to BC,” I said. Boston College.

  “Not now.”

  “You accepted Penn’s offer?”

  He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “That’s wicked cool. Congrats!” Penn was a big deal. Ivy League. A very big deal.

  He looked puffed up and deflated at the same time, proud of his accomplishment, but...

  “You tell Trevor and Darla yet?”

  His eyes cut away as he shook his head.

  I started tapping a beat on my thigh, trying to ground my brain as it spiraled away from me while the emotional implications of what Joe was saying began to sink in.

  “I haven’t told them, but I have to tonight.”

  “What about the band?” I practically shouted.

  Joe grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the couch.

  “If I’m in Philly there’s no way I can stay in the band.”

  “Damn it!” We were just starting to get good paying gigs, the kind that would let me drop the temp jobs in the factories and the crappy cubicle farm shifts where I processed paperwork that had no real meaning in life. “If you leave we need to get a new bass player.”

  “I know you do. But I’m leaving.”

  “Dammit, Joe, why’d you have to go and get a backbone just as we’re starting to break out?”

  I smiled. I was glad for him—this meant a lot. But…

  “It’s not just about the band,” Joe said, his eyes shifting. “It’s about everything.”

  “Your mom’s going to shit a brick.”

  “She already did. It was a vegan, free range, organic brick.” He shook his head, looking like an old Italian grandmother tsk-tsking. “A proud brick,” he said, chuckling. “But look,” Joe added, “I’m going to Penn. I’m staying to room with Trevor, so if you want to take over my half of the apartment, you can. Have your own bedroom, the whole bit. Give your spine some luxury.”

  I went numb. That was great and all, but how the hell was I going to pay for it?

  “And you and Darla... and Trevor... ?” The words seemed so weird coming out like that. All three of them.

  Together.

  “I have to deal with that next,” Joe said, his eyes breaking away again.

  Trevor came up behind us. “Why so serious?”

  Damn. They were fast. Darla’s eyes were hazy and unfocused, filled with the look a woman has after she’s just been thoroughly enjoyed. Trevor strutted a bit more than usual, and I saw small red streaks on his neck.

  Fingernail tracks.

  “We’re just talking about the mating habits of chickens,” I answered.

  “Fuck off,” he grunted and stormed off.

  “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck OFF!” Joe said like a chicken’s bawk. We laughed. “It always works, doesn’t it?”

  I just shook my head. It felt like the entire room was balanced on one tiny, tiny shard of glass on top of a feather bed that was about to tilt.

  “Five minutes!” the owner of the club said, popping his head in.

  I walked off to find my own damn bottle of water as Joe pulled Darla into the adjoining room.

  At least somebody was getting some.

  Amy

  The last time I saw Sam was four and a half years ago at the qualifiers for the National Debate Tournament. He was from a neighboring school and I’d run into him since freshman year at different speech tournaments, every Saturday, from the end of October through March with few exceptions. I had a sense of who he was from the start. He was Lincoln-Douglas debate all the way, baby. Smart, determined, and turning from a silent geek into one hell of a hot guy by the time we were seniors.

  The funny part was he didn’t know it.

  The awesome part was that was what drew me to him.

  He wasn’t awkward, like the other guys. Sam was so self-contained and knew himself so deeply that he didn’t need to talk about it, show off, or prove his manhood.

  Over ice cream bars and the occasional cup of coffee by our senior year, there was an accumulation of just enough conversations for me to decide that I wasn’t crazy. He was interested.

  What happened to confirm that was burned into my brain, the second strongest memory of my life.

  I lost one of the most intense debates of my career two weeks before qualifiers, and Sam found me in a corner of the enormous high school auditorium. I was trying to cry quietly, and mostly failing.

  He just found me—that’s all. He didn’t lord over the fact that he placed first in the tournament that day, to my third. He didn’t try to say all the right words that everyone thought were kind, considerate, comforting, and helpful.

  And gutted me.

  He didn’t stumble or say “I’m sorry.” He just walked up and stopped a few feet away from me, his brow lowering with a frown of recognition, and then did something so perfect it makes me ache to this day.

  He closed the gap and just put his arms around me. Tucked my cheek into his chest and wound one arm around my waist, the other around my shoulders, rested his head on my hair, and held me.

  I would give anything to go back to that moment in the auditorium, with its cracked wood seats and its shabby, threadbare carpet, its smell of lemony bleach, to feel again how Sam filled all my senses.

  My ear against the wool of his suit, his arms wrapped around me like a cocoon of understanding. His aftershave, the rasp of his cheek against my ear. Sam created a world for me in that one moment, a safe world where I could cry.

  A world where I fell in love.

  What I didn’t know then was that two weeks later at the national qualifier tournament, I would dismantle that world, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, completely unaware that I was doing it at the time.

  Sam

  “What the hell kind of state doesn’t have Happy Hour?” Darla asked, incredulous.

  She was at every practice and gig now that she was living here, somewhere in Cambridge with an aunt who ran a dating service where Darla had a job.

  It must be a day job, because she had plenty of time to act like a band manager and mother hen. You wouldn’t know that she had her own apartment, either; she’d been spending so much time at Trevor and Joe’s that they’d bought her a toothbrush.

  Not that I could say anything—I was crashing on their couch for free.

  “In Ohio most bars have Happy Hour all week long. You walk in and they’ve got free food—you know, wings and mozzarella sticks and all kinds of things that you can munch on,” she said. “And then discounts on drinks. Dollar drafts, buy one drink, get one free, or buy one drink, get one half off—you name it. All the major cities in Ohio have it, but here....” She rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. “Nothin’. And why do the bars close at one o’clock?”

  Trevor shrugged. “Beats me. I know alcohol can’t be served after two.”

  “Yeah!” Darla interjected. “So why one o’clock? What’s up with being so uptight? Is it the Catholicism in this state, or what? What the hell does the Pope have against a mozzarella stick or a basket of wings? ”

  “Darla,” Trevor said, pulling her
in, their hips touching, his hands all over her ample ass. “You go march right over to the bar owner and give him a piece of your mind. Change the world. Free the mozzarella sticks.”

  “The poor schmuck who owns this place doesn’t control any of that. It’s the voters,” she insisted.

  “Run for governor. Vote for Darla!” Trevor shouted.

  “Why would I do that?” she asked. “It’s so much easier to just sit here and bitch about it.”

  Joe walked up in the middle of our laughter looking green and sick. I started to take off and give them a minute for what I knew was about to happen, but Liam marched over and interrupted before Joe had a chance to speak.

  Joe looked relieved.

  Liam was taller than any of us; he towered over Trevor, and that wasn’t an easy accomplishment. When we were younger, he’d looked like a wiry praying mantis, always too tall for the society he was in. Since senior year of high school, though, he’d taken to lifting weights and had filled out a lot.

  Liam’s confidence reflected the change; he’d begun to manifest a certain personal authority. He interrupted Joe without apology, confidently certain that what he had to say was most important.

  I wanted to be that way.

  It wasn’t easy after my parents spent most of my childhood and teen years reminding me to project happiness at all times, as a sign of confidence, assurance, and contentment—none of which I really felt.

  In reality, I was cocooned behind my drum kit and managed the truth by omission.

  Drumbeats and measures and music are always honest, laid out plainly, page after page after page. The beats, the microbeats, the macrobeats, all of it are a kind of language that tells you—note after note, tap after tap—exactly what you need to do to get to the end of the song.

  How I interpret the emotional landscape within those beats, though—that’s entirely up to me. I can go heavy and deep, or shallow and wild.

  If only life were that simple and uncomplicated.

  I studied Trevor, Joe, and Darla. I saw a complication of their choosing. No piece of music, no set of lyrics or measures or notes laid out in a blueprint, could capture what they had improvised.