Page 63 of How NOT to Seduce a Rockstar
He downed it in one swallow. Then held his empty hand out toward the bar, like a robot signaling for fuel.
Tess ordered another. Same scene: one gulp, empty hand, vacant stare.
By the third round, she turned to me, lit up as if she’d cracked the code of the universe.
“Bea, I’ve got it.”
“What, that he’s basically a sink?”
“You pour gin into him and he’ll follow you anywhere. If you set down a glass every hundred yards, you could lead him all the way to China.”
“Like a drunken Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb trail.”
The man grunted again, this time inquisitively, as if asking whether the next gin was en route.
Tess stood, crossed to the register where a row of tired little mini-bottles glimmered like weary soldiers. She grabbed one of gin, came back, popped the cap, and held it under the saxophonist’s nose. “Come with us, Maestro.”
And just like that, he slid off the stool and followed her meekly between the tables, like a tipsy dachshund.
At the door, the bartender—a bald man in a grease-stained apron with a spoon-shaped scar on his chin—stopped us. “Hey, where you takin’ Bernie?”
“Bernie?” I echoed.
“Yeah. He lives upstairs. We give him a room in exchange for a couple sets a week—when he remembers to play.”
Tess gave him a cherubic smile. “Oh, upstairs? We were just walking him to bed.”
The bartender shrugged and dropped a key into her hand, a relic that looked like it had survivedthree wars.
We climbed a narrow, groaning staircase, Bernie’s heavy steps dragging behind us. The hallway reeked of damp carpet and mint-scented disinfectant.
We unlocked the door.
Bernie’s room was… let’s say… the meeting point between an abandoned college dorm and the storage unit of an alcoholic junk dealer. The twin-and-a-half bed took up most of the space, covered with a leopard-print quilt so worn it looked like it had been printed in memory of a leopard who’d died of old age. On the nightstand sat five empty gin bottles, one half-full, and a glass where a green olive floated—vintage unknown.
A crooked wardrobe held hostage three Hawaiian shirts, a pair of corduroy trousers, and a beige trench coat that seemed to belong to a detective fired in the ’70s. On top of it, a stack of old vinyl records, all without sleeves, as if Bernie had been using them to prop up a wobbly table leg.
On the walls, the only decoration was a crumpled poster of Lev Mirov, tacked up with two rusty pins and hanging at an angle, as though it too had gotten drunk. Beside it, a 1998 calendar of tropical beaches, frozen on June—probably the last time Bernie had checked the date.
The floor was covered by a gray carpet that had maybe once been beige, but now told the story ofevery spilled drink and every wet shoe that had walked across it. The smell was a cocktail of gin, sweat, and that faintly sweet note you get in apartments where curry has been cooked… once, back in 2003.
Bernie crossed the room without a word, collapsed face-first onto the bed, and began snoring in exactly three seconds.
Tess leaned against the doorframe, looking pleased.
“Tess, it’s official,” I said. “This is the first man I’ve seen you take to bed since this whole thing started.”
“And the most romantic,” she shot back. “He didn’t even ask for my number.”
36
The day of the Tampa concert arrived like one of those dates that sneaks up on you without warning. A private jet was waiting for us at Teterboro Airport, polished like a pair of Italian leather shoes, with a crew that could have stepped straight out of a James Bond movie. But before we could fly south into the Florida sun, there was one last stop we couldn’t avoid: the Tropical Jazz Club.
Bernie was still “parked” in his room above the club, probably in the exact same position we’d left him days before—gin instead of oxygen, leopard-print quilt as a second skin. All we had to do was load him up and drag him to the airport, like badly labeled oversized luggage.
The room hadn’t changed, as though time itself had frozen out of courtesy. Light filtered weakly through a faded beige curtain, just enough to highlight the dust floating in the air. Bernie lay sprawled across the bed, one bare foot dangling off the edge, a gin bottle clutched to his chest. Hesnored softly, with the rhythm of an old refrigerator defrosting. At the foot of the bed, his sax rested on a chair, tilted like a drinking buddy just as wrecked. For a moment I thought it might be easier to take the sax and leave him behind—but no, the plan required the full set: Bernie plus saxophone, an inseparable package.
We lifted him as carefully as possible, trying not to wake him. His body yielded like a limp mannequin, folding in ways no human skeleton should. The stench of gin was so thick I got a contact buzz just breathing.
