Mezzanine

The smoke pulls the walls in closer. The amplifiers hum and tunnel everyone’s vision toward the stage as the electric fizzes and pops course through the crowd. It’s going to be a long night. The last few drops of anticipation are the most potent as they leech down from the hanging IV bag through the tentacle lines and into our addicted arms. Mezzanine is the sort of place that’ll be gone in a year, two at most, replaced by another bar with new clientele and then misremembered by the once-upon-a-time regulars with distorted nostalgia. This makes the anger welling up inside of me all the more pointless, but that doesn’t stop it.

“We’re surrounded by idiots,” Alex half shouts above the growing din. Mike and I swivel our heads round to Alex, who has rocked his chair back against the wall, balancing it precariously on the back two legs and trying to look unconcerned about it. “Not to sound like a pussy,” he reassures, “but there’s something to be said for banning smoking in bars.” He casts his eyes upward and we take the hint. We all three analyze the cigarette smoke. It rises in a serpentine path from casual exhales and burning rollies or store boughts until it massages the ceiling as it mushrooms out before finally cascading back down into our clothes and lungs.

“Why do you care?” Mike jitters with suspicious confusion as he parses tobacco into his rolling paper, drawing extra attention to his meticulous work so as to silently point out that both he and Alex smoke.

They look to me as one of the only non-smokers in the entire program. “I dunno. There’s something to the idea that this is the last resort for smoking in bars. It’s like the Alamo.” They smile a little knowing that I’m set up for another stream of consciousness monologue arguing intensely the finer points of who the hell cares subject matters with philosophical expertise applied uselessly to nothing at all.

“I mean, even though I hate smelling like an ashtray and even though out of all the smokers here I’ll be the one that get’s lung cancer because that just the sort of cosmic injustice that the universe revels in, there’s something I sort of like about it. There’s something I’ll miss about it when it’s gone. You know?” They give me a small, thoughtful laugh and for the moment the scratchy tension eases a bit.

“Whatever man,” Alex playfully replies, “all I’m saying is how fucking stupid do we look when South Carolina’s the last state where this is legal? And now that the state’s finally getting around to banning it, this bar is one of the last one’s to give in?”

“We’re a defiant people,” I tease. “We may be wrong, but we’re loud wrong.”

“I’m just saying, this is the most behind the times bar in the most behind the times state and it makes us look like a bunch of backwards fucking dopes.” The flourish to Alex’s sentiment is his hand diving into the pocket of his stylish tweed jacket draped around the back of his chair to fish out his pack of Parliaments and then deftly slapping his wrist just so, encouraging a single cigarette to poke out the torn top, offering itself to him like it’s thankful to be called upon.

“Na,” I halfheartedly protest as Mike lights his painstakingly rolled smoke with a match standing erect out of the matchbook, “it just seems wrong to go out and listen to music in a bar and not come home smelling like carcinogens and sins in general.” That gets a big laugh as Mike offers the match to Alex who sparks his store bought stereotype.

On his exhale Mike concurs, “Exactly. Smoking is unhealthy and so is pursuing music.” Another round of laughs, but as usual Mike’s words are laced with a poignancy that poisons our tranquil buzz. Rather than distract us from the impending shit-show, it highlights it. We’re back to silently stirring in our seats. Waiting for the prospect of having no prospects. The weighty smoke drowsily presses down on us. We take our last bits of medicine. Mike and I finish our beers while Alex polishes off his Manhattan and then jiggles the depleted and toothpick impaled Maraschino cherry around in the rocks glass before resigning it to the table. We all know what’s coming. Fate is a terrible thing in and of itself, but it’s all the worse when it makes its designs known to the afflicted.

The ceiling fans lazily bat against the steamy atmosphere. Charleston in May is when the heat just begins to summon up the humidity in preparation for the muggy summer. With classes over the bar is full and the excess bodies add to the sticky air arithmetic. Everyone’s on their post-exams bender to varying degrees and probably varying depending on what degree they’re graduating with next week. Surely business majors are out celebrating instead of stewing in the depressive heat of Mezzanine with a bunch of music majors and music minors who had the slightly better sense to get an actual degree but stopped short of practicality and landed in liberal arts.


Victoria finally bursts into the bar from the stairwell leading up from the first floor entrance. She is, of course, fashionably late. Victoria is a true artist when it comes to making a scene. She feigns being flustered; pausing briefly to give hugs and kisses on each cheek to fellow professors and her most cherished students. These are the people she deems deserving to catch the edge of her spotlight, but Victoria never lets lapse the impression that she is terribly rushed or that the spotlight’s focal point is her and they are lucky to catch it’s circumference.

The whole routine is designed to make her appear elegantly frazzled. Her clothes are a costume of flowing fabrics and she’s riddled with scarves and tassels and loose jewelry. Her hair is perfectly primped to look careless and afford her with the opportunity to perpetually brush back her long wavy auburn locks with dramatic effort as she takes the offending strands in her hand and flips them back over shoulder with sharp movements that catch the eye and cause her collection of clanging bracelets to catch the ear. The crowd is enthralled and the purpose of the evening revealed to be underway. I am at once struck with abject misery.

Amidst the circus our waitress wanders over with the next round. There are plenty of reasons to like Mezzanine. It’s where the music department hangs out, students and faculty alike.  Almost every night is an open mic night and when they do schedule a band they give preference to musicians associated with the department or the faculty. Plus, it’s two blocks from campus, hovering over a scenic King Street painted by the evening’s sinking sunlight and being trampled on by clueless tourists. Yet, despite the bustle bellow, Mezzanine remains a hidden gem of a hole in the wall. Sandwiched between a boutique clothing store on the first floor and rented out office space above, the low-ceilinged intermediary story projecting out onto a balcony is a perfect setting for opinionated music aficionados who want to float above the Philistine masses amongst their peers like intellectual angels. An ideal hangout for our snobby sect, but a bad business plan overall. And so we all simultaneously love the place and while figuring that without doubt it’ll be gone in a year, two at most. It’s a fleeting bit of sanctuary. The property and location are simply worth too much to keep would-be developers at bay; change is inevitable.

In the face of forces beyond their control and too strong to fight, management has opted for defiance. They refuse to ban smoking and stay open long past 2am. In many regards it’s petulant, but as our home we all choose to see it as noble Quixotic cause. When it’s gone we’ll make it out like it was Camelot. We’ll forget the carcinogens, the wobbly tables, and the barely cleaned bathrooms. But tonight is less about Mezzanine temporal dead zone and more about its coterie; whether or not when we’re gone if we’ll be remembered as favorably as our haunt and if those remembrances will be deserved.

Nevertheless, above all the reasons to like Mezzanine, the waitresses take precedence. They are all hot or at the least sexy as they all practice their charming sarcasm, disdain, cynical disposition and love of irony to expertise levels like monks in their Mezzanine monastery. Despite their similar contemptuously feisty temperaments they are all distinctly individual independent women personality-wise. Even so, their common identifiers are as follows: little to no makeup or makeup applied heavily only to the eyelids and nowhere else, hair that’s messy and cut asymmetrically at whatever length, vintage clothing that’s actually vintage and not made to look that way, piercings are popular, and, above all else, every waitress at Mezzanine has a tattoo. In some cities that isn’t a big deal, but in the South a woman with a tattoo that isn’t some cutesy bullshit flower or Christian fish or whatever quietly kissed to her ankle or hidden on her shoulder blade is immediately an outlier. The waitresses at Mezzanine pursue that status.

Our waitress’ name is Jewel, but it’s entirely possible or even probably that she made that up. Like strippers, the waitresses concoct personas to present to the clientele. Unlike exotic dancers, however, the waitresses at Mezzanine don’t drop their disguise when they walk out the door. Strippers, I imagine, come up with a character to sever their personal lives from the potentially demeaning or dehumanizing duties of the job. For the Mezzanine waitresses the persona is an opportunity. Most of them are students or recently former students who either begrudgingly graduated or defiantly dropped out. They’re either not from Charleston or they’re from a part of Charleston that would never darken the doorstep of such a dive of a bar. Without the burdens of who they were before Mezzanine, they’re free to be whoever they want to be. Without history, there’s only the future, only endless possibilities and potential. To that end Mezzanine is something like a halfway house for girls in their early twenties who want to redirect where they were in life and who they were expected or in danger of becoming. It’s the opportunity to pursue their ideal self.

Occasionally, you’d see one and swear that you’d seen her before. Maybe sophomore year or something, on her way to a sorority party dolled up and decked out in monogrammed jewelry. But now she’d be sassily slinging drinks with messy hair done up in a half-assed bun and wearing a ratty black t-shirt and matching black mascara. So if it was really her it’d be impossible to tell and ultimately pointless since clearly she’d killed off that previous incarnation of herself and would deny the murder with dismissive guile.

Whatever the case, Jewel is relatively new. None of us have a notion of her before she’d started working here sometime in February. She, like all the waitresses at Mezzanine, wears no uniform, just a black shirt of their choosing and jeans or pants or a skirt if it’s hot. Jewel is sticking with jeans despite the heat as are most of the others, waitresses and patrons alike. There is something about being an artsy type that instills an aversion to shorts even in immense heat. Jewel’s shirt is a plain black V-neck that has been slightly shrunken and noticeably faded by too many cycles in the washing machine. Its decaying fuzzy fabric looks soft and inviting. I imagine it’s that perfect textured shirt that women have a habit of throwing on in the morning after they’ve taken you back to their place when they want to cover up a little without going so far as to put on a bra; head faking toward modesty despite what transpired the night prior and leaving open the possibility of a morning repeat to bookend the one-nighter or to deepen your addiction for the sake of longevity. Of course it helps that Jewel is pretty stacked up top and the V-neck makes plenty of her beach tanned skin available to us as she leans over to take our empty glasses.

“Hot as hell,” Alex suggestively mutters. Mike and I snap out of our perverted stares and glare at him for calling attention to our deviant sight lines.

“Excuse me?” Jewel flexes back at the waist so that she snaps up straight. Looking right at Alex she places one hand on her hip while holding the three empty glasses by mashing them against her soft body with the other. Her blonde hair is chin length but braided in arbitrary places and pulled back behind her ears except for a few escaping strands. The arm attached to the hand on her hip bares a tattoo of a creeping vine wrapping around her wrist and slithering up her forearm. It augments her hippie vibe, but gives the impression that unlike some daffy flower child she’s got a hard edge and isn’t to be trifled with.

Ignoring the indignation in Jewel’s voice Alex calmly rocks his chair forward so that all four legs are once against landed upon the ground. He reaches forward and flicks his cigarette to chase off the accumulated ash at the end and then clenches it between his lips while he pokes his hand into his jacket pocket. “I said it’s hot as hell in here,” he repeats out of one side of his mouth as the cigarette dances up and down on the other. His hand returns from the recesses of his jacket with his pack of smokes. He again deftly taps his wrist and one pops out the open top of the soft pack. He offers it to Jewel. “What do you saw we cool off by you taking a smoke break with me out on the balcony to catch a breeze?”

Jewel’s body loosens. Her hand remains planted on her hip but her slackened stance makes clear that now it’s partly just for show. “Come on,” Alex seethes, “life is fleeting. Next week I graduate so maybe I’ll be gone for good. And smoking, well how much longer will we be able to smoke in bars do you reckon?” Alex lets loose a long exhale of smoke and wryly smiles as he still holds the offered cigarette to Jewel.

She takes the cigarette and tucks it behind her ear, “I don’t have time for a break right now, but I’ll find you in five or ten minutes.” Alex smiles at her words and coolly rocks his chair back into its precarious back two legs on the floor position. “But it’s not for your sake,” Jewel warns, “I’m doing it because I want to have as many smokes in the bar before they force that stupid law on us.”

“I know what you mean,” Alex says as he flashes a look at Mike and I. “This place is like the Alamo of smoking in bars and it’ll be a shame when they take that from us.”

Jewel gives Alex as half smile before she turns away, trying to play it up as suspicious or doubting or coy but the veneer of sass is gone. She’s been unarmed and she’s vulnerable and open and Alex has won again. Through a guilty smile Alex jokingly asks of Mike and me, “What?”

I answer, “The Alamo you say?”

Mike shakes his head, “In historical terms, if this place is the Alamo, you’re Benedict Arnold.”


Victoria finally rambles her buxom weight through the crowd and up to the stage but hesitates before stepping onto it. The stage is a rickety wood construction about six inches higher than the rest of the floor. It’s painted the same bluish grey as the bar’s walls but the paint job on the stage is obviously much newer so its brightness sticks out underfoot. Meanwhile, the much abused walls with their smeared, stained, and chipped paint prepare for another beating of amplified sound. The questionable wooden creation is situated on the wall farthest from the stairwell leading up from the street level entrance. We sit on the wall opposite the stage, at one of the multitude of round wooden tables that are scarred and scrawled upon. The traditional mahogany bar draws a line from the stage to our backseat as it stretches out perpendicular with the wall to our right. The wall to our left, meanwhile, isn’t so much a wall as it is a near continuous string of French doors and hurricane windows, all open and looking out on or providing access to the narrow balcony where it’s standing room only.

Victoria’s menagerie of her most dutiful of students is already elevated on the platform waiting for her to join them. They tune their instruments and play quick riffs to warm up and to clandestinely show off to the crowd. They’re clearly nervous and aware of their position. They should be nervous. Unless they blow the doors off they’ll be harshly judged by envious music students not deemed worthy by the queen of the department to play in her band.

But before they can be jealously criticized by their peers, their regal patron gives them the once over. Victoria remains frozen in front of the stage, refusing to lift her robust leg onto it like a show horse refusing to hurdle a jump. She studies her collection. One piece is missing and it’s the prize pig of the lot. Briefly, Victoria lets her façade slip. A hint of panic is discernible in her plump face as she scans the bar for her crown jewel.

Suddenly, the bulb in her selfish spotlight stops flickering and returns to full strength. She lights up again and the performance is back in full force. Her head swings back as she bleats out some amused chuckles. It’s all so obviously fake to anyone who looks closely, but it’s in line with what the character she portrays would do. She’s a phony, but she’s consistent with her falsehoods. Most people passively put up with it because at least you know what you’re going to get. Other, more enterprising students, actually indulge Victoria’s theatrics due to her stature in the department and her contacts in the outside music world.

I follow her line of sight and see that she’s spotted Cates over by the bar. This is what has relieved her passing moment of panic. Cates is surrounded by three of his friends, none of whom are in the music program. The two girls, both in bright sundresses and sporting neatly combed and primped hair, are seated on bar stools, legs politely cross but offering just enough tanned thigh not to be prudish. Cates and the other guy, who is wearing a pink collared shirt and khaki shorts held up by the sort of fabric belt you’d buy at Half Moon Outfitters, have their back to the action on stage and are playfully chatting up the girls.

Victoria makes a show of pretending to huff in disapproval as she waddles over to her protégé with the imagined determination of a mother preparing to scold her child. While the audience is enthralled by this impromptu amateur theater, I catch Cates looking past the girls in sundresses and into the mirror behind the bar. The mirror provides a backdrop for the bottles of liquor and lets Cates covertly assess the crowd behind him. These are the things only Mike and I see. These are the things that when I tell people they accuse me of being resentful.
Victoria stops behind Cates, who continues to chat to the sundresses as if he is unaware. With the theatrics of a bad stage play Victoria puts both hands on her hips and loudly sighs. She taps Cates on the shoulder, “I hate to interrupt,” she pauses for effect, “but the show is about to start.” Her act stops just short of her actually physically chewing the scenery.

Cates spins around gracefully in his fine leather shoes and black dress slacks, affording his skinny tie a pendulum swing across his checkered dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. “Dreadfully sorry my dear,” Cates replies, professionally projecting his voice, “I was just plying the audience with drinks so as to ensure positive reviews.” The scene cajoles laughter from the gullible audience. Cates winks back at his friends and then accompanies his mentor Victoria onto the stage to applause and cheers.

Mike beats me to the punch, “Who fucking winks?”

“Oh give it a rest. He’s not a bad guy; it’s just you and Jack that hate him.”

“No,” I correct Alex, “Mike and I are the only ones that openly hate him. Everyone else is either too stupid to see what he’s up too or too lazy to be bothered by it.”

“And just what is he up too exactly?” Alex asks. “You two make it out like he’s the devil incarnate.”

“He is the devil.” Mike returns without hesitation.

A loud chord of six notes, each one independently powerful and perfectly complementary blasts out as Cates drops his hands to the keys of the baby grand piano in a lackadaisical fashion only to produce a perfect sound. He then affords his hands individual autonomy as they meander across the ivories on beautiful excursions to destinations that only a chosen few could even fathom, let alone successfully set out for. The weary looking baby grand, tattooed by cigarette ashes and pockmarked by water that sweated off bottles of beer and left circular scars, extends itself beyond its physical decay like an aged quarterback pulling out one last great game as Cates wills the instrument beyond what it’s rightfully capable of.

The rest of Victoria’s assembled faithful quietly support Cates’ play with soft backing beats. Lana, a pale and pan-faced rake of a girl weakly chins a violin in a green mixture of dress and scarves that perhaps are meant to serve as an homage to Victoria’s ascetic but ultimately make her look like a would-be Tinkerbelle. Darren is sitting in at drums and sporting his usual white guy afro and furthering his constructed wildcard vibe by wearing a t-shirt depicting two unicorns having sex and red suspenders hitched to his tight black jeans. Ronald occasionally thumps on his standup bass in a v-neck baby blue cotton shirt paired with neatly fitting tan corduroys.

Lana, Darren, and Ronald are the ones that draw the bulk of the silent jealousy from the audience and for those three the ire is possibly justified. No one would argue too vigorously that their place on stage is due to anything other than their skills in schmoozing rather than musical prowess. In fact, those three are pretty mundane musically. The other two members, however, Cates and Marion, are more complex exhibits in Victoria’s museum of musicians.

“Hate him all you want, but the guy’s good.” Alex says of Cates during a bout of quick interlaced scales and modal shifts that bound out from the piano with perfection.

Alex has a point. Cates is the class virtuoso without question. He’s got an ear to pick out things others miss, he has no trouble with the written theory, and he can just as easily pick up an instrument and improvise on the fly. His medium of choice is the piano, but he’s also the best drummer in the department and he grew up in school orchestras so he’s the unquestioned maestro of those stringed tools too. Since arriving in Charleston and to the department he turned to brass instruments and became an expert of those devices and even became highly serviceable on the saxophone, though Victoria hates that sound so his inevitable conquest of that piece of equipment never materialized. He alights my chosen instrument, the guitar, in his spare time as if it were just a musical toy for the masses; a beginners guide to music that any angst-ridden high schooler or socially conscious college dorm room composer can fiddle around on successfully without having scratch beyond the surface of musical depth.

I resign myself to the satisfaction that I’m better on guitar than Cates, even if it’s only due to his disinterest in it. On the whole, if it weren’t for him I’d probably be the best musician in the department. But with him in the picture the distance between first and second is so vast that it seems pointless to fight over the scraps of second best.

“Yeah,” I concede, “he’s got game, but I’d like to think there’s more to it than that.”

Alex mischievously smiles at my admission, proud that I can acknowledge it and hopeful that it’ll be the first step to me coming around to his way of thinking. “Of course there is Jackie boy, of course there is. You just can’t have your head so far up in the clouds that you’ve got no traction on the ground.”

Upon hearing that Mike cuts his attention from the stage and makes a surprised face at me before shooting his confused look at Alex.

“What?” Alex asks.

“Nothing, it’s just that you said something that came dangerously close to being meaningful, or at least intellectually evocative.”

“What’d you think Mike-y, that I was just a pretty face?”


Mike and Alex aren’t particularly close. In fact, I’m the only thing the two of them really have in common. Looking at them now, in the final days of our time in the music department, I fondly remember when I first introduced Mike to Alex. In that initial meeting they were openly antagonistic to one another; Mike a musical purist majoring in music with an emphasis on jazz, Alex a psych major minoring in music as a way to improve his guitar skills in the hopes of forming a successful band or at least bedding more girls. We were sophomores then and Marion had just broken up with Mike. One night I finally coaxed Mike out of reclusive hiding and off to a party that Alex was already at and assured us was full of beautiful women. When we got there Alex was half drunk and eager to introduce us to this girl he’d been hitting on. The deal was all but closed he promised, but he would hang around a bit rather than abandon me with the sunken-faced Mike.

As we walked through the house and toward the backyard Alex told us that the girl wasn’t his usual type, a gullible sorority girl or poser bohemian chick. This one was a French major who also dabbled in music. Mike’s eyes sharpened back into focus and my heart’s electrical impulse sparked at the possibility. Alex, a few steps ahead of us, put his hand on the waist of girl with black curly hair spilling out of a red beret. She turned around to reveal her signature bright red lipstick that matched her favorite headpiece. Mike and I froze at the sight of Marion. Alex put the pieces together and I confirmed it. Marion and Mike only managed to silently stared at each other; Marion boring down on a dejected and defeated Mike with a mixture of scorn and pity. We all stood there, overcome with inaction until Alex calmly turned to Marion and loudly, so that the assembled partiers could hear his declaration, said, “I can’t believe I wasted my time on you when there are so many girls here way better looking who aren’t fucking cold-hearted bitches.”

That incident cemented the friendship between the three of us, despite our differences. It also established the immutable truth that the nicest thing Alex would do for you was not fuck you over. It did not, however, stop Mike from pining over Marion.

Now she’s on stage next to Cates and the piano he is giving the business to. Marion sits softly with a cello between her legs. Her red dress is appropriately long, but short enough to look erotically scandalous as she hides herself behind her wooden instrument. The top part of the dress has buttons on it that I suppose are meant to make it resemble a petticoat, but the neckline plunges and the sleeves are thin and tight around her flexed arms as they respectively press and clutch the neck and bow so that the fabric clings to her body like the sheets of a bed. The curls of her black hair are half held in place by a series of barrettes but strands that couldn’t be corralled snake down her head looking like slightly unwound Slinkys intermittently tangled together. Her skin is snow white with the usual exception of her bright red lipstick.

Mike looks at her with a longing that makes me uncomfortable to witness. It’s as if he’s trying with every bit of force his body and spirit can muster to yearn for her so hard that the universe would relent to his will and give him back the girl that left him three years ago. I feel sorry for him and ultimately I realize that despite the fact that we’ve been best friends since freshman year, I still don’t totally understand Mike. His biography is so insane no one believes it. Those who know its validity find it hard to understand how it hasn’t driven him insane. The way that people don’t see who Cates really is and he’s the better for it, no one sees the way Mike’s been batted about by the world and so his resilience goes unnoticed. Mike suffers quietly.


Victoria has her back to the audience as she lords over her assortment. They cease their solos and keep a simple rhythm. Victoria cocks out one leg and flexes that knee back and forth in time. She inhales deeply and shoots her arms out from her sides with her palms facing upward. Slowly her arms, covered in loose fabric intermittently encircled with bracelets, rise from her round body as they shake and convulse like the faithful at a tent revival. Cates reacts by pounding out notes with increased ferocity. When her arms reach their apex above her head she snaps them down and out. Cates slams down a final chord before retreating his sound to a soft jazz standard in line with his supporting cast. Victoria swings around to face the microphone, sporting her interpretation of sultry look you’d expect from someone trying to play the character of a female jazz singer.

“I’d like to thank everyone for coming out tonight.” She wraps her arms around herself like she’s embracing the music then closes her eyes and bites her lip lower lip, which gives the impression that the music is seductively running a finger up her hearty thigh. “We do this every year, I know,” her spoken solo comes out in rushed bursts to fit between the frames of musical timing, “but every year it is just such a release, such a celebration, that I can’t help but be overcome with how far each of our students has journeyed and how their travels, their trials and travails, have in turn aided us, your faculty, in our continued growth as well.”

As Victoria prattles on, spewing trite platitudes affixed to sayings fit for a chicken noodle soup for the musically inclined soul book, Lana looks sad as she stands there uncomfortably holding her violin like a guitar and quietly strumming so that even though no one could possibly hear it she looks like she’s doing something. Marion looks to be similarly bored, not even bothering to fake some sort of onstage business.

Their string instruments don’t fit in and neither do the puppeteers. Lana was in the honors program for two years, but when Victoria heard her play the violin well enough to slide into an orchestra or a bluegrass band she convinced Lana to take more music classes. The girl went from a double major in the honors program to just another Art History major. She dropped her potential second major in physics, the more practical of the two intended degrees, in favor of minoring in music. They kicked her out of the honors program when she kept missing an early morning required class. The class was on Friday and Thursday nights at Mezzanine was an open mic night that unofficially served as a jam session for students in the music department. The musical revelry usually went until the bar closed and then carried on at someone’s apartment until the sun came up or something better came along in the form of drugs or sex.

Marion, on the other hand, knew what she was doing. She has the whole French major slash girl who is just one of the guys affectation down pat. If she isn’t wearing a beret, she is writing poetry in the grass, and if she isn’t doing that she is off being politically impassioned at some protest only to then find herself at a coffee shop reading nihilistic philosophy and critical theory and decrying the abject misery of things while being fawned over by men of all stock. The more mysterious she acts, the more the world offers itself to her.

When I met her and Mike as freshmen, I knew Mike was running out of road. He had certain ideas and a certain direction in life. Marion was keen to follow along until she realized that purporting to be aimless drew all kinds of male attention and gave her an air of Marylin Monroe tragedy mixed with Parisian savvy. She is a perfect fit for Victoria. Musically Marion is really nothing special on the cello; she slips in notes here and there that sidle up next to the sounds of the better musicians and offer themselves as accessories. Her greatest attribute is that she looks the part and Victoria makes a religion out of holding appearance above substance.

“As I said,” Victoria emphasizes while continuing her lengthy preamble, “we do this every year for our graduating class. Our faculty members invite students to join them in a musical ensemble and we play for the each other. It’s meant to show off how close we’ve become and how much we’ve developed as musicians and as people. You’re all adults now, you’re all musicians now, you’re all artists now.” She smiles with pleasure at her own words. With her makeshift commencement speech at an end, she moves on to the itinerary. The musical tempo quickens and Victoria’s voice crescendos in volume and pace. She lists the music professors who will be playing with their handpicked students. After speeding through the laundry list her spoken word takes the tone Janis Joplin. “Then finally, yes finally, ladies and gentlemen,” she makes like she’s out of breath, “we’ll be treated to longtime professor and onetime head of the department Dr Jamison Bates giving his last performance as a member of our esteemed faculty. Yes, he’s retiring from teaching and he’ll be missed as he’s touched the lives of so many students and brought so much great music and honor to this department ladies and gentlemen. Normally the current head of the department closes the show, but how could I not let this wonderful man, on his last night, not bring the show and this academic year to an end?!”

“How magnanimous of her” Mike sarcastically murmurs.

“Just don’t save all your best stuff for old Dr Bates okay fellas,” Alex warns. “At the after party I want our band to put these artsy fartsy douche bags to shame.”

“Speaking of magnanimous,” I chastise. Alex rolls his eyes in response.

“Hey man, it’s fine and dandy to impress these music nerds. I hope you rock the hell out them with your harmonic modulations and interlaid key changes and all that highfaluting shit, I really do. But, the after party is going to be huge and filled with people who don’t give a fuck about tonality or consonance and dissonance. That’s where what we’ve learned counts, that’s where four years of music pays off. If we nail that then we get some word of mouth going and we can start playing bars other than Mezzanine’s haphazard open mic nights and start making money out of this.”

“In that case, aren’t we going to need a name for our band? I mean it’s hard to get a following when people don’t know who to follow.”

My dose of harsh reality shuts up Alex just in time to hear the orgasmic finale of Victoria’s wordy prelude and her forked tongue praise of Dr Bates. She cries out, “And now, without further adieu, I give you my ensemble of graduating students.” She lists the lesser players and their majors, emphasizing extra pride when they are actual music majors as Darren and Ronald are. She’s saves Cates for last. “And last, but certainly, oh certainly not least, the man you all know and admire, the most talented student I have frankly ever seen come through this program, Cates Calvert!” Cates plays a loud and wild solo as Victoria euphorically shouts, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are Victoria and the Empires!”

On that emphatic scream the band pulls into a high energy swinging melody and Victoria seamlessly transitions into a sultry singing voice as they cover Van Morrison’s ‘Moondance.’ Cates covers for the fact that there is no horn section and the violin and cello provide an air of elegance. For all her flaws, Victoria knows what’ll work musically. She’s put her own spin on the song and the result is something unique enough that the snobs respect it and accessible enough for the unsophisticated.

Alex interrupts my begrudging musical appreciation. “What about The Rhythm Methods?”

I let out a burst of laughs. “What are we a high school band? Is your next suggestion that we call ourselves Free Beer so that the posters would say, ‘Live Tonight at Mezzanine, Free Beer’?” Even Mike laughs at the exchange, though his eyes remain locked on Marion sitting on stage with Victoria lustily singing and Cates smoothly subduing any instrumental difficulty or convoluted musical tract with an effortless grin.

“Well fuck you Jack, let’s see you come up with something better.”

“Okay,” I respond confidently, “how about Not Defeated.”

“What?”

“It’s a Hemingway reference. From his quote: ‘a man can be destroyed but not defeated.’ Get it, Not Defeated?”

“Oh, so it’s bad and pretentious. I see what you’re going for Jackie boy. I’m sorry, I should’ve been clearer. When I asked if you had a suggestion for our band name I meant, do you have a GOOD suggestion.”

“Well first of all, I never agreed to be in your band and neither did Mike. But just to shut you up,” I straighten up in my seat as I rise to the challenge, “I’ll give you a good name for a band, actually, a great name for a band.”

This draws Mike’s attention away from Marion and the performance. He’s not terribly fond of the idea of pursuing a successful bar band with Alex, but due to circumstances he doesn’t really have any other options. His reticence would wash away if I threw my support behind the idea but thus far I’ve remained uncommitted by writing off the enterprise as a hopeless lark. Alex’s question merits Mike’s attention because Mike knows my long cherished band name that I’ve always assumed I was saving for my own triumphant foray into the music world.

“Forget it” I say as I wave my hand at the hot smoky air.

“I knew you were bluffing.” Alex’s claim of victory is unconvincing even to him but his suspicion that I’m holding back takes a hiatus when Jewel reappears.

Noticing us firing dubious looks at one another she asks, “What are y’all talking about?” She pulls the cigarette out from behind her ear. Mike supplies Alex with his matches so that he can light her smoke for her.

“Oh, nothing really,” Alex reassures, “just trying to come up with a name for our band.”

“Is that so?” Jewel tries to hide her interest but her mastery of sarcasm isn’t up the level of the more experienced waitresses.

“Tell you what, you and I will go out on the balcony for a smoke and if you come up with a great name we’ll make you president of our inevitable fan club.”

Jewel rolls her eyes at Alex, but her lips break rank and reveal a smile. She and Alex elope out onto the balcony, serenaded by the treacherous genius of Victoria and the Empires.