"I always forget you left when MySpace was
still a thing," Penny laughs. "God, it's like we found you frozen
in a glacier. Look, check it out." Penny passes me her iPhone, open
to Rafe's Facebook page. "I can't see much without friending him,
but according to this he's not attached. Here, gimme." She takes
back the phone and taps the screen while I look out the window and
count the numbers on the buildings.
"Jackpot. Thank you, Google. Rafe Stone,
sole proprietor of Perfect Pitch. Let's see..." She taps the phone
a couple of times. "Oh wow, look at this article from a few months
back. 'New York musical wunderkind Rafe Stone today sold Perfect
Pitch to Facebook for an undisclosed figure. It's hoped that his
groundbreaking app will drive a new generation of...' yada yada
yada, business stuff. Ooh, looks like he might be loaded,
Maddy."
"OK, that'll do," I say, snatching the
phone from Penny's hand. "Can we please not stalk the guy online?
I'm an old fashioned girl, Pen."
"Oh, come on, this is the way it's done
these days. Everyone knows everything about everyone. Get with the
times, cave girl."
I shake my head. I can't deny I'm curious,
but I really do hate this modern obsession people have with using
the Internet to discover every little detail about each other.
Mystery is underrated. I'm about to launch into a rant against the
web when I catch a glimpse of number 500. I tap the driver on the
shoulder. "OK, can you please let us out here? Thank you." I can
tell by Penny's stifled laugh that this isn't how you're supposed
to communicate with a cab driver in New York.
The cab pulls to the side of the road and
lets us out on the quiet street. It looks nice, with manicured
trees casting a shadow over well-kept red brick townhouses, but it
doesn't look like the kind of place I'd expect to find a bar.
I walk quickly ahead of Penny, checking out
the numbers painted above each door until I finally reach 525.
"Huh."
This definitely isn't a bar. The plate
glass window looks in on some kind of reception area, and above the
front door hangs a swinging wooden sign that reads '6th Street
Pilates.'
Penny catches up, and looks at the sign.
"Yeah, this place is really rockin'. Umm, are you sure you got the
right address?"
I nod, slipping the business card from my
pocket. "Definitely. Check it out. 525 6th Street. So where the
hell's the bar?"
"He must have written the wrong address or
something. Give him a call and double check."
"I didn't get his number, Pen, just the
address." As soon as the words are out of my mouth I realize my
mistake. "Ignore that, I'm being an idiot." I flip over the
business card, pull out my dinosaur of a phone and dial the number.
Rafe picks up on the second ring.
"Hello?" I can hear loud music in the
background.
"Hi, Rafe, it's Madison. Hey, so I'm at the
address you gave me but I don't see the bar."
"You don't see it? Can you not hear the
music?"
"No, nothing. I'm in front of a building
that says '6th Street Pilates', and there's... I don't know, a
bakery across the street. No bars."
"Wait, wait.
Where
are you?"
I can feel a little twinge of anger appear
now. "I'm at the damned address you gave me, and it's wrong. 525
6th Street."
Rafe's laughter comes through loud and
clear. "Read it again, Princess. The address is 52 South 6th
Street. You know, in Brooklyn?"
I look back at the card, and as soon as I
see the writing I can see he's right. That second 5 is clearly an
S.
"No, it definitely says 5. You have
terrible handwriting, Rafe." I developed quite the stubborn streak
in Mongolia, and I'll be damned if I concede the point that
easily.
"Whatever you say, Madison," Rafe laughs.
"Look, I have some buddies coming down from uptown right now. Stay
right where you are and they'll pick you up in a few minutes, OK?
Don't worry, they know how to get around even if you don't."
"Hey, I know my way around if I'm given the right address,
jackass. Don't give me any of that
yaksteh
."
Another laugh. "Hey, I know that word from
your book. You're saying I'm full of bullshit in Mongolian, right?
Aww, that's sweet. OK, I gotta go, but you can continue swearing at
me when you get to the bar. See you soon, Princess."
With that he hangs up the phone, and for
the first time in many years I feel the weird, infuriating but
strangely attractive rush of wanting to fuck and throttle a guy at
the same time. I don't know what it is about Rafe. Even after a
seven years absence he can still push all my buttons just by
breathing in my direction.
"So what's the word, hummingbird?" Penny
asks, lighting a cigarette.
"We got the wrong address," I reply. "But
don't admit that to Rafe. Hey, put that death stick out. Our
chariot awaits."
I see a yellow cab turn into the street,
and when it pulls up beside us a young hipster dude with a fussily
manicured beard pushes open the back door. "You Madison?" I nod.
"Hop in."
The hipster and what looks like his female
beardless twin move over to make space, and as soon as Penny and I
squeeze into the back they both go back to silently staring at
their phones as the cab moves away. A minute later we turn south
onto FDR, and before I know it we've crossed the Williamsburg
bridge to Brooklyn, and the cab turns onto South 6th Street.
"This is it?" I ask. "Hell, we could have
just walked."
The hipster guy snorts with derision.
"Walk? What are you, new?" He looks me up and down, and clearly
isn't a fan of the leather jacket I made out on the steppe. "Hey
Sara," he says, rousing his female friend from her iPhone coma,
"Indiana Jane here wanted to walk."
Wow.
Well, if nothing else this douche has helped me establish
that I'm not attracted to just any guy who acts like a prick. That
honor is reserved for Rafe, it seems.
The cab pulls in front of the bar, and I
toss a few dollars at the hipster before climbing out. "Buy
yourself a personality, asshole," I mutter, slamming the door
closed as soon as Penny's clear. "Jesus, I hate New Yorkers. How do
you survive here, Pen?"
Penny laughs. "Ummm, by avoiding bars like
this, usually. Oh god, they're drinking out of jars."
I look around at the tables and cringe inwardly. The bar is
some kind of disused warehouse, and out front a couple of dozen
tragic hipsters sit on wooden kegs around tables made from old
doors. Pretty much every guy here is wearing a beard and a weird,
stylized approximation of a lumberjack outfit. I really can't
explain why this turns me off so much, but these guys just look
like boys dressed up as men. It's as if they think that a plaid
shirt and a thick beard makes them woodsmen; like it's the
look
that makes the man.
I don't know... I just think that if they want to dress up as
lumberjacks they should know how to swing a fucking ax. I
can.
Penny vanishes off to the bathroom, leaving
me surrounded by a crowd of guys enthusiastically discussing the
pros and cons of the craft beer they've chosen, and I'm relieved
when I feel a tap on the shoulder and turn to see Rafe.
"You made it!" he yells above the music,
and draws me in for a hug. I can't deny it feels good to be close
to him again, and as his arms squeeze my body I can't help but
remember that one perfect morning in the motel. As he pulls away he
looks around at the crowd with something approaching annoyance.
"Come on, I can't stand another minute down here. Follow me."
He takes my hand and pulls me through the
crowd and into the building, where the sound of a fiddle solo from
some Mumford & Sons knockoff is even louder, and on to the
concertina door of an elevator. It looks like it hasn't worked for
a century, but as Rafe pulls me in and yanks the door closed the
motor kicks into life and we ascend, leaving the noise behind
us.
"Sorry, I just can't listen to one more
trust fund asshole tell me about his new artisanal ice cube
venture. What the fuck happened to our generation?"
Jesus, I'm glad he said that. "I know,
right? These guys aren't your friends?"
Rafe shakes his head. "God, no. I'm just
doing the owner of this place a solid. It's opening night and he
wanted me to play a little, but it turns out he doesn't have a
piano. Asshole promised me he'd set me up, but when I got here it
turned out he only has a fucking Casio SK-1. Can you believe
it?"
I shake my head. "You just said a whole lot
of words I don't understand. What's an SK-1?"
"You remember those little mini keyboards kids used to have
in the 80s? Like, 32 keys and a few preset beats? That's an SK-1.
The difference between that and a piano is... I don't even know.
It's the difference between a firework and the damned space
shuttle." He laughs. "Jesus, these guys piss me off. It's like
nobody knows how to do anything
properly
any more. Everyone down there is just
stumbling through a never ending adolescence, pretending to work on
their latest startup so they don't have to get a real
job."
"Now hold on a minute," I say, narrowing my
eyes, "didn't you have your own startup? Penny showed me an article
on her phone. Perfect Pitch, right?"
Rafe nods and smiles. "Yeah, but mine
actually existed, Princess. I tended bar at night and played piano
in a hotel lobby through the day to pay my way. I didn't sleep for
four years, and I didn't – this part is important – I didn't grow
any ironic facial hair or spend my days riding a fixed gear bike
around the fucking Village searching for hipster tail."
"I'm sorry," I laugh, "but are you trying
to give me a rags to riches story that involves you playing piano
in a fancy hotel?"
Rafe grins and gives me a wink. "I played
until my fingers bled, baby."
The elevator suddenly grinds to a halt, and
Rafe yanks at the gate until it creaks open. He steps out into a
dark hallway and beckons to me to follow him up a narrow flight of
stairs.
"Where the hell are you taking me,
Stone?"
Rafe doesn't reply. Instead he hops up the
last few steps and pushes open a fire door. Beyond it I can see the
lights of the city.
"Welcome to the hipster free zone."
Rafe leads me out onto the rooftop, and I
gasp as I see the view. A block to the west is the river, and on
the still water beside the Williamsburg Bridge is reflected the
countless lights of the skyscrapers of downtown. To the north I can
see the Empire State and the Chrysler buildings – the only two I
know by name – towering above midtown. Up here the constant sounds
of the city are muted, as if filtered through layers of cotton
wool, and it almost feels as if we're not in the city at all.
Rafe straddles the low brick wall that
bounds the roof and reaches down to a six pack of Rolling Rock
hidden in the shadows. "Take a seat and grab a beer, Princess. It's
not exactly a fancy rooftop bar, but it's better than downstairs."
He pops the top of a bottle on the edge of the wall as I gingerly
sit down, looking over to the long drop to the fire escape hugging
the side of the building below.
"Is it safe up here?" I ask, trying my best
not to look at the street six or seven floors below.
"Sure," Rafe smiles, "just so long as you
don't fall. Here, take this." He hands me a cold beer and grabs
another for himself.
"So, tell me about this business of yours.
What do you do?"
Rafe takes a sip. "You mean what
did
I do. I left the company when I sold it. I
decided it was time to move on to the next challenge."
"So you're unemployed?" I tease.
"Ha! Yeah, I guess you could say that. I
won't have to work for a while, so long as I don't blow 27 million
dollars on lottery tickets."
I almost choke on my beer. "27 million? Are
you serious? 27 million fucking dollars for an app?"
Rafe grins. "That's pocket change for
Facebook. They just bought me out because they were trying to
develop their own music discovery app. They knew mine was better,
so Zuckerberg reached down the back of the sofa cushion and tossed
me what he fished out."
"But how... what..." I can't get my head
around the idea. "Sorry, but how the hell did you manage to design
an app worth millions of dollars?"
Rafe slips a pack of Marlboros from his
pocket and pats around for a lighter. "Prison. I had a lot of time
to think in my cell, you know? After a while I started thinking
about how I'd get by on the outside with a felony on my record, and
I decided the only way to get a decent job was if I was my own
boss. I managed to get hold of my own laptop in my second year, and
I started learning about computers. By the time I was released I
was pretty good. It's surprising how much you can learn when you
don't have any distractions."