One Trick Pony

"Crap," Jesse Majors barked as he pushed open the front door of the apartment building with the tire of his bike. It was pouring again. And he had a hangover. From the way that girl Cassie or Carrie or Cammie or whoever was kissing him all over the face a second ago, he just knew she wasn't going to handle this one-night stand--which he hadn't made any attempt to disguise as anything but--very well at all. He pulled his Saint Martin cap from his back jeans pocket and covered his freshly buzzed hair with it, the bill shading his face. The hat--like his Italian key fob; too-mature steel-rimmed sunglasses from Paris; and expensive Hawaiianshirt-- was a souvenir from his parents. Armored up in all this stuff, Jesse felt like a walking, talking souvenir himself, something you bring home from a trip and forget about. His cell phone rang right as he started pedaling home. It was his movie exec dad. "We're going to stay another week out here. This producer is really trying to ruin Kevin Sting's book. Could you imagine doing a musical of a horror picture?" No, as a matter of fact, Jesse couldn't. He couldn't imagine leaving his own seventeen-year-old son for months at a time, either, but that was something Jesse kept close to the vest. "Don't worry about it, Dad," he managed to say, mustering up his most carefree voice. "I know you've got to do a good job. We'll do the hiking thing next month." They'd planned on heading up to the Catskills, where his mom had picked out an old Greek Revival place the previous year, but Jesse hadn't actually assumed they'd be going. They'd only been up there once since they bought it. Surely there was some rotting crap in the fridge by now. "All right, Jess. Thanks for understanding. Why don't you go out and get yourself one of those new Nintendo Wii game systems? You've got the credit card. Everyone's talking about them over here. We've got two on the set. The Road Rage game is pretty awesome." "Yeah, sure, Dad. Thanks. Talk later." Jesse tucked his phone back into the Velcro pocket on his left jacket sleeve and slipped his earbuds into his ears. Lately, he'd been listening to this garage band, the Flash, he'd heard at the One Trick Pony the previous month. The Flash had sort of a British punk sound and they'd played on the last night the place was open. Right when Jesse finished cleaning out the espresso machine and counting out his drawer, Jimmy had pulled a chair up in front of the coffee bar, settled his hands on the roundest part of his belly, and said, "This is it, Jesse. We're closing up for good. I'm bankrupt. Kaput. Dead. Over. If I thought you needed the money, I'd feel pretty bad about it. But I'm sure you can find a new place to pick up girls," he added with a wink. "What are you gonna do now?" Jesse had asked. Jimmy was just about the worst businessman in the world--more into music and hanging out than keeping consistent business hours, or serving good coffee--and it wasn't shocking that the One Trick had gone under. But at least Jimmy had been around a lot, and he knew Jesse. He hated to admit it, but Jesse missed the whole scene. Ah, but that was all history now. Jimmy had moved down to Miami and planned to waiter at a tapas joint. "People, possessions, money . . . it all comes and goes in life," Jimmy said before he left. That was exactly the way Jesse himself saw things. He found that if you didn't worry, life had a way of working out--ups and downs, ins and outs. There wasn't much point to any of it, so far as he could tell. "Yeah, yeah, kiss her where it huurrrrrrrrts!" The music thumped in his ear as he coasted along Smith Street toward his family's luxury apartment, ready for a final school-free Friday of nothing and a whole lot more nothing. Maybe he'd order some wings later. Or take his car out to Brighton Beach for some Roll 'N' RoastBrodsky, Daniella is the author of 'One Trick Pony ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780385734523 and ISBN 0385734522.