Catherine (3 page)

And then I started worrying about Hence. Cooper had seemed nervous about my being
here, like his boss would bite his head off for letting me in. Why else would he be
hiding me in the basement? But if I really
was
the granddaughter of the guy who founded The Underground, didn’t that make me something
like rock-and-roll royalty? Why wouldn’t the current owner be happy to meet me?

Suddenly tired, I thought about lying down on the cot, maybe crawling under the blankets,
but they smelled like boy and probably hadn’t been washed in months. Instead, I dug
into my backpack, zipped on a hoodie for warmth, and put a T-shirt between my head
and the grungy-looking pillow. Earbuds in, I hit play on my iPod and shut my eyes.

When I opened them again, groggy and disoriented, someone was standing over me, watching
me sleep. I bolted upright, struggling to recall where I was. The someone was a guy,
familiar and strange at the same time, looking down at me with a wry little smile,
like I was a puzzle he was working out how to solve. I yelped, scrambling to my feet,
and our heads collided.

“Ouch!” The pain jolted me back to the present, and I remembered where I was and how
I’d gotten there. “Geez! What were you looking at?” It didn’t seem fair, watching
a person like that while she slept.

“I came to get you.” The flush on his cheeks deepened. “I was trying to decide whether
I should wake you up.”

“You scared the crap out of me.” I didn’t mean to be rude, but I’d always been cursed
with a tendency to blurt out the first thing that pops into my head. It was something
I’d been meaning to work on.

“Sorry.” The flush on his cheeks deepened.

I felt bad for snapping at him, so I changed the subject. “Anyway, is Hence here?”

Cooper nodded. “He’s not in the best mood.”

I shook the hair out of my eyes and slipped my hand into my hoodie pocket to make
sure the letter was still safely there. “That’s okay. Neither am I.”

“No, seriously. He can be prickly. It’s easy to get on his bad side.” He paused to
look me squarely in the face with eyes that were midway between blue and green. “And
I’m guessing you can be prickly yourself.”

True as that was, I didn’t much like hearing it from a complete stranger. “I’m not
prickly.” I drew myself up to my full height. “And I’m not afraid of your boss.” Because,
really, how bad could this Hence character be?

“Hokay.” Cooper’s mouth twitched, like he was holding back a grin. “Don’t say I didn’t
warn you.” And with that he led me up the creaking staircase, into the heart of The
Underground.

My life changed forever on an ordinary Tuesday. I was rushing home from school so
I could get together with Jackie and start on our homework assignment. The school
year had barely begun, and already I was feeling frazzled and more than a little frustrated—I
wanted to be doing my own writing, not some lame collaborative book report. It was
a hot, sticky afternoon, the kind of late-summer day that made me want to hang out
in a sidewalk café with an iced tea and a fresh pad of paper, eavesdropping on the
conversations around me and jotting down every crazy idea that popped into my head.
It felt wrong to be wearing an itchy school uniform and lugging a backpack, and even
more wrong to have homework.

When I took the corner, I saw him right away: a slender guy with shaggy black hair
camped out on my front stoop next to a guitar case and a big duffel bag. My first
thought was
Oh, no, not
another one.
One of the most annoying things about living above a nightclub—and believe me, there
are plenty—is the musicians who are always trying to introduce themselves to my dad,
hoping to convince him to put them on the bill. It’s a waste of time, of course; Dad
books his acts a year in advance, and he knows exactly who he will and won’t let play
in the club. A band not only has to be great, it has to be on its way up, about to
go national. “The Underground has to stay relevant. We’re more than a place to hear
music. We’re tastemakers”—that’s how he puts it. He’s not exactly humble when it comes
to The Underground, but why should he be? The place is kind of famous, and Dad’s a
legend in the rock-and-roll world. Or so everybody has told me all my life, to the
point where I get a little tired of hearing about it.

Really, I’d gotten so sick of coming home and finding stray guitar-god wannabes on
the doorstep that I was thinking about sneaking around to the back door so I wouldn’t
have to talk with this one. He was staring down at his feet—lime-green Chuck Taylor
All Stars—so I could have slipped right around the building without him so much as
noticing me, except he happened to glance up as I was passing, and the look on his
face stopped me. He was striking, with dark eyes, glossy hair, skin like coffee with
extra cream, and the sharpest cheekbones I’d ever seen, but it was more than that.
He looked hungry. Literally. Like he hadn’t eaten in days. I had this feeling he needed
someone to be kind to him. It was written all over his face: He was on the verge of
losing hope, and he needed someone to urge him to keep going, to fight for what he
wanted.

It was the strangest thing. It’s not like I’m usually good at reading
minds. If anything, I’m the opposite—dense about what other people are thinking and
feeling. But something flashed between me and the guy on the stoop—a kind of understanding.
So I went over to him and he scrambled to his feet and dusted his hands off on his
jeans. He held out his hand and I shook it—like we were executives meeting at a business
luncheon. His touch surprised me; the palm of his hand was dry but hot—almost feverish.

“Do you work here?” His voice sounded hopeful, but right away his gaze shot back down
to his sneakers, as if he didn’t dare meet my eyes for long.

It was a strange question, considering I was wearing my school uniform and carrying
a knapsack.

“I live here.” I threw my shoulders back and brushed a stray lock of hair from my
eyes.

“You live in The Underground?” Now he was looking at me in disbelief, as though I’d
claimed I lived in the Taj Mahal or Buckingham Palace.

“Not in it. Above it.” I fumbled in my knapsack for my keys. “My father owns the place.”

“Seriously? You’re Jim Eversole’s daughter?”

I had to hand it to him; he’d done his homework. But the hope in his voice made my
stomach lurch. Like all the others, this one would turn out to be way more interested
in my father than in me. Why had I thought, even for a moment, that there might be
more to him?

“You want Dad to book you.” It wasn’t a question.

“That’s not why I’m here.” He sounded defensive. “I know I’m not ready for that yet.
For now, I just want a job. Any job. Waiting
tables, maybe.” From closer up, I could see the faint scruff above his upper lip and
along his chin. Despite the heat, he had on a black denim jacket, and under it his
faded blue T-shirt was speckled with small holes, one wash away from dissolving into
shreds.

“I don’t think my dad needs any more waiters.”

“I’ll wash floors. I’ll even scrub toilets. I just want to get to know the place from
the inside.” He dug his hands into his front pockets and looked back down at his sneakers,
as if he knew he was asking for a huge favor and didn’t want to pressure me one way
or another.

Maybe he wasn’t like the others who had tried to worm their way into The Underground.
I paused a moment, weighing my options. When I opened the door, stepped inside, and
beckoned for him to follow, I wondered if I was making a big mistake.

I usually hate giving tours of the club to my friends. Call me paranoid, but I get
the feeling that where I live is more important to most people than who I am. But
showing this guy around made me see the place through new eyes. First I took him through
the main room. As we approached the stage, he paused for a long moment, staring like
he could see the ghosts of all the acts who’d played there. So I waited beside him,
recalling some of the bands I’d seen—The Magnetics, The Faithful, and Hot Jones Sundae
were a few of my recent favorites—and I had the feeling that if I grabbed his hand
and squeezed my eyes shut I could share my memories so that he’d have them, too.

But I didn’t. What would he have thought if I’d tried it? Most likely that I was crazy—or
hitting on him.

Instead, I cleared my throat and led him onward, into the mixing room with its tangle
of wires and crates. I let him take a peek at Dad’s office, and at his wall of glossy
photographs of bands who’d come through the club. I saved my favorite spot for last:
the dressing room where so many rockers had graffitied the walls into a multilayered,
psychedelic mess. I pointed out a doodle drawn by Joey Ramone, and he studied it closely,
as though trying to decipher its secret meaning.

“Thanks,” he said when the tour was over. “For letting me take up your time. And for
giving me a tour.”

I shrugged. “No problem.” There was nothing more to show him, really, but I wasn’t
ready to head upstairs and start dinner just yet. “I’m Catherine.” And when he didn’t
reply, I said, “You have a name, right?”

“Hence.”

It took me a while to wrap my mind around that one. “Hans?”

His answer came through gritted teeth, like he’d been asked that question a thousand
times. “Hence. Like
therefore
.”

I wanted to ask him if it was short for anything, and whether he had a last name,
and where he’d come from, but he crossed his arms over his chest and cast a glance
toward the front of the building. I got the distinct sense he was about to bolt. “You
want to leave a phone number? In case my dad wants to get in touch with you? If he’s
hiring?”

Hence grimaced again. “I don’t have a phone,” he said. “I’m not really staying anywhere.
I’m… I’m looking for someplace.” He
swallowed hard and I remembered the impression I’d had earlier, that he was on the
verge of giving up. Had he been sleeping on the streets? Or in a shelter?

So I did something I probably shouldn’t have. I invited him up to our apartment, into
the kitchen. At my urging he sat down on one of the stools along the counter, perched
uneasily like a stray cat who wasn’t sure if he was going to be stroked or shooed.
I cooked him one of those make-it-yourself pizzas heaped with everything I could find
in the fridge. He practically swallowed it whole, so I made him another. Either he
wasn’t much of a talker or he was too busy eating to make chitchat. To fill the silence,
I talked about myself—about how I wished I were musical but couldn’t carry a tune
in a bucket, so I wrote poetry instead, and how most of the girls at school thought
I was weird because I liked vintage clothes and would rather spend an afternoon reading
than shopping. I went on and on until I noticed I was whining about my relatively
nice life to a guy who probably didn’t even have a roof to sleep under.

The realization brought a blush to my cheeks.

“No,” Hence said, frowning down at his plate. “Keep going. I’m interested.”

“I’d like to hear about you.” I stole a glance at the kitchen clock. It was 4:15,
and Dad had told me that morning to expect him home at about five. My father’s pretty
cool about most things, but even so I didn’t want him to come home and find me alone
with a boy whose last name I didn’t even know. Same thing goes for my brother, Quentin,
who was due back from school any minute, and who could be a bit overprotective and
big-brothery sometimes.

“There’s nothing to tell,” Hence said. “I’ve always wanted to
come to New York to see The Underground. I’ve read about the seventies punk scene,
and the place is legendary…. But you know that already.” And he stopped, as though
that’s all I could possibly have needed to know about him.

If I hadn’t been worried about the time, I would have pressed further. I needed to
get him safely outside, but I didn’t want to let him disappear into the night, not
before I at least tried to help him. I reached out—slowly, so I wouldn’t startle him—and
tugged his jacket sleeve. “I have an idea.”

I sent Hence out, telling him to return around six thirty. Less than ten minutes later,
Quentin burst through the front door without so much as a hello. A bag of fast food
in his arms, he took the stairs up to his room two at a time and locked the door behind
him. Q had been cranky a lot lately and, judging by the expression on his face as
he blew past me, that night was no exception. Good thing I’d gotten Hence out in time.

Twenty minutes later Dad turned up, and—surprise, surprise—he was in a bad mood, too,
after a long, frustrating meeting with his investment broker. He lumbered into the
kitchen, kissed me on the cheek, loosened his tie, and tossed his jacket over a chair.

“I started a nightclub so I’d never have to deal with money-grubbers again, and look
at me now.” He opened the refrigerator and stared absently at the shelves as if something
delicious would magically appear in front of him. “Completely at their mercy.”