Iris Has Free Time Read Free Page B

booth, I’d shyly stick out my hand. “For you.”
    Lex would receive my gift with a laugh and welcome me with a kiss on the cheek, while pressing a few drink tickets discreetly into my palm. Then he’d pull back to get a good look at me. “I love the acid wash.” After that, I’d go to the bar and try to make friends, returning to him throughout the night to request songs.
    “Do you have ‘Word Up’?” “‘Self Control’ by Laura Branigan?” “‘All Night Passion’ by Alisha?” My requests were a code: I’m wiser than my years and I know what you know, Lex. All the songs from the 1980s that are closest to your heart; they are close to mine, too.
    From the outset, we’d bonded over eighties music and trivia; this had been his heyday and it had been mine, too. As a kid in Greece, I’d tagged along to discos with my older cousin, who was just a few years younger than Lex; I’d danced to the same music at nine that he’d danced to at twenty-five. Couldn’t he see? I was not like these other girls who came to his party ready to dance to whatever he happened to play. They didn’t know what I knew, what we knew together.
    By July, I was spending less time alone and more time with Lex, who’d also been left behind for the summer. The way people without family feel about the winter holidays, Lex told me, New Yorkers without summer homes feel about July and August. I commiserated, leaving out the fact that it had been my choice to stay, that I was as thrilled by our condition as he was unhappy, that I loved the terrible heat, and that I always feel lonely no matter who I’m with or what the season, and that I felt lucky to be lonely in New York City with him.
    We’d meet up for brunch, for a movie, for a birthday party his friend was throwing on his roof. Lex would call and say, “I hate parties. Wanna come?” Or I’d hang out with him in the DJ booth at Lot 61 or Life or Veruka. And then, Thursday again. I’d say hello before setting up at the bar, dance by myself to Billy Idol’s “Dancing with Myself,” and then when I got tired, rest by sitting in the coin-operated toy car machine in the corner of the club.
    There, practicing loneliness, I’d watch the crowd until Lex came to fetch me, pulling me up to dance with him until the song ended and the record cut off. Everyone looked around, waiting for Lex to set up the next one. Lex had to work, so I’d return to the bar alone to pick up guys, which is an art as much as bullfighting. This was my Hemingway moment:
    They’d buy me good drinks, and with dignity we’d lean on the bar of this dirty, poorly lighted place, before a song came on, a song I could not resist, and I’d run to the dance floor to perform my high-kicks dance.
    Certain songs were anthems that brought everyone to their feet. The beat would find you chatting, sipping a beer, worrying, and you’d rise up, as if called. There, dancing under the swirling multi-colored lights, the song lyrics echoing in your ears like a Greek chorus, it felt as if you were part of something, as if youth were a revolution, and your drinking, your dancing, your laughing, even your tears, were a sacred duty.
    I’d get fantastically drunk and smoke cigarette after cigarette and talk and talk until I had no voice left, until the lights came on and it was 4:00 AM.
    The staff would start to close up, and I’d help Lex gather his records into the trunk of his vintage Buick parked out front. With me in the passenger side, we’d speed off into the night, stopping at our favorite diner to get cheeseburgers, or at the deli to get cigarettes and a six-pack—“my fuel.” And then we’d go to Atlantic City, or if we were feeling responsible, one of the illegal card rooms right here in Manhattan. Lex knew all of them. Lex knew everything.
    An empty catering hall with one table occupied: A fifty-five-year-old dealer whom everyone called “The Greek,” two DJ’s Lex knew from Gambler’s Anonymous, a truck