Too Young

Too Young – Phoenix(listen in new tab)

Moments pile on. Seconds compress under the cumulative weight and ossify into minutes, days, years. Your life becomes dense with the particulate matter of time, eroding fossil memories. It is dense, but not indistinct. Some things still hold shape, so that when you look at them…

The first few bars are familiar; they clear a swath, like a hand wiped across an old pane in a dusty western. Or palms on a fogged shower door in any kind of sexier film.

K’s face is screwed up as he tries to hear over the music. “What?”

V. I. Lenin is busier now, swirls around as if he and G.T. are static, pillars in the wake.

G.T. thinks for half a second, wondering if he had said anything. He holds up his glass. It is three quarters empty. The amber fluid sloshes against the fingerprint smudged walls when he taps K’s glass. It is too loud to hear the glasses connect. Except for the settling foam and small waves there would be no proof they had touched.

This pint, the last before they leave to catch up with Claire (she had invited them to some “rich people party,” where the “liquor runneth free” – her words), had waxed G.T.’s brain, glossed it with slippery circumspection. “Nothing,” he says. “Haven’t heard this song in a while.”

K: “It was in that movie. It makes me think of Billy Murray.”

G.T.: “That’s a shame buddy. He wasn’t the high point of that film. At least, for those of us who the view the female form un but de chaque jour.” The movie, though, wasn’t what G.T. was thinking of. Not exactly.

G.T. looks at his cell phone. It’s almost 10:30. “We should go.”

K barely hears him, but he can guess. They finish their glasses, leaving them in a neat pair on a table they pass on the way out.

K taps a poster near the door. Squares, like from an old video game, form a barely discernable unicorn driving an ice cream truck for other smaller unicorns. The thick paper hangs loosely. The scotch tape that was holding the upper left corner, floats in the small drafts, weighed down by a few specks of red paint form the wall.

K: “Hey, the Pixel Kings. I thought they broke up.”

G.T. “Nah. They’re on again, off again these days.” Carefully, he grabs the loosened corner. He smoothes the paper against the wall, feeling the slight irregular textures of the acrylic inks the screen printer used. Colours in Braille.

K: “Remember when we saw them?”

G.T. “Yeah. It was the night you met Shannon.”

K reaches back and rubs the back of his head, feels his hair under his hands as he considers the facts. “Yeah, well, we didn’t “meet” meet that night.”

G.T.: “History is a complex mix of antecedents and accidents. I can understand how you’d get confused.” Besides, before it became the night K met Shannon, it was the night they met Claire.

And they are now outside. Their lungs bring in the damp, spring’s night, exhuming and casting out the silt of the bar’s air. The overcast sky, lit by the newborn weekend’s blithe city, hangs low with promises of rain.

Five years ago, it was already raining. Inside V.I.’s you could hear the pounding, thick and heavy drops obliterating themselves on the roof, adding a low syncopation to the world inside the bar.

It was the lull between bands. The music playing over the sound system, sounded smooth and clean after the fuzzed-out reverb that had driven the close of the opening band’s set.

K and G.T. stand against the back wall. They had come later than they normally would, squeezing in just before the bar reached capacity. No one was there for the opener (some trio lost to the annals of Toronto’s ambitious youth). They were all there for the Pixel Kings (on their way up, that spring – on their way down by the winter).

The only spots left were near the swag table. G.T. watched K try to give the girl selling shirts and CDs a sly look. Both he and his friend were facing a months long girl-drought, such furtive efforts had become common.

It was at that point that Claire walked by. G.T. didn’t see her at first. She was blocked by her friend (G.T. never saw again). But, K saw her for sure. G.T. watched his friend’s head turn to follow them. This meant, historically speaking, that G.T.’s first view of Claire was from behind.

During the Pixel King’s set, K and G.T. had pushed forward. They found themselves crushed in the middle of the dance floor. At some point, Claire reappeared again on her way back from the bar.

She placed a palm on G.T.’s shoulder. Her palm was warm, gentle on his shoulder. He turned to let her pass. She smiled gratefully at G.T. The band tore into a new song. She held to her chest a brace of beer bottles. Her mouths formed a “thanks” as she moved confidently and casually by, into the pumping press of fans.

She disappeared, swallowed into the crowd ahead of him. G.T. was impressed. Moving through that crowd that night was a feat of skill and determination.

They ended up at the bar together after the set. K clumsily started a conversation. They talked about the Pheonix song that was playing. And Lost in Translation. Claire said she liked it. K agreed a little too ingenuously. For some reason G.T., driven to contention by something Claire said, demurred and suggested that better songs and movies existed.

Claire smiled a gracious, cutting “whatever” and left with her drinks. Left with that breezy bounce that G.T. did not yet know was typical of her.

Later, outside, they ran into her again. The rain had stopped. The asphalt, the sidewalk, everything glistened in the street light. She was getting into a car that had just pulled up.

G.T. a little drunk and happily petulant yelled: “Hey! See any better films yet?”

K told G.T. to cool it and ran up to her. He put on his best, “my friend’s a jerk, but I’m ok” act.” The woman driving was nonplussed, annoyed at being held up. Claire, half in the car, quickly scribbled her number on a worn paper customer rewards card from a coffee shop he hadn’t heard of.

K backed away as Claire closed the door. G.T. walked up.

Through the open windows they heard the driver ask: “Who was that loser?”

Claire gave the driver’s headrest a sprightly slap. “Take it easy Shannon. We’re going.”

A small moment. As the car pulls away. Claire looks back at K. Then at G.T. , who doesn't know that look yet, somewhere between disdain and something inexorably gripping. But, he has since learned the language of her face.