Marissa suddenly felt lightheaded, like she might pass out, a combination of shock and the schnapps hitting her system. She had to actually lean against the wall for a few seconds with her eyes closed to stop the room from spinning. Then she opened her eyes and saw Darren coming toward her.

“Hey, what’s up?” he asked, smiling stupidly. Did he expect her to be, what, excited?

She tried to get past him, and he grabbed her arm like he had last night.

“Hey,” he said, “where’re you going?”

“Just leave me alone,” she said, yanking her arm free.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You’re what’s wrong,” she said, but he probably couldn’t hear her because she was walking away and Tone Def ’s set had started. Her friends, standing in front of the stage, waved her over, and she had to stand there, watching Lucas play bass. It was hard not to notice how relaxed he looked post- blow- job. As soon as she got home she was so deleting all of the Tone Def tracks from her Mac and iPhone.

She was sick of looking at Lucas. She looked over to her left, but Darren was there, so she turned quickly to the right and saw this incredibly good- looking guy standing a few feet away from her watching the show. She thought she’d seen him somewhere before, and then she knew why- he looked so much like Johnny Depp. In fact, for a few seconds she thought he actually was Johnny

Depp, but then she thought, Would Johnny Depp really be watching some lame band in the West Village with a bunch of people from Vassar? She was checking him out more closely- he actually looked a lot younger than Johnny Depp- and then he looked in her direction and smiled. She thought he might be smiling at somebody next to her, but, nope, he was smiling at her. She smiled back at him and then looked quickly away toward the stage, where Lucas was doing a bass solo, making a face like he was having another orgasm. Did it really take that much energy to create such shitty music? She felt a tap on her shoulder, and the Johnny Depp guy was next to her saying something, which of course she couldn’t understand because (a) she was nervous as hell and (b) the music was so damn loud. Then he made a drinking motion with his hand, and she nodded and then walked ahead of him through the crowd toward the bar. She hoped Darren was jealous, watching them leave. She also hoped Lucas was noticing but doubted he could with the spotlights on him and the way he was busy fucking his bass.

When they got closer to the bar area, where the music was lower, the Johnny Depp guy leaned closer to her and said, “Hey, I’m Xan.”

He pronounced it “Zan,” but she didn’t think she’d heard him correctly and said, “I’m sorry?”

“Xan,” he said. “My real name’s Alexander, but people call me Xan.”

He had bright blue eyes, long sideburns, hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and strings of greasy hair hung coolly over his face- very cool. His scruffiness and darkish skin somehow made his blue eyes seem bluer.

“I had a friend Scott in college and he called himself Scuh,” Marissa said. “I thought that was stupid, but Xan, that’s really cool.”

He smiled, looking into her eyes, and asked, “So what’s your name?”

“Oh,” she said, feeling like an idiot for not telling him on her own. “Marissa.”

“Marissa or Rissa?” he asked.

She laughed and said, “Rissa, I like that.”

“Then there you go,” he said. “From now on I’m gonna call you Rissa.”

From now on. She liked that. And he was looking into her eyes again- when was the last time a guy had paid so much attention to her? Especially a cool, hot guy like Xan? She loved his lips, too- she could tell they were really soft. She was dying to kiss him, not just to make Darren and Lucas jealous but because she really wanted to.

Finally she was able to clear her mind enough to think of a good question. “So are you a big Tone Def fan?”

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a good question, but at least there wasn’t dead air. “I’ve seen them a couple times,” Xan said. “What about you?”

Picturing Lucas coming out of the bathroom with the blow- job queen of the West Village, she said, “Actually, I think they suck. My friends wanted to come, so I kind of got roped into it. Are you in a band?”

“Do I look like I am?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“Actually I’m a painter.”

“You’re kidding me.” She was excited. “What do you paint?”

“Different stuff. Portraits, street scenes. Stuff out of real life.”

“Wow,” she said, “that sounds amazing. I majored in art history.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, at Vassar. I also worked at the Met for a while over the summer.” She left out that she’d rented headsets and had lasted barely a month. Let him think she’d been some important curator.

“Really?” he said, still smiling. “That’s amazing.”

God, She was dying to kiss him. He was so hot- and also she’d finally met someone in New York she had something in common with.

“So who are some of your favorite artists?” she asked, realizing too late how stupid this question sounded.

“Oh, man, there are so many,” he said. “I like a lot of different types of art, you know? I really like the Impressionists, like van Gogh, um, Monet, Cйzanne, Degas, yeah, Degas’s stuff is really great… but I like other stuff, too, like, um, Edward Hopper-”

“Oh my God, I love Hopper. His work is so simple, yet so deep. I love twentieth- century urban Americana.”

“I also like Picasso, Warhol, um, Jackson Pollock-”

“I can’t believe it. You just named my favorite artists.”

“Oh, and I love Frida Kahlo too.”

“Get out, I’m so into Frida Kahlo. I did this twenty- five- page paper on her senior year. I think she’s amazing. Do you know that painting Henry Ford Hospital?”

“Yeah, that one’s great, but I think my favorite’s Self- Portrait with Small Monkey.”

“I know, I love Small Monkey. The use of animals in that is so powerful and so resonant. It really is the quintessential example of the angst in Kahlo’s oeuvre.”

Angst in her oeuvre? Yikes, she wished she could shut herself up. She hoped she wasn’t sounding too pretentious, too much like a know- it- all.

He took a sip of his beer but didn’t stop looking right into her eyes.

“So what kind of stuff do you paint?” she asked.

“Hard to describe it,” he said. “I’m into a lot of different, um, movements. I do some street- scene- type stuff, but I also paint mountains, people, a little of everything, you know?”

“Wow,” she said, impressed. “So, if you don’t mind my asking, do you do something else to support yourself or…”

“No, I’m just an artist,” he said. “I believe you have to find what you love to do in life and keep doing it no matter what. You can’t let money get in the way of happiness. You just have to do it, be passionate, follow your dream, you know?”

“I think that’s amazing,” she said. “I say the same thing all the-” Marissa spotted Darren with Zach at the edge of the crowd watching the band.

“What’s wrong?” Xan asked.

“Oh, nothing,” she said. “I just know that guy over there. He’s just some guy I used to go out with, and I’ve been trying to blow him off and he won’t get the message. It’s so annoying that he’s even here.”

Darren came over to Marissa and said, “Can we talk for a sec?”

“I’m busy right now,” Marissa said.

“Excuse me,” Darren said to Xan, “but I have to talk to my girlfriend.”

“I am not your girlfriend,” Marissa said. “Can you just leave me the hell alone?”

“I just want to-”

“Hey,” Xan said to Darren. “She asked you to leave her alone.”

“Am I talkin’ to you?” Darren said.

Xan put his beer down on the bar, then calmly grabbed a fistful of Darren’s jacket and pulled him away toward the front door. Marissa couldn’t tell what Xan was saying to Darren because he had his back to her and the music was still very loud. But she could see Darren’s face. At first he seemed angry, like he was ready to fight Xan, but as Xan spoke to him his expression gradually morphed. He looked confused, then concerned, then terrified.