Making myself a drink, and one for Bob Dylan’s grandson here. Backward-hat looked at me and then put a hand on the edge of the cup.
This is for Bob Dylan’s grandson? he said.
That’s right, said Hayden. This is him right here. We shook hands, his fingers clammy with sweat. He’s doing front work before his grandpa’s last concert, he said. Backward-cap nodded. Dylan’s doing something big this time, Hayden added. It’s a multivisual, audience-participation, varied-media project. He put his hand on my shoulder again.
It’s called Project W, I said. Opens at House of Blues.
Backward-cap opened his eyes wide. Well, it’s really great to have you here. Anything you need.
We’ll keep you posted, Hayden said, as we walked toward the dance floor.
I never like dancing with a cup in my hand, but Hayden was a natural. It became just another appendage to his gyration. He told me once in that new phase of being completely open that the dance floor scared him, that he felt that there were fish-strings going from the place where his neck meets the back of his head, out to his various responsibilities: me (was I having fun?), the girl from class who had put her hand on his arm outside, other hangers-on. It was almost too much to think about while trying to look passable. But he made it look easy, and if he hadn’t said it I never would have known. He was always doing interesting things with his arms in time to the music, mixing it up, keeping it light.
The friend from earlier who had brought leftover dinner had materialized here, and she was doing her best to edge closer and closer to Hayden. She’d told us earlier in the night that she didn’t drink but smoked weed on Shabbat, as long as someone else lit it for her. Religious, Hayden whispered in my ear, with his eyes going up and down.
I could appreciate that she was making an effort, and I started to look around to see if there was anyone else I’d met before whom I could tag along with while they danced. Hayden was premiering for the night a toothbrushing move I’d seen him pull off to great success before. She mimicked the motion and stayed in sync with Hayden’s twists, and got one hand on his hand, and twirled herself around.
They had both hands together now, and he was leading her in a sort of fake fox-trot even though the music was reggaeton, and she was laughing at the antics. I was pretending to be doing the same without a partner, so I was close enough to hear her say, leaning in, Let’s go back to Grad.
Hayden cocked his head sideways and then he said, Look, really drawn out. He was making perfect eye contact with her and still holding her hands. He kept holding them for what seemed like a moment too long, like he was a child again and he was waiting for one of our parents or teachers to tell him what to do. This was fun and I’d love to dance with you again some other time, but tonight I can’t, he said.
Then he patted her forearm and turned toward me and signaled the door.
• • •
It was snowing softly outside, but the wind with the snow on the ground was making sheet-fingers over the layer of frost. We crossed a street where I remember Hayden had told me about one time when he and a girl had kissed for fifteen minutes on the double yellow line. Cars went past them on both sides, but because the two of them were in the middle they never got close.
I remember once Hayden told me that he was finding it difficult to live in the moment, and that he thought this was the major problem in his life from which everything else stemmed. Hanging out with me, he said, he was always thinking about the next time I’d be able to come up. When meditating (he’d started meditating), he could only think about texts waiting on the phone in his pocket. He felt that if there were some way to narrow in, appreciate some type of now, he would be cured. It was a Heisenberg uncertainty issue, which the “Mathematical Topics” professor was always ragging on: only being able to know position or momentum. Physically, if you tried to measure either, you’d be pushing it just a little bit. The professor put red marks all over that on a test. Close, he wrote. Good to think about this.