Free Wonderland by Stacey D'Erasmo Page B

here when I was out with Carmela?”
    “I guess. Time flies.”
    I wonder about Anton’s life here, how long he’s been here, as thick brown bread and various big pizzas and terrible wine arrive, as Anton explains that the Czech name for Prague means “threshold,” as Spain gets a goal and the restaurant tables nearly fly up in the air with collective joy, as Boone, tapping his watch, reminds us all that we have to get dressed, get ready, be at the venue by nine, we can’t be late. Tom folds a last piece of pizza, devours it, and pats his stomach, which I notice is already bigger. Alicia, having eaten nothing but a heel of bread, is smoking and watching the game, shadows in the hollow of her throat. Zach is leaning close to her, talking fervently. Alicia, expertly sending up a smoke ring, nods. Her platinum hair glows in the near-dark. The men on the big screen are clearly exhausted, drenched, but they line up again. They keep watch on the ball as if they are all in love with it.
    We go on at midnight. We’re playing a basement club tucked way back into a curve of Prague on a cobblestone street. After Frogs and Foxes and the collective, the stage is littered with broken strings, abandoned beers, what looks like a bikini top though I don’t remember seeing anyone topless, gum wrappers, a few stubbed-out cigarettes. Tonight is no-stockings, which means I have to remember not to lean over too far, lest I show Prague the world. With no-stockings, I have decided on the braid. My face feels naked. The stage beneath my feet, as I walk onto it, my band behind me, feels uneven, not so much rickety as warped. I need sea legs for this one, and I’m not sure I have them yet. I turn around to smile at my band, all brushed and polished and dressed, and Tom makes devil’s horns at me. They all look smart tonight, what my mother would call
spiffy,
and even Tom is in a clean shirt. The light, as it falls on them, makes them look both more and less than mortal. For a moment I don’t understand them, why they would come all the way out here with me, wait for me in hotel lobbies in foreign countries, what it is that we think we’re doing. Did I ever know what I was doing?
    Tom takes his place at the drums, waits for the nod from me. Except for Anton, standing with arms folded at the back of the room, the audience is made up mostly of teenagers, all of whom seem to be on their iPhones, probably texting one another. By my foot, a gangly boy with several nose rings bobs his head up and down, though there is no music playing. He looks up at me beseechingly. I wonder if he thinks he’s come to see some other band. The flavor of the crowd is punk, or punkish, which we definitely are not. Standing on the edge of the crowd is the lead singer of Frogs and Foxes, a young British guy with curly brown hair and a crooked nose, his arm around a small, round young woman from the musical collective. He is drinking a beer after his loud set of songs that actually seemed to be about frogs, also zebras. There might have been a giraffe. Zach, arranging himself in his bass, subtly eyes the room, raises an eyebrow at me. Alicia touches her cello gently, leaning forward to it, eyes half closed. I brace my legs on the warp, turn around, nod. Tom raises his drumsticks. I turn back around. 1, 2, 3, 4.
    I’m in good voice tonight, we’re all in good voice, pacing one another, a team of well-trained horses, well-watered, well-fed. The pizza wasn’t bad. Spain won. Prague means threshold. I pace the stage until I get my sea legs—
here
is the dip, and here as well. Here we go. It’s our short set, so its mood changes often. The gangly boy bobs his head in the same rhythm no matter what’s playing; like a stopped clock that’s right twice a day, he’s in time with us now and then. The teenagers find beats wherever they can and obligingly dance to them, pretty cheeks pink and damp, hair damp. One young girl sticks her tongue out; I see the little white