However, there was one thing that Michelle Cooper didn't care for. The claustrophobia. The ceilings in the club were low and that accentuated the closeness. The dim room was not particularly spacious, the ventilation not the best; a mix of body scent and aftershave/perfume clung, stronger even than grill and fry tank aromas, adding to the sense of confinement.
The sense that you were packed in tight as canned fish. No, that never sat well with Michelle Cooper. And she and her daughter were at a table dead center, inches from other patrons.
Michelle brushed absently at her frosted blond hair and looked again at the exit doors--not far away--and felt reassured.
Another sip of wine.
She noted Trish checking out a boy at a table nearby. Floppy hair, narrow face, hips skinny. Good looks to kill for. He was drinking a beer and so Mother vetoed Trish's inclination instantly, if silently. Not the alcohol, the age; the drink meant he was over twenty-one and therefore completely out of bounds for her seventeen-year-old.
Then she thought wryly: At least I can try.
A glance at her diamond Rolex. Five minutes.
Michelle asked, "Was it 'Escape'? The one that was nominated for the Grammy?"
"Yeah."
"Focus on me, child."
The girl grimaced. "Mom." She looked away from the Boy with the Beer.
Michelle hoped Lizard Annie would do the song tonight. "Escape" was not only catchy but it brought back good memories. She'd been listening to it after a recent first date with a lawyer from Salinas. In the six years since a vicious divorce, Michelle'd had plenty of awkward dinners and movies, but the evening with Ross had been fun. They'd laughed. They'd dueled about the best Veep and Homeland episodes. And there'd been no pressure--for anything. So very rare for a first date.
Mother and daughter ate a bit more artichoke dip and Michelle had a little more wine. Driving, she allowed herself two glasses before getting behind the wheel, no more.
The girl adjusted her pink floral headband and sipped a Diet Coke. She was in black jeans, not too tight--yay!--and a white sweater. Michelle was in blue jeans, tighter than her daughter's, though that was a function of exercise failure, not a fashion statement, and a red silk blouse.
"Mom. San Francisco this weekend? Please. I need that jacket."
"We'll go to Carmel." Michelle spent plenty of her real estate commissions shopping in the classy stores of the picturesque and excessively cute village.
"Jeez, Mom. I'm not thirty." Meaning ancient. Trish was simply stating the more or less accurate fact that shopping for cool teen clothes wasn't easy on the Peninsula, which had been called, with only some exaggeration, a place for the newly wed and the nearly dead.
"Okay. We'll work it out."
Trish hugged her and Michelle's world glowed.
She and her daughter had had their hard times. A seemingly good marriage had crashed, thanks to cheating. Everything torn apart. Frederick (never Fred) moving out when the girl was eleven--what a tough time for that. But Michelle'd worked hard to create a good life for her daughter, to give her what had been yanked away by betrayal and the subsequent divorce.
And now it was working, now the girl seemed happy. She looked at her daughter with moon eyes and the girl noticed.
"Mom." A sigh. "What?"
"Nothing."
Lights down.
P.A. announcements about shutting off phones, location of fire exits, upcoming shows, were made by the gravel-voiced owner of the club himself. The venerable Sam Cohen, an icon in the Monterey Bay area. Everybody
knew Sam. Everybody loved Sam.
Cohen's voice continued, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, Solitude Creek, the premier roadhouse on the West Coast..."
Applause.
"Is pleased to welcome, direct from the City of Angels...Lizard Annie!"
Frantic clapping now. Hooting.