Chapter 2: The Beautiful Girl Who Flirted with Me
What can 75 cents buy you on Bedford Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, in the fall of 1992?
Answer:
A hot dog from the cart on the corner for 50 cents — and if you gave the guy an extra quarter, he'd pile on the sauerkraut and mustard without giving you a hard time about it.
As for freshness—
"Mmph." Andrew took a bite, knocking out nearly a third of it in one go. Meat, bread, and a pile of toppings, all for two quarters. Where else were you going to find a deal like that?
What? The hot dog's been sitting there since noon, the bun's going stale, and the sauerkraut smells a little off?
It's 50 cents. Just saying.
A can of Pepsi cost 75 cents from a bodega; this was a hot dog. Don't overthink it.
"Urp." Andrew sat on the stone steps outside his apartment building, working through the hot dog with the focused dedication of a man who hadn't eaten since yesterday. After a satisfied belch, he finally had enough peace of mind to actually look around and take in the neighborhood.
Greenwich Village in 1992. Red brick buildings, yellow cabs honking at nothing in particular, NYU students weaving through the sidewalks in oversized flannel shirts. The smell of roasting nuts from a street cart down the block. Someone's window was open three floors up and you could hear Nirvana bleeding out into the autumn air.
The realness of it washed over him all at once, and Andrew went still for a moment before slowly standing up and allowing himself a small smile.
Didn't matter how alive this city felt. It wasn't his, not really. Not yet. He could be pushed out of it any day for any number of reasons.
"Urp."
Another belch. He'd inhaled the thing too fast and now he was paying for it, a hard lump of food stuck somewhere between his throat and his chest. He thumped himself on the sternum, eyes watering.
"Hey!" A bright, warm voice came from his left, and before he could process what was happening, a half-finished bottle of Evian water was pressed into his hand.
Andrew took it on pure instinct and drank. A long pull, then another. The blockage cleared. He stood there blinking, catching his breath — and then realized that someone was patting him gently on the back.
"Thank you," he said, turning to see who it was, feeling his face go a little red.
"Don't mention it, handsome." The woman grinned at him — wide, genuine, a little goofy — and held out a folded slip of paper. "Here's my number. You should call me sometime." And then she was already walking away, the ends of her long blond hair bouncing as she went.
Andrew stood there for a second, slightly bewildered. She was pretty — really pretty, actually — but also a little strange in a way he couldn't quite pin down. Something breezy and untethered about her, like she operated on a different frequency than the rest of the city. He looked down at the slip of paper.
A phone number, written in round, cheerful handwriting. And a name.
Phoebe Buffay.
Andrew turned the name over in his head. Something about it snagged. He couldn't figure out why — it just felt faintly familiar, like a song you half-remembered but couldn't place. He shook it off, tucked the paper into his pocket, and glanced back across the street.
Phoebe had already rejoined another woman — dark hair, pretty, and carrying what looked like a takeout bag from the diner on the corner. The two of them were laughing about something. When Phoebe caught Andrew still watching, she gave him a happy, completely unselfconscious wave, like they'd known each other for years.
A girl like that and I'm completely broke. Great timing.
Andrew squeezed the slip of paper in his pocket, dropped the empty Evian bottle in the trash, and headed inside.
Room 204 was his apartment. Well — it would officially be his apartment after next Monday, assuming the judge didn't rule against him.
The layout was a decent size for New York: a living room you could actually move around in, maybe three hundred square feet. Coming in the front door, you had two bedrooms on either side of the back wall. The master was a solid-sized room with its own bathroom. The second bedroom was a bit smaller with no private bath, which had caused the previous Andrew a certain amount of inconvenience — let's say, a lack of privacy for a young man living with a father who regularly brought home visitors.
To the right when you walked in: a narrow kitchen. Straight across from the second bedroom: the shared bathroom. Down the short hallway to the left: a small balcony that fit maybe two people and a chair comfortably. The chair that had been out there Andrew had already thrown away after inspecting it under natural light and deciding he didn't want to know.
The balcony looked out toward a slice of Washington Square Park, which made it excellent for Evan's purposes — people-watching, fresh air, the kind of breezy open view that worked well when you were trying to impress someone. For Andrew, it was just nice to have a window to breathe out of.
"Good thing Gunther's got me down for a set tonight," Andrew muttered to himself, dropping onto the couch and pulling the guitar from where it was leaning against the cushions.
He plucked a string. It sounded like a cat walking on a piano.
He hadn't touched the guitar in a month. Between Evan dying and the memories flooding back in, his fingers had gone completely stiff on him — and the James Holloway side of him, whatever musical instincts had transferred over, didn't seem to play well with three years of half-hearted practice from the Andrew side. He could technically read chord charts. He could technically remember what each string was supposed to sound like.
The reality sounded like something else entirely.
His best song, "The Sound of Silence" — the one that had legitimately worked on a girl in high school, the one he'd considered his ace in the hole — came out sounding like someone trying to play Simon and Garfunkel through a broken garbage disposal.
[+1 EXP]
Andrew stopped. If the panel hadn't flickered into view in the corner of his vision, he would have completely forgotten it existed.
[Guitar (Beginner): 1/100]
"You've got to be kidding me." He stared at the prompt for a second, then plucked the string again, just to see.
[+1 EXP]
"Okay." He kept going.
Thrum. Thrum. Clang. Clang.
It was genuinely awful. He played for five minutes and racked up 3 EXP total, and in those five minutes he also mapped out a few rules:
First — the panel wasn't just counting noise. He had to actually be practicing, with intention: correct posture, real chord shapes, proper technique even if the execution was rough. The moment he started noodling mindlessly, the EXP stopped ticking. One point per minute, as long as he was doing it right.
Second — this was an apartment building in Greenwich Village in 1992, not a soundproofed studio. His downstairs neighbor, Mr. Heckles, had already banged on his ceiling with a broom handle once this week over the sound of Andrew's footsteps. Sustained guitar practice was going to be a diplomatic incident. Evan used to have a separate music room he rented over on Bleecker Street. That option was no longer available, given that Andrew currently had 75 cents to his name — wait, 25 cents now, after the hot dog.
Third — and this one was purely physical — his body wasn't built for this yet. The old Andrew had been thin, underfed, and about as physically robust as a wet paper bag. Five minutes of pressing down on steel strings and his fingertips were already aching. Real session-length practice would destroy his hands in the short term.
"All right, I hear you," Andrew muttered, setting the guitar down. He stared at the ceiling.
He was being greedy. He knew he was being greedy. Having a skill panel at all was already an absurd gift — some kind of RPG mechanic made real, borrowed from whatever browser game James Holloway had been grinding when he dropped dead on that other Earth. In the game, leveling up a skill just meant clicking a button and watching a number go up. Here, it meant earning it, rep by rep, callus by callus, with a body that needed time to catch up.
Fine. That was fine.
"Get it together," Andrew told himself. "Tonight's set is in four hours. If I show up and fumble through 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' again, Gunther's going to have me playing outside on the sidewalk."
He sat back up, repositioned the guitar, checked his posture — back straight, wrist loose, fingers curved properly over the frets — and started again from the top.
Every second counted.
[Power Stone Goal: 500 = +1 Chapter]
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