She regarded him skeptically as they stopped at a light. "Where on earth did you hear that?"
"I read it somewhere," he said. "You don't have to be a college student to want to learn things, you know."
To Linda, it sounded like an elaborate line, a ploy designed to coax her out of her virginity. She quickly changed the subject to another walking tour of the bars and stores along University Avenue. They soon arrived at the Rutherford Record Exchange, where used records awaited them in stacks and stacks of crates arranged in aisles. Seth soon tired of that, however.
"If I find something," he said, "it'd be too hard to carry it back on my cycle. It'd be all warped and scratched by the time I got home."
Not knowing what else to do, they turned into the Staten Islander, one of the classier bars along the strip, where they'd just started happy hour. It was early, and summer session. "Saturday nights during the school year, you can barely breathe in here," Linda explained. It was the only bar on the strip remotely resembling a disco: a terraced placing of platforms held tables and chairs that surrounded a stainless steel dance floor in the middle, with flashing and strobing lights above it. At the far end of the bar, in one of the corners another dance floor raised up on a platform, with a smaller dance area. The management sometimes held amateur boxing matches on that second dance floor.
As they searched for a good table to sit down, Seth pulled out his wallet. "What'll you have?"
"Coke is fine," she said.
"Coke? Coke?" Seth repeated, wearing an exaggerated look of disbelief on his face. "We are in a bar. Now, I'm not going to drink alone. Can't you at least get some Jack or Jim Beam with it?"
"Can't. Technically you're supposed to be twenty-one to get mixed drinks. I won't be twenty-one for another couple of months."
"That leaves beer," Seth said, possibly thinking out loud. "What about wine? You like wine, right? You're Catholic. You've probably had it at mass. It's just like going to church."
"Okay, wine then."
"What kind?"
"What kind? I'm not picky. Whatever white wine they have."
Linda found a table on the other side of the dance floor, positioned on a platform just beneath the second dance floor. "It's like stereo dancing," she said to Seth as soon as he returned with their drinks. It was still early enough that only one waitress was working, and the bar tables were only about a quarter full. They played music on the sound system at about half-volume: Linda recognized the Kiki Dee song "I've got the music in me."