I order café au lait. Not sweet, but not bitter. Just on the edge.

And it’s cheap.

Last fall, after I’d ordered café au lait for three weeks in a row, Janos started charging me for a regular coffee, which makes it even cheaper. Sometimes he hands the cup over with a friendly wink.

I come alone. I’m no trouble.

Not to him.

Then I take my spot, on the edge of the patio or at the end of the coffee bar, and I watch the half-ready stage, and I watch the crowd waiting, talking, shoving, texting, posting photos of their eyeliner or their perfect pouting lips, and I sip my coffee.

And, of course, I watch the woods. They’re always closer than you think.

Someone lets out a whoop. Patrick, the drummer, and Jezz, the bassist, have stepped unobtrusively onto the stage. Jezz is lanky, with long sun-blond hair; Patrick has a buzz cut and burly shoulders and arms. Jezz looks like a surfer who got lost here in northern Minnesota. Patrick looks like he could rip a car apart with his bare hands and then put it correctly back together again.

They arrange mic stands, check amps. It takes ages. They’re particular.

It’s actually Anders who’s particular. But he doesn’t help with the setup. He doesn’t appear until the very end. Because the moment he steps onto the stage, everything changes. The taste of the coffee. The lights. The air. It’s an energy that can’t be sustained, not while the band futzes around with plugs and strings and cords. It starts to feel dangerous. The simmer before an overflowing boil.

So Anders waits until everything is set.

Then he steps through a back door onto the little stage, holding his black electric guitar—I’ve heard he calls it “Yvonne”—and there’s a shift in the air. People scream, as though half of them haven’t sat across the aisle from him in math class.

And they haven’t, really. Classroom Anders blends in. He’s medium height, with choppy brown hair and the kind of features you only start to notice the second or third time you look: well-shaped face, nice edges, sleepy-lidded eyes. You could pass him in a crowded school hallway and not look up.

But seeing him on stage is different. You wonder how you didn’t see it all along. You wonder how you ever looked at anything else.

He seems taller, looming over the packed room. His face is harder. His hands, sliding into place on the black guitar, are long-fingered and rough. But the way they move isn’t.

There’s a beat. A blast of feedback.

The first song starts.

It’s “Dead Girl.” I recognize it immediately. I know all the songs by heart. Even the new ones, the ones they’ve only played in public once or twice. The ones they’ve never played in public at all.

Patrick hunches behind the drums, his arms a muscular blur. Jezz leans back like the bass in his hands is a counterweight.