The sound check ended, and Henry noted a wave of relief in the audience. There were a few nods between the guy mixing in the back of the bar and the band, and they took a few a minute or so to sip drinks and chat before the vocalist announced that they were indeed Amish Tech Support and introduced himself and his companions. No one cared.

But that all took a few minutes. Henry returned from his thoughts and looked at George, who had a pensive expression on his face. At first, Henry thought he was watching the band, but on closer examination he was just spacing out. Henry decided to restart conversation, and put on a friendly smirk on his face. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

He blinked slowly. “I was just connecting some dots, I guess.”

“What?” Henry’s confusion was genuine.

“Well, so I was hanging out at my sister’s last weekend, and her son was watching Spongebob while we were just shooting the shit with my brother-in-law. Anyway, we get quiet for a little bit, and a new episode starts or something. It’s Spongebob sitting at home, really intently watching a sea anemone” — he botched the pronunciation, Henry noticed, but he wasn’t sure if it was the booze — “swinging around on its little stalk, like in an ocean current, on TV. Then the snail, Gary — I think I’m over there too often — comes in and Spongebob changes the channel really quick and looks all guilty.”

George was leaning back against the bar, facing toward the band, mostly talking to Henry but also to the new guy. Henry was sort of hunched over, facing out and in George’s direction, making eye contact as he listened. Henry glanced occasionally at the new guy, who was paying special attention to some girl in the corner of the bar. He let the thought go and decided he wanted more to drink, so he held a finger up to pause George’s tipsy philosophizing, turned to the bartender and asked for two of whatever was cheap and on tap. He signaled for George to continue.

“So of course after that we adults were cracking up. I mean, it’s a joke about porn in a kids’ show, right? But then my nephew was just staring at us, asking over and over what was so funny, which only made us laugh harder.” He looked at Henry, clearly about to make a point. “But the thing is, I watched that same show as a kid, and I was probably just like my nephew back then, and all that stuff went miles above my head.”

George said that with the intonation of finality, but Henry didn’t see the point. The beers came though, and both of them took a sip. “But what does that connect to?” Henry asked, not wanting to overtly tell George to stop rambling. 

“Well, long story short, I’ve been learning Spanish, right, and I’m getting pretty good, talking with relatives and stuff. But there’s still all kinds of stuff I miss, from subtext to massive chunks of sentences.” He took a few sips, then continued. “And I’ve just been wondering if I missed as much as I did when I was a kid, except I never noticed it because it was just outside of what I could comprehend.”

He finished his beer in one final swig. Henry didn’t interrupt him. “I guess the question is: what am I missing just because I can’t even process it? There are things I know I don’t get, like fine art and jazz and morse code and that sort of thing, but what about the things I don’t even know of?” He stared intently at Henry, who stared back but saw much more. George had, over the past thirty seconds or so, gone from excitedly rambling to deeply serious, perhaps with a tinge of suspicion.

Henry had tested that out plenty of times, though. George couldn’t know of Henry’s little abilities, but he was more than able to discern that Henry was letting himself behave a little weird. Shit. “Are you high?” he asked calmly, with a bit of judgement on his face for good measure. He didn’t know whether he was at that in-the-zone level of buzz or he just thought he was.

George rolled his eyes and looked back out at the band, who’d started playing something surprisingly unobtrusive but undoubtedly on the experimental side. George’s eyes narrowed once the vocalist came in. “This is [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgWJwxl-wG4]a Wilco song[/url]. I saw them live a couple years ago. The instrumentation is just really weird.” He declared, and he was right, thought Henry. “I think they’re holding off with the theremin until the bridge at the end of the song. Good thing, too.”

A large group stood up and left. Maybe it was a little too noisy for them, thought Henry, but they might also just have gone anyway. “Let’s grab that table,” George said, pointing. “This is no way to have a conversation and make friends.” He nodded in the direction of the New Guy. Then, with a gregarious, not-entirely-sober smile, he looked over at the guy sipping sparkling water. “You look like you need to relax. Get yourself a beer and meet us over there.” He motioned with his empty glass, put it down on the bar, and walked over to the table. Henry gestured to the bartender and followed.