One very beautiful, very plastered woman lands next to Edge and begins throwing her arm around him, nuzzling him and flirting.

"What do you play in U2?" she asks him.

"There's no easy answer to that," he mumbles.

"Are you married? Divorced? Married but living apart?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

She proceeds to do her imitation of Edge singing "Numb" and

517

laughs loud at what a bad voice he has! (She's dissin' the Edge—other diners start ducking under the table.)

"What's your real name?" she asks.

"David Evans."

"I'm going to call you Dave."

"Suit yourself."

"Hello, Dave Evans."

I decide to step in. "You know," I tell her as Edge shoots daggers at me from his eyes, "the whole world loves the man called the Edge—but he's been waiting all his life for the gal who'll fall in love with simple Dave."

"Is that true?" she asks, almost crawling into his ear. "Is that what you want, Dave?"

"I just want to be loved for who I really am."

"And who are you really, Dave Evans?"

"A BIG FAMOUS MEGA RICH ROCK STAR!"

That pretty much puts the kibosh on that romance. Bono once told me that the difference between Edge and him is that if Bono sees a woman he is attracted to, he will go up and try to find out everything about her, hopefully coming across something that will assure him she and he could never get along (the trouble starts, he said, if that doesn't happen). It is the same impulse to face whatever frightens him that led a kid scared of heights to climb bridges and walk along high railings. By contrast, if Edge is attracted to a woman, he will get up and leave before he is led into temptation. I tell you this only by way of illuminating two different approaches to maintaining fidelity for all you married folks out there. I don't mean to suggest that Edge was attracted to this woman; I think he wanted to ditch her in spite of the fact that he was not attracted to her.

Edge, Ned, and I head out of the restaurant, Edge signing autographs and posing for pictures the whole way. We get a cab down to the Village, figuring we'll start celebrating our Irishness at Sin-e. But when we get there the crowd in the pub is spilling out onto the sidewalk. We buy drinks and wander down the crowded street with them. At the end of the block is another club, not quite so crowded, where a band is playing some insane Irish/Brazilian crossover and people in green hats are dancing on chairs. It looks good, so we go in and run straight into Suzanne Doyle and her retinue of revelers.

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We stay there, swinging from the light fixtures, till about 3 in the morning. Then Edge, Ned, and I wander up Second Avenue looking for a quiet place for a nightcap. We find an almost empty bar and order a round. A band has finished packing up their equipment, and two tipsy women are on the stage telling Kurt Cobain jokes in the one remaining microphone.

"What was the last thing that went through Kurt Cobain's mind when he shot himself) His teeth!"

We turn around and tell them to shut up. One of them stumbles over to where we are and sticks a cigarette in her mouth looking for a light. She doesn't get it. She doesn't leave, either. She stares at Edge for a long time and says, "Are you famous? You're not . . . No, you couldn't be. Are you? I mean, I'm not impressed by celebrities. I don't care. And I mean, I don't even like U2."

It's all downhill from there! She stumbles on back and forth for a while, saying she likes "One," but "You're not that Edge, right? You're not the Edge from U2, right?"

"No," I tell her. "This is trying Edge."

Edge, splendid in his green soccer jersey, says it's time to go home. "This day has done everything it can for us," he announces. "This day owes us nothing."

The Rest Is Easy

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