In response to her statement, Benjamin shyly gazed down at the floor and gave an expression as though he were wracking his brain to come up with some sort of cordial retort.
"I.. um.." he softly muttered, clearing his throat, "I would love to accompany you on such a date."
Ellie just stared at him for a moment with wide, beady eyes. Sporadically, her lips curled up into a huge smile, and she began to laugh. Loudly. In fact, she guffawed as though he had just told the most hilarious joke New York City had ever heard. And with all honesty, she really did believe that he was messing around with her. But then he began to anxiously digress, and slowly, awkwardly, she realized Ben was being serious.
"I mean.. if y-you have a gentleman friend or you're talking to someone already.. I-I understand-d." he said while apprehensively biting his lower lip.
"Oh my god! I didn't realize you were actually...I'm so sorry! I'm such an effing jerk! I-"
Realizing how inaudibly fast she was talking, Ellie quickly composed herself and gave the young man a gentle smile. "I mean, I'd love to!" she ejaculated, "and no, I don't have any gentlemen callers or anything. Well, I guess just you if you count what's just occured at this very moment..."
Defeated by uncontrollable social ineptness, the girl just ran a hand through her frizzy brown hair and placed a hand on her hip. She emotionlessly stared down at the floor until she could conjure something else to say to Benjamin's charming face.
"So um...did you have any place or anything in mind?"
"Tell me, Benji.." Sammie Tyrant mused with puckered red lips, "What brought you here tonight? I know Gigi's loudmouth wasn't the only thing reeling through that smart brain of yours."
The young musician smiled and laughed rather indulgently. "True, she wasn't the only thing that brought me here. I guess there are two distinct answers to your question. One is rather simple. The other is a bit more...philosophical."
A glass of red wine was clasped between his fingers. He swirled around the smooth beverage (as well as his many rough thoughts), before giving a coherent answer.
"First of all, I came here to network. A musician needs to promote like a spider needs to spin a web. In this city, you'll never know who you might run into..." He said this while leaning in closer to Sammie.
"Secondly, I came to observe," Benji added after sipping down a few drops of his drink. His breath became laced with the spicy, sultry tang of the luxurious liquor. "There are those who choose to pay attention to tiny morsels of logic that nobody else sees. They then use that logic to fuel projects or get tasks done. Take the fictuous character, Sherlock Holmes for example; he deducts things from small details, consequently using his findings to catch criminals and, generally speaking, save the day."
Benji gazed down at the floor for a moment, and then fixated his eyes back on Sammie. "Now, I'm no detective, but I can perceive something that many others can't. It's a little something called emotion, and believe me when I say that it's everywhere. I use the large quantities of emotion in a room to fuel projects and tasks as well. Those projects and tasks are, as you have probably guessed, songwriting. Emotion is important because it can do so much to just a few bars of notes and some rusty old lyrics. It can make a song rememberable. RELATABLE. It can make people dance or cry. It can tell that kid who thinks he's different that he's not alone in the world, or it can tell the shy girl that she's got what it takes to follow her dreams. Putting feelings - raw, REAL passion - into a song is like writing a love letter to society. And I don't know about you, Miss Tyrant, but I think this twisted society of ours could use a bit of love..."
He gave a gentle smirk, backed away, and leaned himself against a nearby wall.
"And so, those are the two reasons why I have crashed this party tonight."