His boot misses a step and a splat of whiskey hits the ground. Gamely, he recovers and walks off, looking rattled. I hiss at her, “Shuddup.” I’ve never even registered his existence properly, but he reveals himself to be tall, handsome, tattooed. Muscles, butt, boots. Tick, tick, tick. Decent bone structure, too.
I picture myself trying to talk to him. Touch him. Know him. Then I think of him trying to do the same to me.
Maybe he could drive me to the airport.
“Pass.” I give her a mind-your-own-business look and she receives it, loud and clear. We avoid each other politely for probably close to an hour; she serves drinks, each transaction like a novelty for her, blinking at the register in earnest. I dread to think whether the final tally will balance.
I lug a new keg out of the storeroom and a familiar chest-rattle begins. I should know better, but every time is a surprise, because I’m a moron. You’d think that a lifelong heart arrythmia would be something I am used to, but every time: Gosh, that thing again. It’s the tripwire that I forget about the instant I’m past it, and despite my being an otherwise healthy twenty-six-year-old, I have to sit in Anthony’s chair, my vision pixelating and my heart palpitating.
“You okay?” Holly calls, her face peeping around the corner. “Girls aren’t supposed to get the kegs.”
“Twinged it a little,” I lie outright, indicating my back. “Go out front.”
“Shoulda gotten Keith,” she says mutinously, and I point my finger until she leaves.
Meanwhile, my heart is running up a skyscraper’s fire stairs, and it’s got a little wooden leg. Step-pause—hop-scramble. Up and up, no handrail, don’t panic, don’t fall backward into black. I’ve just got to endure the blip until it passes. But this time, I’m breathing like I’m taking the stairs, too. I can almost feel Jamie’s angry alarm fogging around me in these moments; he’d be using his strength of will to make my heart beat right.
Jamie caused my heart condition. He unplugged my umbilical cord to take a leisurely swig, smirking, watching me turn blue before giving it back. My cardiologist told me that was impossible, but I’m still convinced. That’s very on-brand for Jamie.
Apparently, I was lined up to be the firstborn, but at the last second, Jamison George Barrett swooped around and beat me to it. He belted out of Mom first, rosy and strapping, screaming Touchdown! He was in the upper percentile for everything. I came out jaundiced and was kept in one of those newborn pressure cookers for a week with a heart monitor. Jamie’s been outpacing me ever since, scoring endless touchdowns in classes and offices and bars, mirrored surfaces, and probably beds. Ugh, gross.
Maybe the reason I can deal with the guys in the bar is because I was dealing with an alpha male in the womb.
It was raining today in Jamie’s new city. I can picture him walking down the pavement to his dream job as an associate at an investment bank. I don’t know what he does except I imagine it involves swimming in a vault of gold coins. He’d be in his Burberry trench coat, black umbrella in one hand and phone in the other, Blah, blah, blah. Money, money, money.
What would he say right now, if he were speaking to me again?
Breathe, you’re going gray.
Distracting myself with thoughts of Jamie always seems to work. I can focus my irritation on him rather than my faulty engine. My tormentor is also my anchor.
Darce, you gotta do something about this heart.
I pay exorbitant health insurance premiums, on account of my dud heart, and my earnings from this place only just cover it each month. When I think about it, it adds an extra layer of depressing to this job.
My heartbeat is now back to its sad version of normal, but until Jamie speaks to me again after my epic fuckup, I’m attempting the impossible: being twinless. I contemplate sending him a casually abusive text, but then I remember I can’t, even if I want to. I’m attempting a second impossible thing in this day and age: being phoneless.
I was out with Vince two weekends ago at Sully’s Bar and I dropped my phone in the toilet. As it sank to the bottom, the screen lit up with an incoming call and a picture of my brother’s smug face. How typical; the first time he’d tried to contact me in months, and he was forty fathoms deep in pee water. The phone went black, and I washed my hands and walked out.
My parents would kill me if they knew I had no phone. They would kill me if they knew I don’t wear a bathrobe around the cottage on cold nights. Your heart! Smother, smother! I have a worse feeling that no one will even notice I’m uncontactable. Ever since I fucked things up and Jamie left, my phone had stopped ringing. He’s the bright sparkling one everyone gravitates to.
I hear a smash out front and a few guys echo oooh. Men are electrified by breaking glass. I hear the fortifying inward breath I take. I’ve done this on and off for years, but still, I wouldn’t describe this part as getting any easier.
“What’s up?” I clomp out in my boots and a row of guys are smirking. Holly is trying to stack pieces of broken glass and her face is red. There’s beer everywhere and the front hem of her T-shirt is soaked. I’ve never seen a girl more in need of rescuing.
“Dumb bitch can’t even pour a beer.” The alpha of this group is a mean-lipped construction type. “Lucky she’s hot. Unlike this one.” He means me. I shrug.
“It’s okay,” I tell Holly. She nods without a word and disappears out back. Is this the shift that’s going to break her?
This guy won’t just pay and leave. He’s looking for stimulation. I argue on autopilot and the details are boring. I’d be better-looking if I didn’t have such short hair. I’d be so good-looking if I tried harder. I kinda look like a guy wearing makeup. Okay, that one stung a little. I’m a real tough bitch, aren’t I? Every comment or insult is something I can easily bat away, and I’m counting out five double whiskeys when he goes too far.
“Who do you think you are, anyway? Someone special?” His voice cuts through the fog and I jerk my eyes back to his face. There’s a sensation inside me: a big split, like I’ve just been axed in half like a dry log. I cannot come up with any response to this. He sees he’s hit the mark and smiles.
I’ve been abused so much worse than that, in so many languages, but tonight it feels like the worst thing anyone’s ever said to me.
Actually, it is. It’s the same thing my brother said to me before he left.
“This one,” I tell Keith, like I’m choosing a goldfish, and he muscles him out by the scruff. The rest of the group mutter and curse. Anger is a blowtorch-bright inside me. “All you have to do is order, pay, and tip. Don’t talk. Just do those three things and get out of my face.”
Holly returns and gets down on her knees beside me, scraping glass into a dustpan. “Ouch!” Now she has a thin line of blood running down her shin, into her white sock and shoe.
“Show it to me,” I manage to say without sighing. As I dig through the first-aid kit, I think of where I can rehome her. “Can you do any basic sewing? My friend Truly might need an assistant soon. You could probably do it from home.”
“I made the quilt on my bed. It’s just straight lines though, it wasn’t hard. I could do it if it was simple.” She wipes away her melted mascara and looks around herself like she’s realizing what I’ve known all along: This place is a mistake for her.
I patch her up, split our tips, and send her home early. “If you don’t want to come back, just text Anthony.” She tearfully nods.
She is the nicest girl, but for her sake I hope she quits. She might end up like me.
It’s almost ten P.M. The bar doesn’t close until four A.M., so the real bad bitches who do the graveyard shift arrive. They’re what I’ll become. I put my tips in my purse and we spend a few minutes talking over which douchebags in here to keep an eye on.
“Bye,” I tell Keith as I walk past his stool near the door, but he’s already hauling himself to his feet.
“You know the rules.”
“The rules here are bullshit.”
“That’s life,” he replies with a shrug.
“Who walks you to your car?” I watch him mull that over.
“You probably would.” He smiles at that realization. “If you ever want extra cash, I could probably hook you up with some security work. You’d be a natural.”
“I probably would be, but no.” I push through the front door, resigned to the fact that he’ll be behind me. I step out into a haze of cigarettes and exhaust fumes. “Seriously, you don’t know how much I hate you babying me.”
“I’ve got a fair idea,” Keith responds dryly. When I look back, he’s scanning the parking lot with practiced eyes. Something happened a long time back to a girl who worked here, long before my time, and the side alley feels tainted with an awful, shivery wrongness.
I give up and start walking. “Come on, guard dog, time for your walkies.”
Keith’s insanely long legs easily keep up with my irritated marching through the little groups of guys standing around near their bikes. Someone says, “Wait around a minute, babe.”
“I can’t tonight,” Keith replies in a girly voice, causing them all to crack up. “Are you okay, Darcy? You seem a little fragile.”
I shouldn’t underestimate how perceptive he can be. He watches people for a living.
“Ha, me? I’m fine. Thanks for before. Must be the best part of your job, watching them bounce across the concrete.” I dig in my bag. I don’t need a key clenched in my fist with a shadow this big.
“Not quite.” Keith leans an elbow on the roof of my car. He’s Sasquatch in size, on the handsome side of plain, and he has a gold ring. “By the way, I still owe you that twenty bucks from the other night. I wanted to say that I appreciated it . . . and thanks for listening.”
I feel bad now, because I wasn’t listening at all.
I checked the roster like a compulsive brownnoser, circling the fuckups and gaps, while Keith sat on a bar stool telling a story about his wife, mother-in-law, and a misplaced wallet. Something about sickness and working all the time. Some sighs and a drink coaster torn into tiny shreds. As doleful and sweet as he is, twenty bucks was a bargain price to end that conversation.
“Don’t worry about it.” I always get a proud swell in my chest when I’m generous. I wait, but Keith just keeps leaning. “Seriously, I don’t care about twenty bucks. You can buy me a drink to celebrate when I finally get out of this place. I’d better go. Wine doesn’t drink itself.”
“Could drink it in there,” he points out. “It’s a bar, you know.”
I make a face. “Like I’m going to breathe the same air as those dudes for longer than necessary.”
“I’ll get you a stool next to me,” he offers, but I shake my head.
“I do my best drinking at home on the couch. With no pants. And the Smiths getting me all nice and depressed.” That was a bit too honest.
I put my hand on my car door, but he just blows out a deep breath. He’s stalling for some reason. I’m beginning to think he’s working his way up to a bigger loan. “God, what is it? Spit it out.”
He squints up at the stars. “So, some night, huh?”
I put my hand on my hip. “Keith, you’re being really weird. Please stop crushing my car.”
“You feel it, right?” He looks down at me in a strange way. Sort of like he needs to sneeze.
“A stampede of dinosaurs?” I don’t make him smile. He just keeps looking at me and he won’t let me leave. “What? What am I supposed to be feeling?”
“Me and you. This.” He points between us.
Shock plus surprise equals anger. “Keith, what the hell.”
“You look at me a lot.”
“Because you’re the bulletproof vest we keep on the stool by the door. No, don’t even try.” I snatch my arm back when he reaches for it. “I bet your wife would be real impressed with you.” Unfaithfulness is the most abhorrent thing I can think of, because it’s the opposite of weddings—and that’s what I’ve marinated myself in for years. Someone promises to love you forever, and then you go staring at girls at work? “Fuck you, Keith, seriously.”
He slumps, hand on the back of his neck, the picture of misery. “She’s barely got any time for me since her mom got sick. I feel like you and I have a connection, you know?”
“Because we were friends. Were.” I wrench open my car door and feel a spike of fear when his hand wraps my wrist, holding me in place. I pull and he gets tighter. I get angrier and pull harder. My wrist is burning worse than when Jamie twisted it on purpose when we were kids. But I want it to hurt. Better than standing still.
“If you would just listen—” Keith tries, but my skin is too soft for him to retain any purchase on, and I slip out of his grip like a silk scarf. The parking lot is now inexplicably deserted. My heart rate perks up, like a guy looking over the top of his newspaper: What’s going on here? If it craps out on me now I am going to be furious.
I point my finger at Keith’s face. “I thought you were one of the good ones. Wrong as usual.”
I get my butt in my seat. I slam the door and hear a faint woof of pain. I’m out of here, doors locked. This is my personal specialty: slipping out of a too-tight grip and getting the hell out. My former friend just a cheating cardboard cutout in my rearview mirror. “Wrong as usual, because there are no good ones.”
When I hear my voice say it out loud, I know it isn’t true. There’s still one solid-gold good man left out there. He’s the high-tide mark in a world of inch-deep puddles. Quick, I’m having a winemergency. Drink tonight and go to sleep and forget.
I drive a meandering route to the convenience store near my house, checking my rearview mirror. I put my heart back in its box and I endure a ten-minute argument with my base female self. Was I too friendly with Keith? Too casual, too naughty and rude and loose with my smiles? No, fuck him.
I rework different conversations that I’ve had with him, cringing at how easy and enjoyably platonic I found them. Maybe I even used him as a substitute for my brother. Did I pay Keith twenty bucks to be my friend?
Oh God, I’m pathetic.
I wonder how many Keiths are in wedding portraits I’ve done over the years. I prod my stinging wrist. It’s a good reminder that no matter how careful I am, it’ll never be enough. I am going to need a lot of wine tonight.
I pull my car up at the curb. This used to be a piece of parkland, stitched into the seams between my childhood home and Loretta’s cottage. Progress was unavoidable, but a neon-bright 7-Eleven store just feels insulting. I still can’t drive past my old house. It’s been painted mauve. Still, I could probably stand to look at that purple palace before I could make myself turn and look at the run-down white house across the street.
Feelings again. Wine. Wine.
“Not again,” the cashier, Marco, says when I walk in. “Not. Again.”
“I’m too tired for your shit so don’t even start.” This place is as convenient as the neon sign out front says. Otherwise, I wouldn’t endure this. Marco read a book about sugar and it changed his life.
“Sugar is white poison.” He starts telling me a fake-sounding story about sugar-addicted lab rats. I choose a cheap bottle of sweet white wine and a can of fish guts for Diana, and then go into my favorite aisle in the entire world.
“They chose the sugar over food and eventually died of malnutrition.” Marco sells a pack of cigarettes to someone without comment.
I put my head up over the aisle. “That’s what I plan on doing. Please stop talking to me.” I hate that I’ve been stuck here long enough that a store clerk even knows who I am. I will not let him ruin this. This moment is special.
It’s incredible the forms that sugar can take. It’s art. It’s science. It’s cosmic. It’s the closest thing to religion that I have.
I am in love with these cartoon colors. Acid gummies crumbed in granulated cane sugar. Patent leather licorice twists, happy bags of Skittles. Pink and white marshmallows, softer than rose petals. It’s all here, this rainbow spectrum of sugar, and it’s waiting for me.
“Diabetes . . . cancer . . .” Marco is a radio being tuned in and out.
My friend Truly—my only friend from school who still lives here—thinks that women should buy themselves an indulgent weekly consolation prize. You know, for putting up with the world’s shit. She buys herself flowers. As my treat, I jack up my insulin and blood alcohol levels.
Sunday night is my personal weekly Halloween.
I walk along slowly and drag my fingertips along the bars of chocolate. Goddamn, you sexy little squares. Dark, milk, white, I do not discriminate. I eat it all. Those fluorescent sour candies that only obnoxious little boys like. I suck candy apples clean. If an envelope seal is sweet, I’ll lick it twice. Growing up, I was that kid who would easily get lured into a van with the promise of a lollipop.
Sometimes, I let the retail seduction last for twenty minutes, ignoring Marco and feeling up the merchandise, but I’m so tired of male voices.
“Five bags of marshmallows,” Marco says in a resigned tone. “Wine. And a can of cat food.”
“Cat food is low carb.”
He makes no move to scan anything, so I scan each item myself and unroll a few notes from my tips. “Your job involves selling things. Sell them. Change, please.”
“I just don’t know why you do this to yourself.” Marco looks at the register with a moral dilemma in his eyes. “Every week you come and do this.”
He hesitates and looks over his shoulder where his sugar book sits under a layer of dust. He knows not to try to slip it into my bag with my purchases.
“I don’t know why you care, dude. Just serve me. I don’t need your help.” He’s not entirely wrong about my being an addict. I would lick a line of icing sugar off this counter right now if no one were around. I would walk into a cane plantation and bite right in.
I’ve been working on this jet-black disguise for many years now, and it’s bulletproof. But some people can tell that I’m a weakling, and they try to baby and help me. It must be a survival-of-the-fittest thing. But they’re all wrong. I’m not a lame gazelle; I’ll be the one chasing the lion.
“Give me my change or I swear to God . . .” I squeeze my eyes shut and try to tamp down my temper. “Just treat me like any other customer.”
He gives me a few coins’ change and bags my sweet, spongy drugs. “You just remind me of how I used to be. So addicted. When you’re ready to quit, borrow the book from me. I haven’t had sugar in nearly eight months. I just sweeten my coffee with some powdered agave . . .”
I’m already walking out. No sugar? Why is life just about giving things up? What have I even got left that I enjoy? The heavy-sigh feeling inside me gets worse. Sadder. I pause at the door.
“I’m writing to your head office to complain about your service.” I’m a hypocrite, pulling the customer service card, but hey. “You just lost yourself a customer, sugar.”
“Don’t be like that,” Marco roars as the doors slide closed behind me. I settle back into my car, lock the doors, idle the engine, and crank the music even louder. I know he can see me, because he’s banging on the window of his little murder-proof cube trying to get my attention. Men in a Perspex nutshell.
I open a pack on my lap and cram four jumbo pink marshmallows into my mouth, resulting in chipmunk cheeks. Then I give him the finger and his eyes pop out of his head. It is one of the best moments of my life lately, and I laugh for probably five minutes as I drive, sugar dust in my lungs.
Thank God I’m laughing, otherwise I think I might be crying. Who do I think I am, anyway?
“Hey, Loretta,” I say out loud to my grandmother. She’s hopefully up there on a cloud right above me as I stop at a red light and put my hand inside the cellophane bag, pillowy softness on my fingertips. If anyone is going to be my guardian angel, it’s her; she’d insist on it.
“Please, please, give me something better than sugar. I really need it.” Just saying it aloud chokes me up. I need a hug. I need someone’s warm skin on mine. I ache with loneliness, and I still would, even if Vince came and went.
Who do I think I am? I’m unloved, untethered. And I’m twinless.
The light turns green like it’s given me an answer, but I have a few more marshmallows before I bother accelerating. The world has gone to bed, and I’m completely alone.
Except maybe I’m not.
I pull into Marlin Street and see a strange car parked in front of my house. I turn down the music and slow down. It’s a big black utility truck, just like that construction redneck would drive. It looks brand new and shiny, with out-of-state plates. He’s found where I live? The hairs on my arms are standing on end.
I turn my head as I roll past slowly. There’s no one sitting in it. It can’t possibly be Jamie—he’d never accept a truck from a rental place, and he’d park in the drive, not in the street. I drive around the block with my heart trying to beat itself to death. I briefly wish for Keith before I remember.
Then I get mad.
I pull into the drive with an aggressive engine-rev and put my headlights on high beam. Rolling my window down a few inches, I say over the deafening throb of my heart, “Who’s there?”
I hear a yap and a stiff-legged old Chihuahua canters out of the shadows, dressed in a striped sweater. A man emerges too, and I’m okay now. Even without the dog, I’d know his huge shape anywhere. I’m not about to be murdered. I’m now the safest girl on the planet.
“Thanks, Loretta,” I say to the cloud above me. There’s only one thing sweeter than sugar. “That was quick.”
