Julie raises her glass. ‘To our new friend Archie.’
I lift my glass an inch off the bar and the girls clang theirs down against it. We drink. I don’t exactly taste it, but the juice stings my mouth, finding its way into old cuts in my cheeks, bites I don’t remember biting.
Julie orders another round, and when it arrives she hefts her messenger bag onto her shoulder and picks up all three glasses. She leans in close and gives me and Nora a wink. ‘Be right back.’ With the drinks in hand, she disappears into the bathroom.
‘What’s . . . she doing?’ I ask Nora.
‘Dunno. Stealing our drinks?’
We sit there in awkward silence, third-party friends lacking the connective tissue of Julie’s presence. After a few minutes, Nora leans in and lowers her voice. ‘You know why she said you were my boyfriend, right?’
I shrug one shoulder. ‘Sure.’
‘It didn’t mean anything, she was just trying to deflect attention away from you. If she said you were her boyfriend, or her friend, or anything to do with her, Grigio would’ve grilled the f**k out of you. And obviously if he really looks at you . . . the make-up’s not perfect.’
‘I under . . . stand.’
‘And by the way, just so you know? That was a pretty big deal that she took you to see her mom today.’
I raise my eyebrows.
‘She doesn’t tell people that stuff, ever. She didn’t even tell Perry the whole story for like three years. I can’t say exactly what that means for her, but . . . it’s new.’
I study the bar top, embarrassed. A strangely fond smile spreads across Nora’s face. ‘You know you remind me a little of Perry?’
I tense. I begin to feel the hot remorse boiling up in my throat again.
‘I don’t know what it is, I mean, you’re sure not the blowhard he was, but you have some of that same . . . sparkle he had when he was younger.’
I should stitch my mouth shut. Honesty is a compulsion that’s damned me more than once. But I just can’t hold it in any more. The words build and explode out of me like an uncontainable sneeze. ‘I killed him. Ate . . . his brain.’
Nora purses her lips and nods slowly. ‘Yeah . . . I thought you might have.’
My face goes blank. ‘What?’
‘I didn’t see it happen but I’ve been putting two and two together. It makes sense.’
I look at her, stunned. ‘Julie . . . knows?’
‘I don’t think so. But if she did, I’m pretty sure she’d be okay.’ She touches my hand where it rests on the bar. ‘You could tell her, R. I think she’d forgive you.’
‘Why?’
‘Same reason I forgive you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it wasn’t you. It was the plague.’
I wait for more. She watches the TV above the bar, pale green light flickering over her dark face. ‘Did Julie ever tell you about when Perry cheated on her with that orphan girl?’
I hesitate, then nod.
‘Yeah, well . . . that was me.’
My eyes dart towards the bathroom, but Nora doesn’t seem to be hiding anything. ‘I’d only been here a week,’ she says. ‘Didn’t know Julie yet. That’s how I met her, actually. I f**ked her boyfriend, and she hated me, and then time passed and a lot happened, and somehow we came out the other side as friends. Crazy, right?’ She upends her glass over her tongue to catch the last drops, then pushes it aside. ‘What I’m trying to say is, it’s a shitty world and shit happens, but we don’t have to bathe in shit. Sixteen years old, R – my meth-head parents dumped me in the middle of a Dead-infested slum because they couldn’t feed me any more. I wandered on my own for years before I found Citi Stadium, and I don’t have enough fingers to count all the times I almost died.’ She holds up her left hand and wiggles the half-gone finger like a bride-to-be showing off her diamond. ‘What I’m saying is, when you have weight like that in your life, you have to start looking for the bigger picture or you are gonna sink.’
I peer into her eyes, failing to read her meaning like the illiterate I am. ‘What’s . . . the bigger picture . . . of me killing Perry?’
‘R, come on,’ she says, mock-slapping the side of my head. ‘You’re a zombie. You have the plague. Or at least you did when you killed Perry. Maybe you’re different now, I sure hope you are, but back then you didn’t know you had choices. This isn’t “crime”, it’s not “murder”, it’s something way deeper and more inevitable.’ She taps her temple. ‘Me and Julie get that, okay? There’s a Zen saying, “No praise, no blame, just so.” We don’t care about assigning blame for the human condition, we just want to cure it.’
Julie emerges from the bathroom and sets the drinks on the bar with a sly grin. ‘Even grapefruit juice can use a little kick sometimes.’
Nora takes a test sip and turns away, covering her mouth. ‘Holy . . . Lord!’ she coughs. ‘How much did you put in here?’
‘Just a few minis of vodka,’ Julie whispers with girlish innocence. ‘Courtesy of our friend Archie, and Undead Airlines.’
‘Way to go, Archie.’
I shake my head. ‘Can please . . . stop calling me . . . ?’
‘Right, right,’ Julie says. ‘No more Archie. But what do we toast to this time? It’s your booze, R, you decide.’
I hold the glass in front of me. I sniff it, insisting to myself that I can still smell things besides death and potential death, that I’m still human, still whole. A citrus tang pricks my nostrils. Glowing Florida orchards in summer. The toast that enters my head seems unbearably corny, but it comes out anyway. ‘To . . . life.’