I was already walking the last mile of my mortality. What could they do to me? “Come on, Josie, let’s go.”
She didn’t move. The men drew closer, grew bigger. One of them peered down and said, “You need to apologize to these two ladies.”
“For what?” I blustered, pointing at the barkeep. “She’s a crook.” My finger swung to Josie. “And she’s—”
“With us,” one of the men said, looking like a rottweiler that’d jump me. He softened when he addressed the bartender. “We’ll get the drink”—his eyes landed hard on me again—“as soon as he leaves.”
“You got it,” the bartender said, half paying attention, typing away at her phone. Willie Nelson’s “Whiskey River” ended abruptly, replaced by that terrible music from before. The bartender looked at me, gave her gum one final, definitive chew, then held her contraption up. “And if you come back, I’m calling the cops.”
Josie folded her arms and stared, her eyelids looking too heavy to keep drawn. Her new friends flanked her. The emaciated man’s three-peanut tower toppled, and he looked at all of us with his empty eyes. This is what my adventure had come to. Josie and this crew telling me to go home, instead of the other way around.
Well, screw them, I thought. Who has time for this.
With a huff, I slid off the barstool with as much grace as my body would allow, which wasn’t much at all, before adding a bow. “I’m sincerely sorry,” I said to the floor, then straightened up to address the crowd, “that you’re all pieces of shit.”
With that, I made my way to the door, though I couldn’t help but look back once before leaving. Josie met my gaze. The man to her right eyed her bare shoulder, while the man to her left put his hand on the small of her back and gave her a push toward their table. And though I’d just as soon bite a bug than care, it made me wish I had more for those deadbeats than a single useless bullet in my pocket.
Josie raised a few fingers as a farewell, almost like somewhere deep she was sad to see me go, but then she turned around and wobbled away. With this, I blasted through the exit and stepped into much-needed fresh air.
I couldn’t breathe. A vise had my rib cage tweaked tight. I was mad at Josie, furious at myself.
Eventually, all this anger rendered down into shame, burning so hot I wanted to bolt from my own skin. Peel it off like a coat. I kept reminding myself I hadn’t taken a drink. I’d run to the edge of the cliff, curled my toes over the edge but backed away, and now here I was on the right side of Hang Overs’ door, sober as the day I was born. All faculties intact.
With them, I took stock of my surroundings and realized I was standing next to an old pay phone, and, better yet, some saint had left behind a hackneyed quarter for a chump like me.
The vise relaxed a hair.
I peeked up to the sky, in case my direct line to God hadn’t been cut, and thanked him. Even I knew enough to realize pay phones were prehistoric. The next miracle would be if it worked. I lifted the sticky handset from the cradle, licked my lips, and inserted the quarter.
At the sound of a dial tone, my skin cooled.
“That a boy,” I whispered, my hand hovering over the number pad. Etched into the metal casing—below the stated rates but above the fossilized mint gum stuck to the casing—were the words FUCK YOU.
Get in line, I thought, and then dialed the only number I had memorized besides 911 and my own.
13
Two rings in and I had myself a sweet, oblivious “Hello.”
“Hiya, Alice,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “It’s Duffy. I need you to do me a big, big favor, and I need you to do it for me now, if you don’t mind. Get Anderson from the kitchen and bring him to the phone, would you?”
“Why? Are you okay? Did you fall in your room?”