hell, bitch.’ See what I’m saying? Buuurrrrnnn. And then she was all like, ‘Um, well, uh, you can hold my hand all the way there.’ I . . .” W2 shakes his head. “Sorry, Lennie, but that’s a super lame comeback. You know?”
“W2,” Smith says while giving W2 a physical shove out of the conversation. But apparently the conversation is already over, as Rabbit is taking several little hopping steps backward.
“I just remembered. The storage room. A delivery from earlier today. I need to get it put away. It’s a mess. A messy mess. Wouldn’t want you to think we run a slovenly establishment, Lennie. Let me see to that, after which we’ll um, well, hmm . . . Okay?” By the time the last words exit his mouth, he’s halfway across the room, and upon finishing he turns and scurries away until he disappears behind a swinging door.
“That dude is a freak,” W2 announces as soon as Rabbit’s out of sight. I expect him to rag on Rabbit’s appearance or his generally weird deportment, but W2 surprises me by not really surprising me at all. “As if we’re gonna drink ginger ale like a bunch of first graders when we’re at the most legendary bar in the state—hell, maybe even in the whole country.” W2 clambers over the bar and grabs a bottle. After dumping our glasses of pop, he refills them to the rim with vodka.
I push mine away. “No thanks.”
W2 shrugs. “More for me.” Bringing my glass to his lips, he drinks half of it down in a few thirsty gulps.
Dylan makes this disgusted sort of noise and I prepare myself to applaud as she finally rips him a new one, but instead she grabs her own glass and drains it. Then she grabs my glass from W2 and finishes that too. She turns to Smith with that dangerous sparkle in her eyes. “Your turn.”
I don’t expect him to hesitate. I’ve spent enough years around Smith to know that he drinks like a fish who likes to spend a lot of his time drunk. And I especially don’t expect him to shake his head and say, “Not feeling it.”
Dyl continues to stare at him in that I-might-explode-at-any-moment kind of way. If it were me on the receiving end, I’d be nervously trying to talk her down, but Smith just shoots a nearly identical expression right back at her. They’re having some sort of twin showdown, and despite being only inches away I can’t say with any certainty what it’s about or even who’s winning.
W2, realizing that no one is paying attention to him, lets out a loud belch and chucks a piece of ice at Smith. “Dude, you worried Lennie’ll pull more of her voodoo shit on you if you take a drink?”
“Hey, that reminds me.” Dyl breaks the showdown between her and Smith to focus on me. “I wanna make a wish. Sounds like everyone got one except me.” She leans closer, breathing in my face, and instead of getting a big whiff of alcohol fumes, I smell something else instead. Something worse. Death. Decay. Rot.
“Dyl,” Smith says, that one word a warning.
She reacts like it’s a curse, spinning away from me and back toward Smith. “Tell me again what you wished for, Smith. ’Cause I’m confused. I thought you wished to bring me back, but now W2’s story seems to say otherwise.”
His jaw tightens. “You heard him. He wasn’t even there. And neither were you.”
“No.” She laughs and the sound is so bitter and angry. “I was busy being dead.”
“Guys, stop this.” I try to step in, to defuse things a bit. Neither of them even looks my way.
“I remember,” Dyl says, and with those words the fire dies. She trembles, closes her eyes, bites her lip. I can see the struggle. A blind man two miles away could see it. She loses this fight too, as a single tear slides down her cheek.
Everyone cries, of course. Except that Dyl doesn’t. Or she doesn’t anymore. It’s part of some oath she made after her dad died in Afghanistan. She said she gave him all her tears and would never shed another for anyone or anything. Seeing as how she promised that when she was twelve I don’t think anyone in their right mind would expect her to stick to it for the rest of her life. But Dyl’s never been in her right mind. And as soon as that tear escapes, she hisses as if