is trying to pretend Jesus is her boyfriend, and my boyfriend works at a gas station and has never left the state of Delaware, even though he’s older than me and Delaware is, like, ten feet big and he apparently doesn’t understand enough about sex to make it work right so I can fuck him to get my mind off things.”
She takes an emphatic sip of her Shirley Temple, even though the drink is nothing but melting red ice by now, and stomps back to the bathroom. A guy at the bar reaches for her arm as she passes him, but she doesn’t break stride long enough to notice.
“I’m sorry,” Miranda says, sliding her chair out of the way so I can go after Chrissie. I stay put.
“She’ll be fine,” I say, by which I mean that I can’t help her. I think of offering to get Miranda a drink, but her first beer is still barely half gone, an observation that prompts me to push my own empty glass behind a napkin holder. The tables in the bar are covered in old newsprint that’s been lacquered over, and I try to make out the words to one of the stories shellacked beneath my drink, but can’t read it in the dim light. Beside it, a vintage ad warns me: Perspiration Ruins Panty Hose!
“Is this weird for you?” Miranda finally asks.
“Which part?” I ask, and she doesn’t press it. I keep an eye on the bathroom door to see when Chrissie comes out.
“I know about all the nonsense, with him and women,” she says after a minute. “I’m not an idiot. I’m not pretending this is foolproof. But you should see how serious he is about things these days. About his music. About not fucking up the way he has before. About being honest with himself. About dealing with all the stuff he’s not over. You made him a better person. I hope you know that.”
“If I did,” I say, “it was an accident.”
I laugh, and we both pretend I’m kidding.
By the time Brian and the keyboardist stop mingling with the crowd and selling ten-dollar CDs with homemade covers, Chrissie and her slightly smudged mascara have rejoined us. Miranda and Chrissie and I are doing our best impressions of people having fun in a bar, and I find it briefly hysterical the work we’re putting into emotionally containing ourselves in front of a guy who prints out all of his song lyrics and sets them on fire in mini trash cans when he gets really angry, until it occurs to me that maybe he doesn’t do that anymore. While a folksinger in a long tie-dye dress sets up her sound equipment, the speaker continues playing the crappy Top Forty that started when Brian went off, and Alan grimaces. He’s taken off the black collared shirt he performed in and is wearing a T-shirt that says I’M NOT A GYNECOLOGIST, BUT I’LL TAKE A LOOK. His arms beneath the cap sleeves are covered in baby-fine hairs, dirty blond like the hair on his head. Dirty is the right adjective for him altogether. Chrissie whispers something into his ear that I hope is music-related, but probably isn’t because of the way he turns away from her and licks his upper lip. He whispers something back to her and she smiles.
“Alan,” says Miranda, while I’m still trying to figure out where to intervene, but he ignores her and keeps talking to Chrissie.
“There’s your smile,” he says. “Not that you don’t have great pouting lips, but something’s gotta give. You’re fourteen, right? Whatever it is, it’s not forever.”
“My parents are splitting,” she says again. “And my grandfather is dying. So it’s pretty much forever.” She does this dramatic half-sigh thing and puts her pout back on.
“Chrissie,” I say, “stop it.”
It’s not that I doubt she’s upset, it’s that I’m watching her turn into the kind of girl who always needs to assert that something tangible is wrong in order to justify making things worse. Alan knows she’s overdoing it, too, because he smirks a little and raises his beer glass.
“To death and divorce, then,” he says, “which are forever.”
“And marriage,” I say, clinking my drink to his and nodding at Brian, “which is not.”
Miranda’s looking at Brian like she’s waiting for him to say something, and he’s looking at the floor like the universe will work this one out without him. I look at Miranda, the startled flicker in her eyes fading to something