Chapter 33
Hey, if you’re thinking I went home with that guy from the Rose, just stop.
Yeah, I considered it.
What would you have done? If you’d slayed the audience with a Patsy Cline wail and then buried them under that willow tree, and stepped off the stage to yips and howls and a standing ovation from your maybe-manager and then a congratulatory gin and tonic from the handsome stranger who’d been shooting you looks the whole night and chose that moment to approach?
If you were young and alive and maybe in a pretty bad place emotionally, financially, and all-aroundily and already had on deck some pretty serious self-esteem issues?
Right.
But I had the sense not to do that. I accepted that drink and, after Bern left, a couple more—but made no plans, made no promises.
I entertained people stopping by Bern’s table, which had become my table, and at three in the morning, the place closed down around me.
The hopeful guy had already bailed, and the buses had long ago stopped service for the night.
I couldn’t hail a rideshare, but the Rose’s owner took pity on me and called me a cab I couldn’t really afford.
Credit card debt is practically a developmental milestone, right?
Still riding high on the performance, I imagined, someday, the media flack backstage at the Americana Music Awards asking me about my struggles. Well, I’d say, I used to be in a pretty one-sided relationship. With Visa.
In the cab I relived the audience response, the boots stomping the floor. At one point while I stood onstage, I’d become aware of my own outsized shadow on the wall, arms thrown wide and monstrous.
“Miss?” the cabbie said. “Where should I let you out?”
I looked up to find that we’d reached McPhee’s block of Milwaukee Avenue.
“At the pub is fine,” I said.
“I think they’re closed, miss,” the cabbie said, leaning toward the passenger window to see the unlit sign.
I added a tip that I couldn’t afford, either, and hopped out.
It was early o’clock: that late-night, not-quite-Sunday-morning sweet spot known to drinkers and bar bands, alley cats and insomniacs.
In a few hours the pub would fill with navy and orange sweatshirts and football-adjacent hope, but for now, as the cab pulled away, I was left on the street alone.
The neighborhood quiet, empty. The air cold and clean.
It was still dark, but I didn’t care. I was putting out my own light, humming like a fluorescent bulb. Ego trip, Bern had said, as if that wasn’t worth the trouble of stepping onto the stage. Who didn’t need a vacation from dire regular life?
I’d been able to push it all aside for a few hours and my plans now should have been to crawl into bed and grab a few hours of sleep before I could be helpful behind the bar.
But I was feeling a tug toward the pub. My stage, envious?
Or the damning footage from the security video, calling to be deleted?
Or maybe it was only McPhee’s floors siren-singing to me to be swept. It didn’t help thinking that Alex had probably done it himself by now.
I was letting people down. Alex. Joey, obviously. Heather. The band. Oona. If only the empty storefront next door was a convenience store, I could have made good on some milk for the apartment, at least.
McPhee’s walk-in fridge would have milk, I realized.
I could take a little up for Oona’s coffee, an offering. She would say it wasn’t necessary, but that wasn’t the point. The point was …
I couldn’t quite articulate it, but as I walked up to the door, I felt it: the thing I should do wasn’t so far out of my reach. I just had to do it.
I let myself into the vestibule. Through the porthole window, I could see there was a light on down the hallway. The office, probably. Alex must have left it on, or maybe he was still there at his desk, at the business end of things. The stuff I never bothered to understand.
There was a lot of stuff I’d never bothered to understand. He’d better take in more street urchins to work the office end.
Or maybe there’d soon be no McPhee’s to keep afloat. All those bills left unpaid on Alex’s desk.
As I flipped the dead bolt, the light in the back went out.
Weird.
And even though I hit the overheads in the pub immediately, even though everything seemed perfectly normal, I was suddenly aware of being alone, of being alone in a place that had recently had its back door ripped open and a man killed in its alley.
I stared down the dark hallway, hoping Alex would emerge into the light. Or Ned? No one else had keys.
“Hello?” I had never hoped to see Ned’s sloping shoulders before.
There was a quality of silence all through the building that felt like a held breath. I had not imagined it. A light had been on, and then switched off. Which meant that someone was in the pub, right now.
With me.
I remembered the man in the black coat and flat cap, pretending to study an empty storefront window, and backed out, locking the dead bolt behind me, but leaving the vestibule door flapping.
ALEX’S PLACE WAS ONLY A couple of blocks away, a cute frame bungalow with its original sloped roofline. Brown with white trim, it looked like a gingerbread house, except the witch had never lived here, only the children.
I had a key, so I let myself in—quietly, since it was still early, but not trying to sneak. Alex should know someone was in the bar. He would know what to do.
For the moment, it just felt good to be here. Safe. Familiar. Cleaner than Alex usually kept it, but familiar.
In the kitchen, a new teakettle sat on the stove, bright as a berry and out of place.
The old coffeemaker was still standing, though, faithful servant.
The Prohibition-era glass bottles that Alex had rescued from the pub still lined the top of the cabinets, all the way around the room.
He had more bottles stashed in the house somewhere that still held old whiskey, and those were worth real money. He claimed.
I started the coffee machine burbling. I heard a muffled noise and peered out the window over the sink.
The backyard was weedy, but empty. I stood gazing out while the house draped itself over my shoulders like a weighted blanket.
Back when Alex had first brought me here, the solidity of this place had been so odd, so new, that it scared me.
My room, that set of blue sheets, chosen just for me.
The cereal boxes in the shelves, full, available.
I hadn’t trusted any of it. I hadn’t known how.
But eventually I had grown into this house and this life—and into trust, really. A little.
I trusted Alex.
And in that moment, I knew that Alex couldn’t have done anything to Joey. I couldn’t believe it—wouldn’t. I knew Alex. For one thing, he was so transparent. He couldn’t keep a secret to save his life.
More than that, I knew his heart, better than anyone.
He kept it entirely to himself, buttoned up to the neck, but it was good.
He wouldn’t overserve anyone at the pub, even if they begged or railed at him.
He kept an eye out for creeps who might bother the women who just wanted to be left alone.
He watched out for people, not just me. I’d lost track of that. I’d lost track of—
Everything.
That noise again—Alex was awake, probably. I was looking forward to seeing him, I realized. I hadn’t seen Alex in a couple of days—not the real Alex. Video Alex, I’d seen plenty.
I opened the fridge. I had been humming, only realizing when I stopped.
The fridge was full. Of food. Alex took most of his meals at the bar, by necessity. He spent most of his waking hours there.
But in the crisper drawer, there were green, leafy things, and on the top shelf, gut-health yogurt. A tin of artisanal tea sat on the counter.
A dog barked, somewhere close. I closed the fridge and peered into the backyard again. That’s what I’d been hearing, the quiet, questioning wuff of a dog on alert for trouble.
Another bark, in-the-house close. In what universe would Alex have a dog in the house?
Now there was another bark, sharper, joining in, a chorus, a duet. And not just any two dogs.
Maybe Oona had needed someone to take Bear and Lemondrop overnight? Of course I would have watched them if she was going to stay out again, but I hadn’t been to the apartment since I’d left for Heather’s. Yesterday.
I picked up the tin of tea.
We were coffee people. It was a small thing, but why would Alex have a teakettle? He wouldn’t even know where to look for artisanal tea. Or leafy green anything.
He was shuffling around in his room now, soft sounds beneath the dogs flipping out to be let free.
I heard the click of a door, and then Bear and Lemon galloped out to check out the intruder, yowling, nails scraping the hardwood floors.
They slid around the corner and into the kitchen at full tilt, updating from attack mode to level-eight full-body wiggles.
I knelt on the floor and gave them the scritches they deserved, telling them they were such good security doggies while I waited for Alex to emerge.
But the footsteps in the hall weren’t right.
They were light, with a distinctive sound to them I could almost place.
Muffled, soft, two dust mops approaching.
I had just begun to wonder if Alex had turned the house into a rental without letting me know, just begun to understand that someone other than Alex would be coming around the corner, when I realized who it would be.
I stood, letting the dogs lap at my fingers for treats I wasn’t carrying.
Oona appeared in her bunny slippers, sleepy-eyed and hair spiked up in that pillow-smashed way. She wore a man’s robe, but this time it was Alex’s.
“Good morning?” she said. A question.
But I had a lot more questions than that.