2013
I’m at Willie O’Hara’s bar, alone. I’ve been there for some time.
Willie doesn’t keep much on tap in terms of beer, and I don’t think he’s ever even let a bottle of wine past the doorway, but that suits me just fine. Tonight, I’m drinking the hard stuff. I’ve lost count of how much of the whiskey I’ve managed to put out of its misery, one shot at a time, but it’s enough that I can tell Willie’s just about done with me.
‘You want to slow down, honey?’ he says.
I shake my head. ‘I’m good. What even is that stuff, anyway?’
‘I forget,’ he grins. ‘Every time we stick a label on the bottle, it just burns right off.’
He laughs at his own joke, but I don’t. Tonight, a little forgetting would go a long way.
I finish the drink I’m nursing and slide my glass across to him. ‘One more?’ I ask.
‘Come on, Carrie,’ he says gently. ‘Let me call you a cab.’
‘M’fine,’ I say. ‘I can walk home.’ As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I’m no longer sure they’re true. The simple face of it is, I’m not even sure I could find the way to the bathroom by myself, let alone back to my apartment, but I’m going to have to find out in short order; even if I don’t leave, the liquor that’s making my head swim is also doing a number on my bladder, and the results aren’t going to be pretty.
Willie raises one eyebrow as he does it, but he pours my drink anyway. ‘Hmm,’ he murmurs up into his moustache. ‘If you say so. Just say the word and I’ll have one of the boys walk you back, OK? It’s no trouble at all.’
I give him a quick tip of the glass. ‘Sure thing,’ I say, but I already know I’m not going to take him up on his offer. Home is the absolute last place I want to be, tonight of all nights. My empty apartment, full of photos? No. Not now.
Five years.
It’s a hell of a long time, when it’s put like that, and yet simultaneously it feels like no time at all. Five years ago tonight, I was under the harsh fluorescent bulbs in Mercy General Hospital instead of the soft red-and-blue neon of O’Hara’s. I was eighteen years old, not twenty-three.
And I still had a father.
I remember him, lying there all stretched out under a thick blanket even though it was the middle of the summer when he passed; it was the only way he could keep his body warm enough to be comfortable. He didn’t look like my Dad then – not the way he had a few years, a few months, a few weeks before. It was like someone had snuck into his room and traded him out for a skeleton while no one was looking. Mom would fuss around him the way she always did, cheerful to the end, constantly propping up his pillows or getting him a drink of water when he asked, even though he was too weak to bring the glass to his lips. I think it made her feel better, having something to do. It made her feel like she was useful, so when she shut herself in her bedroom at night and cried alone she didn’t have that same sense of helplessness. When it was just the two of us – ‘Just the two of us’; what a bitter taste in the mouth that left – she’d pretend she was fine, that everything was normal, thinking that was what I needed.
It was a long time before anything seemed normal again. Five years on, it still doesn’t.
‘Well, look who it is?’
I recognise the voice; of course I do, despite the fact that I haven’t spoken to him since high school. Why would I? Hell, I’d cross the street if it meant steering clear of a creep like Scanlon. We haven’t shared a single word since the day I slammed his fingers in my locker at school. Oh, he had a lot to say about that, but none of it to me. Just whispers. Malicious little rumours that I knew – but could never quite prove – were down to him. I’m not entirely sure he ever stopped, but after Hale left and Dad got sick… well, what was the point? I had other things to concern myself with.
Jesus Christ, I think. That’s all I need.
‘Carrie,’ he says as he sidles up to the bar and seats himself two stools down the line.
‘Scanlon.’
‘What brings you to a place like this?’
‘Oh, you know,’ I say. ‘Mostly the quiet.’
‘Trying to give me a hint?’
‘Clever boy. How’s the hand?’ I snort, and sip what’s left of my drink. Honestly, I crack myself up sometimes.
‘Funny,’ he says. ‘You’re a real funny girl, Carrie Walker.’
‘So they tell me.’
He orders a beer with a chaser, and works his way through most of a bowl of bar peanuts as he stares up at the TV. Every now and then his eyes flick down towards me. They’re cold eyes, heartless eyes. I’ve seen that look before. He’s biding his time until he can make a move, like a hyena in the bushes.
Well, let him bide. I’m not scared of him. I just order another drink, and then another. The two-stool gap between us shrinks to one.
But I’m not thinking about Scanlon; I’m not. I’m not even thinking about Hale, although I’d be lying if I said seeing Aaron again after all these years doesn’t put me in mind of all that noise. No, I’m thinking about myself, as I am now and how I was then.
What went wrong?
Well, no… I know the answer to that. Everything went south five years ago. If Dad hadn’t got sick, then I wouldn’t have had to pick up so many extra shifts at the Diner to keep things ticking over. I might have been able to go to college like I’d planned. Nursing school. Wasn’t that just the dream? I could have been someone. I could have helped people – people with real problems, not just empty coffee cups. I could have built a life for myself outside of Eden, knowing that Dad was still here to look after Mom. Things could have worked out so differently.
But no, I think. You just had to go and damn well die. Thanks a bunch, Dad.
And that’s without even thinking about Hale. Should I have taken him up on his offer, all those years ago? When he ran away and asked me to go with him, with no plan other than getting out of town? If I knew I’d spend the next five years, ten years, twenty years in Eden… would I have found it quite so easy to say no?
I don’t have an answer to that. I wish I did.
Willie slides another drink over to me: a higher-priced whiskey than the gut-rot I’ve been working my way through all night long.
‘I didn’t order this,’ I say.
‘It’s on him,’ Willie replies, pointing to Scanlon.
I drink it anyway.
~~~
An hour later, I agree to let him walk me home. He doesn’t specify that it’s his home he’ll be walking me to, but we both know the score. He thinks I can’t see it – the predatory smile on his face, reflected in the mirror behind the bar as I pick up my jacket and struggle to put my arms into the sleeves. He thinks I can’t see exactly what’s going on in his sordid little mind. That I’m weak. Vulnerable. That I’m an easy lay that he can brag about to his friends later. I can almost hear him: Hey, guys… remember that stuck-up bitch from high school? The one who damn near broke my hand that time? Well, I nailed her – and on the anniversary of her dad’s death, too! Ain’t that just something? How’s that for levelling the score?
But the thing he doesn’t see – the thing he can’t see – is that I don’t care. I don’t care what a creep he is. I don’t care about the fact that I’m almost too drunk to stand. All I want is a warm body for the night, and his will do. Just so I don’t have to be alone. Just so I don’t have to dwell on how this became my life, just for a few brief hours. I can deal with the fallout and the self-loathing in the morning. Right now, I don’t care.
I. Just. Don’t. Care.
Anything that keeps me out of my own bed tonight is a good thing. Anything that keeps these thoughts away is a welcome distraction.
Even him.
‘Let’s go,’ I say.