Still Here

by Amy Stuart

  The Cabin is busier than last night, the bar lined end to end with bodies hunched over drinks. Clare spots Kavita and Charlotte at a high-top table in a corner, bright cocktails in front of them. She hovers by the door, watching. Kavita rests one hand on top of Charlotte’s, and they lean so close that their foreheads nearly touch. So there is something more between them, something more than friendship. Clare straightens, tugging at the bottom of the loose but low-cut black shirt she’d selected in her pit stop to the hotel. When she reaches the table, neither of them smile at her in greeting.

  “Is it still okay for me to join you?” Clare asks.

  “I guess,” Kavita says, retracting her hand. “Charlotte invited you.”

  “Please,” Charlotte says. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Clare sits and accepts a menu from the passing server. The silence between them is thick. When the server returns, Clare orders only a soda water.

  “You don’t drink?” Kavita asks.

  “I generally avoid it.”

  The withering look Kavita gives her shrinks Clare back against her chair. Between these two women, Clare had taken Kavita as the kind and welcoming one, Charlotte hardened and cool. But tonight they appear to have swapped demeanors.

  “My father used to own this building,” Charlotte says. “The bar too.”

  “Your father owned the whole town,” Kavita says.

  “It used to be really nice here,” Charlotte says, ignoring her. “Sort of hipster rustic. It’s fallen a few rungs since then.”

  “Where’s Austin?” Clare asks Charlotte.

  “Oh, I’m sure he’ll turn up. He likes to be in on the action.”

  “You know that Austin isn’t a real journalist, right?” Kavita says to Clare. “He’s got a rich brother who made millions on some calorie-counting diet app. Billions even, I don’t know. Austin lives off his brother’s money and fancies himself this genius investigative reporter.”

  “He did go to journalism school,” Charlotte says.

  “Whatever,” Kavita says. “The guy couldn’t catch a squirrel if he was holding a bag of nuts.”

  Kavita’s leg bounces madly under the table, the anger she radiates a cover for her agitation.

  “For the love of God, I do not understand why you like coming here,” Kavita says. “It’s fucking weird.”

  “It’s the only decent bar in town,” Charlotte says.

  The smell of Kavita’s and Charlotte’s cocktails makes Clare’s throat itch with thirst. She can imagine the sweet coating of the first swallow, the warmth that would come. After returning from the beach to park her car, Clare had opted for a brisk walk from the hotel to this bar, a mile uphill, and as her breaths grew shorter, she grew angry again. Angry at her exhaustion, at Somers, at Malcolm, at Austin and Charlotte; a hazy and dense anger striking anyone who popped into her thoughts. She carried only cash and her phone in her back pocket, her gun tucked under her loose shirt. Now, at this table, she can relate to Kavita, her anger hard to contain too. These women demand her professionalism, but Clare wants to give them her wrath. She doesn’t even know why. When the server returns with a pint of club soda, Clare gulps half of it before setting the glass down.

  “You two have been through a lot together,” Clare says, her tone a touch too sharp.

  Kavita lifts her cocktail in mock cheers. “Sisters in PTSD.”

  “Don’t call me your sister,” Charlotte says. “It’s gross.”

  “You must hash it out, then,” Clare suggests. “What happened the night your dad was killed? Given you were both there. No doubt you’ve compared details.”

  The women exchange a glance that Clare cannot decipher.

  “Have you ever listened to someone tell a story?” Charlotte asks. “And you’re in it? You’re a character, you play a part? It’s different from how you remember it, but the way they tell the story is so convincing that you figure their version must be right? Has that ever happened to you?”

  Yes, Clare thinks. So often, in her marriage, Clare would listen to Jason recount stories of their home life, explaining an absence, a bruise, fending off concerned questions from Clare’s brother or from Grace. And though Clare knew he was making it all up, she found herself marveling at the details he invented, the way he could authenticate his rendition, the way he’d pass off Clare’s poor memory as a side effect of whatever pill she’d swallowed that day. The way Jason shaped her story for her.

  “I know what you mean,” Clare says. “But who are you referring to?”

  “The cops interviewed Charlotte and Zoe together,” Kavita says.

  “People talk about your brain freezing,” Charlotte says, ignoring Kavita’s interjection. “When something traumatic happens. Like your brain has to stop absorbing what’s going on. All I remember is my mother blowing out candles on her birthday cake. And my father was about to dig in to his dessert. Then he was dead. I swear.”

  “You didn’t get a look at the shooter.”

  “No,” Charlotte says firmly.

  “So who was telling the story for you, then?” Clare asks.

  “Zoe,” she says.

  “I just told you, they were interviewed together,” Kavita repeats.

  “We were,” Charlotte says. “They let us sit together alone in the interrogation room before the interview. Of course, Zoe seemed totally fine. She was always a freak of nature that way. I was numb everywhere, shivering, but she was fine. It was performance art to her. She was going over the details with me. Tell them this, she said. Don’t forget to say that. But I literally couldn’t remember anything. She just told me what to say. When we were little girls, we’d be horsing around and we’d break something, or someone would get hurt, and it didn’t matter how confident I was in how things went down, Zoe would always convince my parents or anyone else that she was the one telling the truth.”

  If Somers were here, she would call this all into procedural question, two key witnesses left alone in the interrogation room and then interviewed together. A more generous take is to allow that the two main witnesses were sisters and their dad had just been murdered right in front of them. The police paired them up out of sympathy. But it doesn’t matter, Somers would say. A witness is a witness. Kavita lowers her head, her shoulders shaking with tears. Charlotte seems annoyed but rubs Kavita’s back anyway. Clare is too absorbed by the moment passing between them to notice Austin until he is upon them.

  “Look at this trio!” he says, arms open to the table. “Have I won the lottery?”

  “Fuck off,” Charlotte says.

  “Come on, Charlotte.” Austin drags over a stool to join them. “You love my company. You, me, and Kavita. We’re like Three’s Company but with a twist.”

  In their previous meetings, Austin had seemed almost wispy to Clare, small, a pushover. But his air is different tonight. Cold, assured. He tugs his phone from his pocket and lifts it.

  “If you take a picture of us,” Clare says, “I’ll break your phone.”

  “Whoa,” Charlotte says, shooting Clare an admiring glance.

  “We’re in a public place,” Austin says. “No rule against—”

  “Austin?” Clare holds her hand across the front of his phone to block the shot. “Don’t.”

  The low register in Clare’s voice stops him. She glares at him until he sets the phone screen down on the table. Clare will not break her stare until he is suitably unsettled. Both Kavita and Charlotte slide off their stools and disappear to the bathroom. Clare sips her drink, silent.

  “You’re touchy tonight,” Austin says.

  “You don’t know me,” Clare says. “It’s been a really long day.”

  Austin points towards the bathroom door. “It’s been something else, watching Charlotte fall from grace,” he says. “She was never the smart one, the pretty one. It was hard to be the ugly duckling Westman daughter, I’m sure. But she got her fair share of attention. Married this musician when she was what? Nineteen? Had a kid. For a while s
he kept this blog about life on the road, life as a musician’s wife, carting a kid around on tour. Got herself into some drug trouble. Her husband quit the band and went to law school! Jesus Christ. Talk about a one-eighty. Anyway, after Jack Westman was murdered, Charlotte really dove down the well. Her husband left her. Took their kid as far away from her as he could. I’m pretty sure she’s switched teams now.” He makes a sexual gesture with his hands. “She and Kavita? That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “I don’t think they’re trying to hide it,” Clare says.

  “I think they’ve got plenty to hide,” Austin says.

  Clare stands and heads to the bathroom. “Keep that phone in your pocket,” she calls back to him.

  The women’s bathroom has three stalls. In the largest one Clare spots two sets of feet. The door is not latched. Clare presses it open and finds Kavita seated on the toilet leaning over a line she’s about to snort. She looks up at Clare as if bored by her arrival.

  “You shouldn’t be mixing that with alcohol,” Clare says.

  “Okay, mom,” Kavita says.

  “Want some?” Charlotte asks. “It’s not going to kill you.”

  The tightness returns to Clare’s chest. She listens to Kavita’s inhale and can muster the exact sensation that comes next. The euphoric hit, the lightness, the dizziness if you lift your head too fast. She can taste the bitterness in her mouth. She doesn’t want to be here, witnessing this. She wants to slap Kavita, Charlotte, both of them. Get yourselves together. Clare must grip the stall door to stop herself. Kavita and Charlotte switch places, Charlotte seated and hunched over. Clare exits the stall and the bathroom. Back in the bar Austin is still at their table, a beer in front of him. The lights have lowered, loud music playing for the benefit of a small dance floor at the center of the bar. Austin smirks as she approaches.

  “I’m guessing they’re not in there reapplying lipstick.”

  “Hey.” Clare lifts herself back onto the stool. “I saw Douglas Bentley today. Thanks for passing on his information.”

  “He’s quite the character, isn’t he?”

  “He actually seemed pretty levelheaded to me,” Clare says. “He claims you’re the moron.”

  Again, Austin smirks, his jaw tense. He doesn’t like to be mocked, or questioned. Jason was the same, Clare thinks, an ego too outsize for his actual life accomplishments, an inability to take any kind of joke at his own expense. Clare lifts her glass in cheers and touches his arm in an effort to bring him back onside.

  “We can share a cab home if you want,” Austin says.

  “What?”

  “You and me,” Austin says. “We could share a cab home.”

  But Clare isn’t listening. When the bathroom door opens, she watches Kavita and Charlotte as they stumble laughing to the dance floor. Austin leans in and recounts his entire past for Clare, the odd jobs taken to put himself through the first years of school before his brother struck rich, speaking free flow on the assumption that Clare is riveted by every word. She nods occasionally, sipping the last of her soda and glancing at Kavita and Charlotte. Clare is so tired. She closes her eyes, but Austin keeps talking. Several minutes must pass before she looks to the dance floor again and notices the women are gone.

  “Where’d they go?” she asks Austin.

  “I think Charlotte left.” He points. “Kavita’s over there.”

  There is a commotion at one end of the bar. Clare’s eyes are pinned on Kavita. Three men surround her. One has her propped up, Kavita unsteady on her feet, swaying to the music, giggling. But Clare sees something so familiar in the vacancy of her expression. She’s not herself. The men are laughing and leaning in to each other, one hand up to shield their whispers. Clare feels her heart rate pick up.

  “Do you know those guys?” Clare asks.

  “The one in the plaid shirt comes here a lot,” Austin says. “He’s a cop, I think. Wow. Kavita’s really wasted.”

  Clare frowns. “Where did Charlotte go?”

  “You think Kavita doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Austin says. “But she does. I promise you, she does. She’s a pro at this.”

  A pro? This interaction feels like déjà vu to Clare, the way Kavita leans into one man until he rights her and guides her to the next, the men passing her around their tight-knit circle like a ball. When Kavita jerks her arm from the man in plaid, Clare notes the force with which he grabs it again. She watches as the man in the plaid shirt takes Kavita and leads her to the front door. Clare stands to follow.

  Outside, Clare detects the man’s laugh before she spots them. She follows the sound to the alley next to the bar. It is rutted and puddled from the rain, the brick wall of the bar lined with garbage bins. The smell strikes Clare. Kavita is against a wall, the man in plaid’s arms lifted to fence her in. Clare can’t quite make out the words between them. Home, she thinks she hears Kavita say. Charlotte. Home.

  “Hey,” Clare says on approach. “Kavita?”

  The man catches his laugh and cranes to look at Clare without lowering his grip on the wall.

  “You should probably let her go,” Clare says, edging closer.

  The smile drops from his face.

  “Hey,” Clare says, addressing Kavita directly now. “Let’s go back inside. I’m going to take you home.”

  “I’m taking her home,” the man says. “We were just about to leave, weren’t we? What’s your name again? Kendall. Fuck no, not Kendall. Not even close. That’s your friend’s name, isn’t it? Kavita. Shit!”

  The sound of that name stirs something in Clare. Kendall. Clare can picture the photographs on Douglas Bentley’s wall, his smiling daughter. Kendall. Clare thinks of her friend Grace back home, the two of them at bars not unlike this one, the pacts they would make. We only leave with each other, they would say, snaking their pinkies together to seal the promise. No one else takes us home.

  “Kavita?” Clare says. “You’re messed up. Come on. Let’s go.”

  The man yanks Kavita across the alley to a back door propped open with an empty beer bottle. Clare tracks them. They pass through a dark hallway, then emerge into the bar. Clare makes eye contact with Austin as he stands up from his stool, smiling. Amused.

  Coward, Clare would like to yell at him. You fucking coward.

  The man has pulled Kavita back to the group at the bar. She sits on a stool and slumps, eyes glassy. But she’s looking at Clare. What’s that look? Clare wonders. Is that pleading in her eyes? Or anger? Clare can’t tell. She approaches the men.

  “Listen,” Clare says. “I don’t want to cause any problems. But this is my friend, and I’m bringing her home.”

  “No, really,” the man says. “What is your problem? Because you really are having a hard time minding your own business.”

  “Let her go. Now.”

  “Oh, fuck off. We’re old friends, Kavita and I. I’ve known her since she was a kid.”

  Clare steps forward and takes Kavita by the arm. But Kavita recoils sharply. Before she can react, the man has grabbed Clare and pinned her arm behind her back. Her shoulder screams, the scar tissue from her gunshot wound stretched taut.

  “Touch her again and I’ll break your arm,” the man says.

  One of the man’s friends is talking now, telling him to let her go. “Come on, man,” he says. “Drop it.”

  His words are garbled, the ringing too loud in Clare’s ears. She works to relax her arm to ease the pressure. Across the bar she makes eye contact with Austin again. He’s moving her way now, his phone in his hand ready to take pictures. The voices around Clare grow louder, the man’s breath hot on her neck.

  “Let me go!” she says.

  “Fuck you,” he replies.

  The rage in his tone sets something alight in Clare. She uses her free hand to reach for the gun tucked into her belt. As soon as he spots it, the man drops her arm and takes a stumbling step backwards. There is a collective whoa from the crowd. Clare lifts the gun and aims it at the man’s head.


  “Touch me again,” Clare says, motioning to Kavita. “Touch her, and I’ll kill you.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he says, hands up. “Okay, wow. Lady. Fuck.”

  Someone turns down the music, leaving only a low hum of voices.

  “I’m an off-duty cop,” he says. “You’re not going to want to shoot.”

  Clare sidesteps until her back is to the wall, the bar stretched out before her like a tableau, faces frozen in fear. But a few of the men around the room smile, wide-eyed, as though Clare pointing a gun at a stranger is a scene in a movie they’re watching and not a danger to them. Clare swallows hard.

  “Just leave,” she says, her voice low. “Go.”

  “Fuck you,” the man says. “Why don’t you shoot me? Go ahead.”

  Now Austin is close. He hovers behind the man, his phone up, filming.

  “Look!” the man says, addressing the crowd behind him without taking his gaze off Clare. “We’ve got ourselves a vigilante here! Touch her friend in a way she doesn’t like and she’ll put a bullet in you. Or will she?”

  He takes a small step forward. Clare clicks off the gun’s safety. He stops. Clare’s arms ache. A standoff.

  “Fuck you,” he says finally.

  He crosses the bar in long strides. Clare lowers the gun and keeps it pointed at the ground until he disappears through the front door. Only one friend follows him, the others closing ranks at the bar. Clare feels a deep heat in her cheeks and down the back of her neck. For the life of her she cannot cry now. She cannot. She tucks the gun back into her belt. Kavita’s shoulders shake with tears.

  Austin rushes over, breathless. “Jesus. Holy shit! I got the whole thing on video.”

  “Delete it,” Clare hisses at him.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “We need to take her home,” Clare says. “Do you know where Charlotte went?”

  “Probably back to my place,” Austin says. “Must have been a lover’s quarrel.”

  “You’re such an asshole,” Clare says.

  “You’re the one who pulled a gun.”

  The din of the bar is louder now, some people fixed to their phones, surely recounting the scene they’d just witnessed to whatever contact is on closest tap. Clare’s head hurts. She looks to the door, certain the man will return, maybe with his own gun. She has to leave. She needs to get Kavita out of here too. But then the door opens and in walks Patrick Germain, striding her way.