by Roxie Noir
But I don’t like it. Something twists in my stomach, some intuition that this is different and worse than ordering for me at restaurants without asking what I’d like or jokingly calling my career a hobby. I’m not exactly sure why or how, but it is.
“I can call and cancel the job,” I say, the two of us still turning around the dance floor. “But seriously, Alistair.”
He smiles, kisses my forehead.
“Thanks, Françoise,” he says.
Chapter Ten
Liam
I don’t see Frankie again that night. Well, I see her from across the ballroom as I’m wrapping up and she’s saying her goodbyes to the people who came, and I see her from far away, walking back and forth. Once everyone leaves she’s got her shoes off, lifting her dress to walk everywhere, and even though I don’t know Elizabeth Winstead very well at all, the irritation is just rolling off the woman in waves.
Alistair seems politely oblivious to the situation. I try not to watch him, but I can’t help it. I’m not primed to like the man — he’s got a reputation for being a prick — but if I can’t so much as kiss Frankie in the sound closet I want to know why, and he’s the reason.
He walks around, uselessly. While everyone else is trying to wrap things up, Elizabeth shouting at the staff and Frankie supervising the removal of tables, he stands in the corner, looking at his phone, one hand in his pocket.
In short, he’s dislikable, particularly for me.
Before I leave I head to the men’s. The single drink I had has left my system long ago, but I’m feeling the slight fuzzy, head-in-the-clouds sensation that comes along with sobering up after a drink.
I’m pissing in the urinal, minding my own damn business, when some other bloke pulls up in the urinal right next to me even though there’s another one further away.
Just rude. I look away, as I don’t particularly want to watch someone else take a piss.
“What’s the name of the flower shop, again?” he suddenly asks, mid-stream.
I glance over at him, realize it’s Alistair. The man I’ve been trying to avoid all night and for good reason.
I ignore him while I finish, zip my fly, and walk to the sink. There’s a strange swell of pride in my chest even though I know it’s stupid: he thinks I’m a threat.
“Aren’t you going to answer me?” he says, still facing the wall, and even though he’s not looking at me he just sounds like he’s talking down his nose.
“Flower shop?” I ask, washing my hands, like I don’t know what he’s talking about.
Of course I do, and of course I don’t know the name of the flower shop even though I walk past it about once a day. I never pay attention.
Besides which, he can go fuck himself.
“You said you worked at the flower shop in Shelton. Earlier, when you were talking to my fiancée,” he goes on, putting emphasis on the last part, like it’s supposed to impress me. “And I found I couldn’t remember the name, and I thought surely someone who works at the flower shop itself would know it.”
It’s a test. He thinks he can fucking test me, like he’s some overbearing schoolmarm and I’m a child who’s about to get into trouble for not knowing the right answer.
“Françoise couldn’t remember the name either,” he says, flushing the urinal and coming to stand next to me. He stares at me in the mirror as the runs the water, so intensely it’s almost unsettling. He’s got rubbery lips that move too much when he talks, watery blue eyes, and a weak chin.
It’s what centuries of cousin-fucking will get you.
“Though that’s not surprising,” he goes on, finally turning on the water and rubbing his hands together underneath it. “She does sometimes seem a bit flighty, has trouble remembering things. Maybe she actually knows you from elsewhere? Another place she frequents in town?”
I look at his ugly face in the mirror, and sudden anger flares through me out of nowhere. My whole body flushes with it. I want to grab him by the throat, shove him against the wall, tell him that Frankie’s smarter and funnier than he’ll ever be, that she’s not the daft creature he’s making her out to be.
I want to leave a handprint around his neck and tell him that maybe he ought not be marrying Frankie at all if he’s going to be talking about her like this to strangers in the privy.
The feeling’s fucking alien, like a bolt to the chest. The most I’ve felt about anything in ages.
But I don’t grab his throat or tell him she’s too good. I think of her face, I remember how she lied to him about me, and I don’t.
A year ago I wouldn’t have hesitated, but a year’s a long time. A year ago, I wouldn’t have thought through that grabbing Little Lord Viscount by the throat would end with me thrown in a cell and then I’d certainly never see her again.
“It’s called Shelton Flowers,” I say, turning away and grabbing a paper towel. “And you’ll be glad to know that we’ve got flowers for every occasion, though I imagine you’ll mostly be interested in apologies.”
He laughs, but I go on.
“We’ve got roses for when you’ve been an utter fucking prick to your girlfriend. Petunias to apologize for when you haven’t been able to get your inbred cock hard for a week straight. Dahlias so that maybe she’ll overlook the fact that you’ve got your head shoved so far up your own arse you can see out of your own mouth. And lilies for when she realizes what a fucking mistake she’s made ever being with you and you’ve got to beg her to come back.”
Alistair starts to say something, but I leave the room and let the door shut behind me without ever hearing a word. I shouldn’t have said any of that. I fucking know it, because even though I’ve only lived here for six months I’m well fucking aware that the Winsteads have more money than God himself, and more or less run Shelton as they see fit.
And it’s not like I’ve got other options. Not here, the middle of nowhere, the only place I can seem to stay clean. I ran those all into the ground ages ago, so right now what I’ve got is a bartending job and a little cabin and a life I haven’t fucked up for a while now. It’s not a lot but it’s something, and it’s better than anything I’ve had since I came back to England.
I just leave. There’s more putting away of sound equipment that I could do, but if the Winsteads want it done they’re welcome to do it themselves. As I walk out I pass through the room where Frankie’s standing, her hair coming partly down, pointing at a table and talking to someone.
I have to fight the temptation to go over and tell her everything that Alistair said. But I’ve got a fair idea how it would come off, because when some arsehole you barely know badmouths your fiancé, who do you believe? It’s never the arsehole doing the badmouthing.
She glances over, and for a moment, we make eye contact. Even from across the room I could swear she smiles, just barely, but then I look away because I can’t fucking stand it, knowing that in moments Alistair’s going to come back and she’s going to smile at him, too, and then they’ll go back to his castle and he’ll shower her with jewels and clothes and money and everything else I can’t, and I’ll be a footnote again.
There’s an off-license store not far out of my way home from the hotel to my cottage. I’ve only been in twice so far during my stint in Shelton, and both times I only bought one bottle. Rum once, whiskey once, both the nice stuff. The stuff that you sip and that tastes like a reward, like you’ve managed to have something nice for once in your life instead of guzzling gutrot just to do it.
I tell myself a million reasons that I shouldn’t stop by tonight. I try to convince myself that this is no way to deal with feeling like utter shit, that vodka’s never solved a single problem in my life, that I’ll only wake up feeling worse.
You’d think my reasoning would work. It’s got all the evidence in the world behind it, but I still find myself walking down the too-bright aisles, suspiciously watched by an Indian bloke behind the counter.
I still find myself standing in front of a hundred bottles
of vodka, all crystalline clear and inviting. There’s at least twenty different flavors but I know my poison: plain, cheap, tastes like pure forgetting.
My hand closes around a bottle on the second-to-bottom shelf, the glass cool under my fingers, but before I can pick it up I remember.
The dark, deep in the well of night. The damp, restless breeze, the smell of wet earth and forest, the slick feel of cobblestones below my boots.
My whole body numb, except for my cold hands, one wrapped around the bottle. The light below, its pull, the way it seemed like the one thing worth finding out about just then.
And the car. The girl, the girl who still doesn’t know or somehow hasn’t realized how we really first met. The girl who thinks I’m just some friendly bartender to flirt with, not a man she nearly watched kill himself, a drunk and high wreck.
I take my hand off the vodka bottle and it all fades, back to where it ought to be: ages ago, a night that happened to someone else. It happened to Old Liam and now I’m here, different, better. I’m not about to be out on a road overlooking a train track again. I’m not about to jump just to see what it feels like.
I leave the vodka section. That’s a bad idea, one that’s never gone well for me. Instead I buy a nice bottle of brandy and a bottle of Jameson. Two alcohols made for sipping slowly, drinking like an adult.
Now that I’ve straightened myself out, I deserve it.
That’s what I do. I pour myself a proper glass of brandy — about an inch in a pint glass, who am I kidding, I haven’t got snifters or something — and I sit at my kitchen table in the dark and drink it.
And it works. I do feel better. I’m still thinking about Alistair’s stupid, smug face in the bathroom, but the anger’s dulled, a well-used knife instead of a fresh one.
So I have another drink. This time it’s the Jameson, a bit more than an inch in the pint glass. I drink it standing at my kitchen counter, leaning against it. Still thinking half of Frankie but half of Alistair, stupid fucking Alistair.
I sip. I plug my phone into the shitty speakers I’ve got, turn up some angry music. Old punk stuff from the 70s, the first thing that really made me feel the music, think that maybe it was something I’d like to do.
I sip more whiskey, feeling the world slow, blur. I’m walking on clouds, everything easy and lovely now, a frosted glass screen between me and the world.
The music takes me back. Upper school, grade eight I think. I’d saved all my money to buy a used Walkman and Gavin and I used to sneak out of class, sit behind the athletic building, and listen to tapes until the batteries ran low.
Now the whiskey’s gone and I pour myself more without even thinking, because instead I’m thinking about Gavin again, the band, everything I’ve left behind. It was only a few years later that we’d started thumbing rides into Newcastle together behind our parents’ backs, going to shows and staying out far past our curfews.
That was where we got into trouble, yeah, but that was also where we first thought that we could do that. He already had a guitar and I’d already scraped together the money for the shittiest drum kit in the world, but sneaking to those underground shows, where the band was drunk and high and the sound quality was like listening through mud?
That’s where it suddenly became real, because we realized that we could be better than that. We never thought Dirtshine would get as big as it did, not in a million years, but we knew it could be something, so we found another guitarist and a bass player and that was Rhinoceros, our first band.
More whiskey. Alistair’s face is fading, finally, and Frankie’s isn’t really, but I can’t expect that. I hoist myself onto the counter, lean against the cabinets, eyes closed, still lost in the past.
The guitarist and bass player left. We had a string of people in and out but it was always the three of us together: me, Gavin, and heroin. Until the night Darcy and Trent came along, both at once, the stars inexplicably aligning at a Rat Bastard show.
I look at the pint glass. It’s empty again, and I don’t think I’ve had that many drinks but I’m definitely feeling them, warmth crawling through my brain like fingers. I pull one knee up to my chest, my boot on my countertop, lean my head back against the cabinet, and I feel fucking wonderful.
I feel like Alistair never spoke to me at all today. I feel like it’s just a matter of time until Frankie comes into the pub again, ring off. I feel like I’m on top of the world, like—
I knock the pint glass to the floor and it shatters. I peer over the counter at it in the dark of my kitchen, a million fragments of dull light reflecting back at me.
Fuck it, I think, brain still swirling. I’m wearing shoes, who even fucking cares?
Deal with it tomorrow.
I sit there for a long time, feet dangling above the broken glass. I think I doze off a few times, smart enough at least to not keep drinking.
Every time I jerk awake, still sitting there, I can hear Frankie asking me what would you get me to say? and I run through a dozen options, imagine them all coming from her mouth.
Finally, it’s late. Far later than it should be, and I think I’ve sobered up enough to make it to bed, so I hop down from the counter.
I’d forgotten about the glass.
Thank Christ I’m wearing boots but one foot crunches hard on a large piece and slides out from under me, the sound of glass shrieking on tile shrill in the quiet night as I go down, hard, grabbing at a kitchen chair as I do.
I land on my left side, right in the shards, splinters of pain singing through my hand and forearm, bright and sharp even through the whiskey fogging my brain. All I can do is gasp and wait for the real pain to hit, knowing that it will.
It comes at me like a train. Slams into my body, the forearm I landed on a symphony of agony. I’m sweating, bleeding, and I force myself to sitting, the slight crunch of shards beneath my jeans. There’s one large piece stuck into my forearm, and without thinking, I pull it out.
Blood gushes, near-black in my dark kitchen, and I close my eyes so I don’t see it.
“Fucking hell,” I say out loud.
I get to my feet, start walking to the bathroom, stop. I shed my trousers, my boots, take off my shirt and wrap it around my bleeding arm and make my way in there wearing nothing but my boxers, then curl up in the bathtub, fading slowly back into sleep.
You did this again, you fucking idiot, I think.
Chapter Eleven
Frankie
I stand at the top of the staircase and peek down at the people gathered in the room below. It’s mind-boggling, really, how many people the Winsteads know to invite over for dinner, night after night. I’d be impressed if I didn’t just want to eat Chinese takeout in my pajamas.
“Remind me who they are?” I ask Alistair softly, my hand in the crook of his elbow.
“That’s Colonel Fitzwilliam Hughes and his wife, Mrs. Anastasia Hughes,” he says. “He’s the heir to a shipping fortune and demands that everyone address him by his title, which he almost certainly got because his father paid someone off.”
I don’t point out the irony in that statement — Alistair’s father would certainly pay someone off to get him ahead in life, and probably paid someone to get him into Yale — because we’re actually getting along all right the past few days.
He’s been his charming self again. He hasn’t signed me up for any more galas or changed my travel plans again without telling me, and I haven’t been to the Hound’s Ears.
I’ve wanted to go, but I haven’t. I’ve resisted temptation.
“And she is next in line for the throne, provided about fifteen hundred people die first,” he says.
“Any chance she’ll do it?” I ask.
“Françoise, the British monarchy is an outdated institution that’s little more than a ceremonial figurehead, so there’s no real point in achieving it,” he says.
I bristle at Françoise.
“But if fifteen hundred people are poisoned at a state dinner, I know who I
’d look at first,” he finishes.
We exchange a look, both laughing silently.
See? Not so bad, I tell myself.
Of course, everything about this house and his position in society is also an outdated institution that has little to do with the modern world.
But that’s not a discussion for right now. Instead we descend the stairs together, my hand on his arm, both of us smiling like champions. I’m fairly sure that many of the people in this household are perfectly aware that things have been tense between Alistair and me, but right now, we’re putting on a good show.
It’s not just a show, I tell myself. He apologized for getting carried away.
He promised that he respects me, and cares about my opinion, and that he’d make a better practice of consulting me in the future.
Now he just has to do it.
“Alistair, darling,” the elder Lady Winstead says as soon as we reach the bottom of the stairs, reaching toward her son with a hand so crammed with jeweled rings I’m surprised she can lift it. “You remember Colonel and Mrs. Hughes, of course, don’t you?”
I may as well be made of cheese, standing there next to him, but what else is new?
“Naturally,” he says, holding out one hand. “A pleasure to make your re-acquaintance.”
“I’d heard you were back home for a while,” the older man says. He’s got a gray mustache, and even though most of his face barely moves when he speaks, the mustache comes alive like it’s signaling for help and trying to jump off his lip. “Finally come back from the colonies, eh?”
To my credit, I don’t roll my eyes.
“I’m only here briefly,” Alistair says. “With my fiancée, Miss Françoise Strauss.”
The Colonel kisses my hand, and I curtsy or whatever. I’m still not one hundred percent sure what I’m supposed to be doing here.
