The Lies I Told(3)
The twin glasses sat side by side, close but not touching. “No. It’s a bit of a birthday tradition.”
He looked at me, clearly trying to decode my overcoat, jeans, black V-neck sweater, Doc Martens, and shorn auburn hair. I tucked a phantom curl behind my ear, wondering whether this new short hairstyle was as attractive as Brit kept insisting.
“Your birthday?” he asked.
“The big three-oh today,” I said.
“Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you going to drink them?” He looked curious, like a man who enjoyed puzzles.
I glanced at the clear liquid. “No.”
A brow arched. “That tradition, too?”
“It is.” Or it had been for the last 365 days—I’d earned my one-year AA token at a meeting. And because I was now sober, I could keep the truth locked away.
He held out his hand. “Alan Bernard.”
A collection of silver bracelets covering tiny white scars jangled on my wrist as I accepted his hand. His palm was faintly calloused, and his grip was strong. “Marisa Stockton.”
“Do I know you?” His grasp and stare lingered, as if searching for the puzzle’s corner piece.
The worn pickup line would have rolled off my back two months ago. Now it unsettled me. Since the car accident, my memory had been sketchy, like a video uploaded on spotty Wi-Fi. Missed words, frozen screens, blurred images dispersed among the coherent and clear. “Your name isn’t familiar.”
“Neither is yours,” he admitted as he released my hand. “It’s your face.”
I smiled uneasily. “Maybe I have one of those faces.”
He leaned forward a fraction, as if to share a secret. Hints of a cigarette and the warm spring air outside clung to him. “No, yours would be hard to forget.”
The jazz piano blended with clinking glasses and conversations. My talent for small talk had never been great, and now it was rusty to the point of dilapidated. “It’s been good to meet you, Alan.”
“I’m going to be a regular here. Beer’s good and beats an empty apartment.”
“Food’s also decent. Burger and fries are great.”
“Care to join me?” He was not quick to accept a no.
“There’s a birthday party in the back room, and if I don’t show, I’ll have a very unhappy sister hunting me down.”
He didn’t look particularly rushed. “Do you live around here, Marisa?” My name rang with a familiarity, as if we’d known each other for years.
“A few blocks.”
“Me too. Maybe I’ll see you again.”
“Maybe.”
As I rose, he glanced toward the shot glasses, mulling over their pristine status.
“They’re yours if you want them,” I said.
He held up his beer. “I’m never one to challenge tradition.”
“How do you know offering the drinks to a stranger isn’t part of the routine?”
“Somehow I don’t think it is.”
“Have a good one, Alan.” Sliding my purse strap onto my shoulder, I touched him briefly on the forearm. The touch was spontaneous but reminded me of just how long it had been since I’d had human contact beyond an EMT shoving an IV in my arm or a surgeon cracking open my skull. Curling my fingers into a loose fist, I left him and the untouched drinks and made my way to the banquet room’s open double doors. Above the entrance was a silver Mylar banner that read HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
“Let the fun begin.”
3
MARISA
Friday, March 11, 2022
8:00 p.m.
I had one birthday wish—no, two. Maybe three. Wish #1: Clare was alive. Wish #2: if Clare couldn’t be brought back from the dead, her killer was caught. And last and certainly least, wish #3: booze didn’t haunt all my waking hours.
But seeing as wishes didn’t come true, no matter how many candles I blew out, I didn’t bother. I crossed the bar to the private banquet space and stepped inside.
I normally wasn’t early; in fact, I’d flaked a few too many times during the last decade, and Brit wasn’t here now because she was expecting me to be late. No doubt the time she’d given me was earlier than what she gave the guests. My new self-improvement mantra—“early is better”—would never be tested enough for my sister.
“Can I help you?” A waiter entered from a side door carrying a tray of glasses.
I removed my overcoat, still coolish from the ten-minute walk from my apartment in fifty-degree weather. “My sister made reservations for dinner. Her name is Brittany Stockton.”
“Ah yes, you’re here for the birthday party.” He pointed at me. “Didn’t you have an art show here in January?”
“That’s me.”
“I’m Mike. I worked that event.”
Already a lifetime separated me from January. “Great. Thanks for helping out that night.”
“It was fun.”
I searched for hints that Mike and I’d met before, but I found no traces of the encounter. Maybe I simply didn’t notice him in January. Brit told me my art show had been a hive of activity. But my exhibit, like Mike’s shift, had fallen into a ten-day window that I now called the Black Hole.