The Comeback(64)

The club is small and almost empty, despite the massive line outside. It is decorated like an old circus with neon lights and distorted mirrors lining the walls, and a bar at the back. Wren heads straight to the bar to order two dirty vodka martinis, her pale hand holding the back of the bartender’s head gently as she speaks.

“Filthy. I’m talking super, super dirty. Like how dirty you’re thinking right now, times a thousand,” she says loudly, and I wonder if she’s already drunk.

When the drinks arrive, Wren holds up her glass to cheers me before she downs half of her drink in one sip. I look down at my glass and imagine the vodka slipping down my throat easily, familiarly. I touch my glass to my lips and then take it away again when I remember Emilia telling me how beautifully I was doing. I’m finding it harder to remember whether I’m lying when I say I’ve never had a drinking problem, or when I say I have one.

“We should get another order in now. That felt like it took ages,” Wren says, taking another long sip of her drink.

“Wren, you know that’s just straight vodka and vermouth.”

“You’re right, not nearly enough olive brine. Can we get two more of these, please? Extra brine,” Wren shouts to the barman, and he nods. We stand, moving slightly to the music as the venue fills up around us. The music is louder now, and I’m grateful that neither of us has to make conversation because we really only have one thing in common.

“You look good,” Wren shouts at one point, studying me.

“I feel okay,” I say, but even as the words leave my mouth, I’m scared that I’m leaving myself open for it all to be snatched away. It turns out that Wren wasn’t talking about my emotional well-being, though, as she reaches out to touch the ends of my hair softly before we’re interrupted by a beautiful boy dressed as a leopard asking Wren to take a picture of the two of us. Wren smiles and obliges, snapping a few photographs of us on his phone. Before he leaves, the leopard boy asks me to say the line from Lights of Berlin, but I pretend not to hear him and pat him gently on his furry shoulder instead.

After he’s gone, Wren stares at me as if she’s still seeing me through a lens, frowning slightly and studying me.

“Who is the friend you were with last night?” Wren asks, and before I can change the subject from Emilia, the lights dim and a strange, frenetic drumming starts to thrum from the speakers. I subtly place my drink down onto a table next to us as we all move toward the purple spotlight in the center of the room, beaming down on a circular drum stage. A woman climbs onto it, holding a chainsaw in midair, inches away from the crotch of her lace thong. Her pale, teardrop breasts are covered only by small sequined nipple tassels that glitter in the purple stage lights. I watch with the rest of the crowd, both horrified and mesmerized until I can’t watch anymore, but when I turn to Wren, she is no longer next to me.

I find her back at the bar, whispering in the barman’s ear. By the time I make it through to her, I’ve already watched her do a shot of tequila with the barman, sucking on the lime like she’s eighteen and in Cabo for spring break. Before I can stop her she orders two picklebacks.

“Can we get some coke?” Wren asks, her eyes glassy and blank. It looks like the numbness has finally set in, and it’s miserable to watch.

“Have you ever done coke?” I ask her, aware that I’m being everything that someone who wants to self-destruct would hate most in the world.

“Never,” she says, just as the barman places two shots of whiskey in front of us, and a shot each of pickle juice to chase them. He grins when I glare at him over the size of the whiskey shots. They’re practically in tumblers. I grab Wren’s arm but she’s already downed the whiskey and is retching into her hand. I stick my middle finger up at the barman and lead Wren through the crowd, ignoring our distorted reflections in the mirrors as we pass.



* * *



? ? ?

I sit Wren down on the curb outside In-N-Out and instruct her not to move. She’s already been sick in the gutter four times, maybe five. I drew the line at holding her hair back from her face because I never went to college and we’re not sorority sisters.

“I want to dance on the counter,” she mutters as I leave her, but she doesn’t move. Her upper body is slumped, now too heavy for her to hold up, and one of her false eyelashes is loose at the corner.

I order more food than we will ever be able to eat, then I sit down on the curb as Wren methodically works her way through each Double-Double burger and grilled cheese as if she hasn’t eaten in weeks.

“Thank you. I feel better,” she says, still slurring softly.

“We’re idiots. We should have eaten before we went out,” I say generously.

“I used to have an eating disorder, you know,” Wren says, unwrapping another burger.

“What kind?”

“All of them.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Want to know what kills a relationship faster than plutonium? Watching your girlfriend eat seventeen Oreos, three tubs of ice cream, two bags of Funyuns and a wheel of brie in one sitting,” Wren says.

“Obviously, Dylan has been a gem about it,” she adds after a beat, but there is an edge to her voice. She stretches her legs out in front of her restlessly, her leather shoes in the road. I stare down at the grilled cheese sandwich in my hand.