1. BETH

I’d never expected to live in the Emerald City—the one in the Pacific Northwest, not the enchanted capital of Oz—but the new job, my first as a bright and shiny college graduate, class of ‘95, would start there in two short weeks.  When I first heard, Mom warned me it rained like 300 days a year in Seattle, but I didn’t think I would mind.  I’d always enjoyed gloomy, moody weather.  I liked to picture myself tucked away in some tiny neighborhood café, sipping Arabica by a fogged-up storefront widow, lost in a book or a daydream, while the world hurried past beneath a canopy of bobbing black umbrellas.

Anywhere but here, my mantra for the last few weeks, kept ringing in my head.  I’d gotten sick of the isolation of this place, a long-dead colonial borough rotting away, bit by bit, in the sprawling Pennsylvania countryside.  The brochure I received in high school described the college’s surrounding town as quaint, a generous adjective, I learned, given its blocks of crumbling brickwork, near-barren shopping mall, and outlying industrial graveyards.  More though, I’d gotten sick of this tight-knit, incestuous campus, the utter impossibility of anonymity.  Around every limestone corner waited an asshole ex (i.e. Sean, though he’d done the world a huge favor and left school, without a word, before graduation), an embarrassing Friday night hookup, a catty rival, or a one-time friend who’d stabbed me in the back (et tu, Jaime?).

I’d spent the past few hours clearing out my shoebox of an apartment, readying it for the next fresh-faced, wide-eyed denizen.  In front of me sat most of my life for the last four years, all crammed into a handful of boxes stacked along the pallid bedroom wall.  Among the contents—a pile of old lit class essays, a fat white candle (the one I used to pour hot wax on Sean’s chest, Madonna-style), a Magic 8-Ball (oh, decisions, decisions), a bunch of textbooks I couldn’t unload, my CD collection (ever growing, thanks to the indie record shop I discovered), two notepad’s worth of shitty poetry (never did do the open mike thing, mercifully), and a hand-stitched leather photo album (a gift from Mary, my older sister), each of its pages serving up a four-by-six memory in perfect Kodacolor.

I fished out the scrapbook and flipped to my favorite picture of Jaime, Maggie, and me, taken during our spring break adventure in Key West.  The three of us had set out on a pilgrimage to Hemingway’s Spanish Colonial villa that slate-gray afternoon, but when the looming clouds made good on their threat, we abandoned our pious quest and took refuge in a salty dive on Whitehead Street.  After we’d surfaced a few hours later, giggling and drunk on tequila-watermelon punch, a kindly but confused Scandinavian tourist snapped the shot for us.  Seeing that photo again, our gleaming eyes and careless grins forever frozen in premium high gloss, sent a pang of sadness through me.  I would miss them, I suspected, even with what happened later.  One final look, then I tossed the album back into the box and taped shut the lid, stowing that bittersweet image along with the rest.

We’d made loose plans to meet at the Happy Hour for our last night in town together, but when I stepped out into the damp late-May evening, dread hit my gut like a sockful of nickels.  Shaky and weak-kneed, I collapsed on the stoop and pulled a crumpled cigarette pack and day-glo orange Bic from the pocket of my corduroy jacket.  Shit, I murmured as I lit up a Parliament, last one.  For a long while, I sat on the concrete steps and puffed away, watching the plumes of smoke swirl into the inky sky, trying to work up the enthusiasm to do something else.

*

On the weekend it happened, I’d driven home to Philly for Gran’s funeral.  Total weepfest—Mom and Mary cried almost the whole time.  And even though I hadn’t seen Gran in a while and the last time I’d visited she was pretty much out of it with dementia or whatever, it depressed me.  It crept me out a little too, seeing her lying there, looking like she’d only fallen asleep, like she could flip open her eyes and start yakking away at any moment.

When I got back to school, all I wanted to do was curl up in bed with Sean and feel his warm body against mine, his muscled arms wrapped around me.  He didn’t come with me on that trip, said he had too much shit to do for his English thesis and couldn’t deal with it anyway.  “Too real,” he said.  I told him I understood, didn’t blame him.  But later, at the church, it made me sad when I noticed how my sister clung to her husband, how he held onto her, kept her from collapsing under the grief while they trudged up to the casket together, how he bent his mouth to her ear and whispered something that made her smile just a little through the tears.

I parked at the student union, where Sean liked to study on Sunday evenings, when he bothered to study, but didn’t see him there.  On the way back to my car, a girl from my creative writing class, the one who always wrote rape stories, bumped into me, her face going white.  

“What?” I asked her. 

“God, Beth, I’m sorry … I guess your boy’s red shirt was in the wash,” she said, forcing a nervous laugh.  “You know, the stoplight party?”  

“What?” I asked her again, still not quite getting it, bemused. 

“Beth, everyone knows.”  

She tried to sound apologetic as she recounted the relevant events but really didn’t conceal her relish at delivering this news, dropping this bomb on me.  Ask Jaime about the rest, she suggested, shrugging with a smirk before scurrying past me.

I went outside and wandered around campus, shell-shocked, putting the pieces together, forming the lurid picture.  After a while, I thought maybe I should look for Jaime, confront her.  I didn’t find her in her room.  But when I passed by the Russian House, where Maggie lived, I saw the two of them smoking cloves on the wide, creaky steps in front.

“So how was the party?” I asked them, moving closer.  “Have a good time without me?”

“Oh, you know, total meat market,” Jaime said, her eyes not quite meeting mine.  Maggie sat taciturn, ignoring me while she ground a cigarette butt into the tongue of a ceramic frog.

“You fucked Sean, didn’t you?”  After I’d asked, Jaime lowered her head for a moment, as if in deep meditation, then looked up at me, misty-eyed.  “Jesus, you’re such a bitch.”

“Beth, I’m sorry,” she said, blubbering, “I had way too much to drink, I guess, and he …”

“Fuck you, Jaime.  Just … fuck you.”

“You don’t understand.  He …”

I didn’t hear any more, though.  I stormed away from them, not looking back, choking down a torrent of sobs until I found the solitude of my car.

*

I loved my Saab 900 convertible (thanks, Dad).  Behind the wheel, speeding through town with the top down, a chill wind rushing by me as I flicked hot ashes to the asphalt and half-listened to Sinéad O’Connor wail about the last day of our acquaintance, I felt like a badass.  Some townies gave me nasty looks as I zoomed past the light traffic on Main Street and turned onto the pike, but after tonight, I would never have to deal with them again.  Before long, I spotted the familiar neon sign and wheeled into the crowded parking lot, easing the car to a stop in a space near the entranceway.  After an anxious sigh, I climbed out and trudged toward the door of the squat metal-and-glass building, stopping on the way to peek through one of the tinted windows.  Not recognizing anyone, I breathed a little easier and ducked inside.

“Table for one?” asked the scowling hostess, a teenage girl with green hair, a silver nose stud, and way too much eye shadow.

“Table for three,” I told her.

“Follow me.”

She led me across the rows of checkered tiles, through a narrow passage between the long Formica counter and some tables by a wall decorated with yellowing photos, to a small, round booth in the far corner.  Cof-fee, I mouthed to a harried, middle-aged waitress who gave a quick nod as she shot past me.  A bit later, after I’d settled myself on the shabby vinyl upholstery, she slapped a steaming cup on the tabletop and darted off in the other direction.  Sugar, hello?  Christ.  The stainless steel caddy next to me offered nothing but a rainbow of artificial sweeteners, which I never used because they gave you cancer.  Behind me though, on the adjacent table, I saw a dispenser filled with the good stuff.  A graying, well-dressed guy with these big accountant glasses sat there, alone, perusing a copy of The Daily Telegraph.  Weird.

“Excuse me,” I said, then, louder, “um, excuse me.”

“Pardon?  Were you speaking to me, love?” he asked, peering over his newspaper.

“Yes,” I said.  “Can I borrow the sugar?”

“Why, of course you can,” he piped, sliding the container over to me.  “Cheers.”  

“Right, thanks,” I said, swallowing a snicker as I turned back around.

I dumped some sugar into the murky dreck and stirred it absently, surveying the raggedy landscape, taking stock.  In no time, a deluge of nostalgia flooded my thoughts, leaving me awash in blissful impressions of a hundred or so other nights in this place—nights during study breaks, nights after driving endless miles back from underground concerts, nights with friends, joking, laughing, trading gossip.  But something darker also permeated, stealing through the cracks, passing like a black light over everything I remembered.

“Anything else?” the waitress asked, startling me.

“No, I’m waiting for some … people.”

She shook her head and walked away, disappearing through the swinging kitchen door.  A beat or two later, I spied Jaime sashaying toward me, squeezed into a low-cut pink halter and too-tight jeans.  She seemed bubbly, happy, flashing a wide, lip-glossed grin as she slid into the other side of the booth.  Returning a wan smile, I asked about her plans, tried to take an interest.  For months, she’d talked about going to New York, becoming an actress, a celebrity, and all that.  I didn’t see it happening, though.  Except when it came to seducing guys, sad to say, she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag.

“I leave tomorrow,” she said.  “I can’t believe it even.  It’s like a dream.  What about you?  You took the consulting gig in Seattle?”

“Not exactly writing sonnets, I guess, but the pay’s a lot better.”

“Hey, where’s Mags?”

“Haven’t seen her.”  Who the fuck cares, I stopped myself from blurting out instead, recalling how she’d sided with Jaime that day, how she wouldn’t acknowledge me, even though my parents shelled out the cash for her plane ticket to Florida.  “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you alone for a minute,” I began again, but the waitress suddenly appeared, all smiles at the sight of Jaime.  Everyone loved her, not that I minded.  They didn’t know her.

“Can I get you something, hon?”

“Sure, some coffee,” Jaime said, beaming.  “Thanks.”

She’d begged me to forgive her for what happened, and I did, said the words anyway.  Since then, though, I’d made excuses to avoid her, and after tonight, who knew when, or if, I would see her again.  Maybe I should have tried harder to fix things between us.  Glancing down at her hand, I noticed she still sported her vintage mood ring.  As a lark, we’d each bought one during our trip, from a willowy, dark-faced boy hawking trinkets on the boardwalk at Mallory Square.  I tossed mine down a storm drain not long afterward—bad mojo, I’d decided, and it never fit right anyhow.  Funny, I mused, looking closer at Jaime’s ring.  For all her outward exuberance, the stone glowed neither indigo nor blue, but a sickly shade of amber-gray.

***

2. JAIME

I almost blew it off, kept right on going past the diner, straight out of town in my brand-new-to-me VW coupe, but decided last minute I should give them one final curtain call.  As I made my entrance, cued by the chime of a little brass bell above the door, I didn’t really know what to expect, whether they would come even.  Inside, I saw the hostess, Sara, this punk chick who I’d run into at a few off-campus parties, chatting with a couple of high school guys in leather jackets and ripped jeans.  But before I could get her attention, ask if she’d seen my girls, Beth caught my eye from a table in the corner.  Showtime, I thought, trooping over to her.

The thing with Sean wrecked Beth and me.  My dumb fault, I could admit, but she didn’t know the whole disgusting story.  She didn’t know how I’d woken up the next morning on a puke-stained couch in the basement, headachy, nauseous, mouth like a desert, thighs chafed and sticky with cum, how he might have drugged me, considering I couldn’t remember anything after downing the Windex-colored drink someone shoved in my hand, and how even though everyone thought of me as the campus slut, I’d never actually had sex with anyone before then, not counting oral.  Maybe she could have understood, sympathized in some way, if I’d confessed those things to her.

I never told anyone though, anyone except Maggie.  When I spilled to her, sitting out in front of her house, she paid close attention but didn’t speak, just kind of nodded, as if she’d heard it all before, known it already.  Never again, was the only thing she said, long after I’d stopped talking, her voice low and grave.  And lolling there on the weathered porch steps, hearing her words echo over and over in my head for the rest of that long afternoon, the two of us dead silent, sucking down cloves like oxygen beneath hot, spiraling phantoms rising up to meet the cloud-laden sky, I believed her.  And later, when I needed a ride to Harrisburg for the procedure, she gave me one, without question or judgment, even though I was pretty sure she was Catholic.

“Hi,” Beth said, half-smiling, as I took a seat across from her.  “Glad I got to see you before you jetted off to New York.”

Yeah, New York.  Six months ago, when I vowed to move there, it sounded romantic, like a glittery fairy tale.  And while I kept on faking this total excitement about it, as I put on my best Miss America smile and delivered the lines for the umpteenth time, giving a great show in that shitty, cramped booth, like when I played Beatrice in Much Ado junior year, I realized it terrified me more than anything.  I didn’t know anyone in New York—other than Gabe, this artist, an old hippie who I met at a show in Philly last winter and remembered mostly because he told me he’d once shared an apartment with the Twin Peaks guy—but I wanted to try making it as an actress, so I had to go.  I had somewhere to live at least.  Gabe offered to let me crash at his place in Brooklyn for a while, until things got going.  Still, it sort of depressed me listening to Beth brag about the money she would make out West.  All I had waiting were a few jobs Gabe lined up for me, modeling for art classes, some private sessions with friends of his maybe.

“Hey, where’s Mags?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

“Haven’t seen her,” Beth replied, shrugging.  “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you alone for a minute.”

Before I could say anything, the waitress, Cathy, who once told me that I reminded her of her oldest daughter at my age, came over to take my order.

“Can I get you something, hon?”

“Sure, some coffee, thanks,” I said, waiting for her to leave.  “All right, what’s up?”

“It’s just about the whole Sean thing.  I …”

“Hello, ladies,” Maggie said, her voice carrying, attracting looks.  “God, this place has gone to hell.”

Not the only thing, I thought, sliding over to make room for her.

*

Let’s take a road trip, she’d said on the phone.  I had a psych test in the morning and didn’t really feel like going anywhere at two a.m.  But it was Maggie, and I kind of owed her, so I threw on some sweats and a wool peacoat and set out into the chilly, quiet night.  When I got to her place, she met me at the door and handed me her car keys.  

“You drive,” she said.  

“Where?” I asked.  She wanted me to take her to some house way out in the Allentown suburbs, where this guy Roach lived.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked, almost two hours later, standing outside a pitch-black split-level, in a sleepy neighborhood that looked a lot like the one where I grew up.

“The asshole deserves it,” she said, something strange flickering in her eyes.  “Besides, it’s free shit.  I’ll split it with you.”

“What if he’s in there, asleep or something?”

“He won’t be.  He’s out in California.”

“Fine, let’s get it over with then,” I said.

She’d claimed, more than once, to have a key.  But when we crept around to the back door, she couldn’t produce one.  She tugged at the brass handle a few times, cursed, checked under the mat, cursed again, and then wound up smashing through one of the glass panels with a weather-beaten lawn gnome.  After she’d tossed the little man aside, she pulled a hand back into the sleeve of her Sexy Bitch! sweatshirt and slipped it through the jagged opening, unlocking the door from the inside.

“Voilà,” she said, grinning in triumph.

“Christ, Mags.”

“Go wait out front and keep watch.  Honk if you see someone coming … or if you’re horny,” she said, guffawing at her own stupid punch line.

On the drive home, I told her how I couldn’t deal with her fucked-up insanity anymore, how it had to stop, but high on the thrill of the heist and God-knows-whatever she’d snorted or swallowed, everything floated right past her, through the rolled-down window, out into the cold spring dawn.  So I didn’t say anything else.  I just stared at the lone tail light glowing ahead of me, wishing I’d stayed in bed, wondering where my friend had gone, who’d replaced her in the seat beside me.

*

The gentle clink of ceramic on wood brought me back to the table.  Cathy set down a second cup in front of Maggie, giving her the stink eye, I saw, and poured both of us coffee from a steaming pot.  Once Cathy had gone, Maggie glanced around like a kid about to cheat on a test, then, seeing no one looking, revealed a miniature bottle of Jameson in her palm, as if she’d done some magic trick.  She offered me a splash, but I shook my head no.  She shrugged and dumped the whiskey into her drink.  Watching her, I couldn’t help but concentrate on her hands, how they sort of jittered, how her nails looked chewed up, how the black polish had chipped away in places.  It made me tense, uneasy for some reason.  All the while, I noticed, Beth just sat there and sipped her coffee, staring past this disturbing scene, pretending not to see.

“Should we do something?” I asked her later, after Maggie had taken off for the bathroom.

“Like what?” she replied, snorting.  “Anyway, about what happened with Sean, I …”

“Have you heard from him?”

About a month ago, Sean disappeared, like off the face of the goddamned Earth.  We’d last talked the night I asked him to drive me to the clinic.  When I called, explained how the thin blue line showed up on the test stick, he freaked out on me a little until I assured him I didn’t plan to keep it, just needed a lift.  He said yeah, cool, he’d take me wherever, help pay for it even.  But on the morning of the appointment, he flaked, didn’t show up at my dorm or answer his phone.  Afterward, I heard a lot of versions of what happened to him.  This Goth chick in my seminar said he went Kerouac and took off on a cross-country road trip to Mexico, right out the blue one morning, at least according to some stoner guy who lived down the hall from him.  But the Asian girl from drama club told me no, Sean’s parents pulled him out of school and checked him into rehab in Connecticut somewhere.  Later, a rumor he was dead started spreading around campus.  No one believed it, though, not really.

“No … no call, e-mail, nothing,” Beth said.  “But fuck him.”

“Yeah, fuck him,” I agreed, relieved to see her smile at me for the first time in weeks.

“Hey,” she said, as if remembering something, “do me a favor and see if you can bum a ciggy from John Major back there.”

“Who?”

“Him,” she said, motioning toward this older guy sitting behind her.  “I’m dying for a smoke.”

“Yeah, OK, I guess.”

I inched out the booth and started toward him, noticing, right away, his big, manicured hands as he flipped through the pages of some out-of-town newspaper.  He wore a dull gray suit—an expensive one, though, I could tell—with a navy-and-white polka-dotted silk tie.  When I parked myself alongside his table, brushing a hand against his elbow, he stopped reading and gazed up at me through a pair of oversized glasses.

“Well, hello, love.  What may I do for you?”

“Could I have one of those?” I asked, pressing my palms against the edge of the table and leaning toward him, giving him a perfect view while I flicked my head gently at the engraved silver case beside his left hand.  No ring, I saw.

“Anything for you, love,” he said, slipping one of the thin cigarettes from its ornate holder and extending it to me.  “A gift, from one of Her Majesty’s loyal subjects.”

When I reached for it, he retracted the cigarette and looked at me funny for a moment, a slight leer on his face, then handed it to me and returned to his paper.  Guys, even British ones, were all the same.

***

3. MAGGIE

Leaning against the porcelain, I eyed my reflection eying me in the mirror.  You look like shit, I thought, bemoaning her bloodshot eyes, the dark circles running beneath them.  I sighed and watched while she took a baggie from her purse, shook out the last of the white powder onto her compact mirror, and arranged it in a ragged line—her glistening runway to someplace better.  Then I saw her grimace as she overturned it into the sink.  Not tonight, I told her, making sure she’d rinsed all the coke down the drain before I flushed the empty Ziploc.  Afterward, I dug a plastic vial out of my bag, unscrewed the top, and popped a few of the blue tabs inside.  There, all better now?  Feeling calmer, I unlatched the door and slunk out of the dingy bathroom, into the warm, beating heart of the diner.  My reflection stayed behind, satisfied, her lips bent into a thin, warped smile.

Back at the table, I found Beth and Jaime speculating about whether Kurt Cobain actually did blow himself away in his greenhouse last year.  I took a seat and did my best to follow the twisted conversation, stop the threads from coming undone.  But listening to them recount the grisly details—how part of the note was probably forged, how his prints weren’t even on the shotgun, how Courtney might have tried to kill him before once, in Rome—made my head hurt, made me dizzy.  And a little later, when I started to feel kind of sick, it just got too hard to keep paying attention.  I didn’t think it mattered much, though, because dead was dead, however it happened.

I turned away from them for a moment, trying to steady myself, and caught a glimpse of Sara.  I observed her as she shepherded a young family—stressed-out mom, grouchy dad, two bratty kids—to one of the nearby tables, a sour expression plastered on her face.  She was me, or I was her, not so long ago.  Angry, disaffected, hostile, always counting down the days until I could get out of this town, counting on no one, counting myself unlucky, counting myself out.

*

At the end of junior year of high school, four of us from Honors English decided to crash this college party we’d found out about from Tiffany, who’d overheard some girls raving about it outside of the Fashion Bug.  That night, we all met at Tiff’s to get ready, laughing as we slathered on makeup, trying to make ourselves look older, sexy.  I’d gone over to her place in a super-long trench coat, mostly so no one would see I had on this slutty schoolgirl outfit underneath.  Really it was one of my old uniforms from St. Patrick’s, where I used to go before the plant closed and Pap lost his job and had to send me to the public school.  Might as well get some use out of it, I’d grumbled when I dragged the clothes out of the attic.  I’d planned on flashing the guys at the door, figured they would love the show, whistle, catcall, or whatever.  I never expected them to let us into the house.  But when we got there, all giddy over the thrill of it, no one even tried to stop us.

The inside stank of smoke and beer and sweaty gym socks, and I could hear reggae thumping from a stereo somewhere.  On either side of the living room, a red lava lamp smoldered, casting a dim, spidery light over the hazy figures that flitted about, toking on cigarettes and tipping back drinks.  Some guy came out of nowhere and took my jacket, tossing it on a tall pile in the corner.  Nice look, he yelled over the din, tilting his head to one side and chuckling.  Anyway, drinks are in the kitchen, he told me before disappearing again.  I stumbled down a long hallway into a brightly lit room where I found an enormous keg, which I didn’t really know how to work.  I ended up just grabbing a bottle of something from the table, half-filling one of the red plastic cups, and wandering back into the party.

I tried to find the other girls again but didn’t see them anywhere.  Later, they told me they’d chickened out and run back to Tiff’s to finish watching her tape of Dirty Dancing for like the millionth time.  I didn’t know what to do so I stood against the wall, staying quiet, taking baby sips of my drink because they burned like a bitch going down.  No one seemed to notice me hanging around there, except this one guy—older, dressed in a t-shirt and cargo pants, cute in a dirty boy kind of way—who kept stealing glances and smiling at me.  After a while, he walked over and with warm breath whispered into my ear something about how hot I looked, how he wanted me.  A gigantic quiver shot all through me, and I didn’t protest when he slipped the cup from my hand and gave me a different one.

“Try this,” he said, and then …

… A sliver of light knifed through the room, dissecting the bed, me, and I could hear him talking low to someone in the hallway, cackling.  I shivered, so cold, beneath the open second-story window.  Then the white beam disappeared, leaving only the sodium glow from a neighboring streetlamp.

“So, where were we?” he asked, approaching me, can of Beast in hand.

“Could you … close the window?”

“Later,” he said, slugging the last of his drink.  The empty hit the floor with a jarring clank, and he hopped onto the bed, straddling me.

“Wait,” I said, so tired, while he worked on the buttons of my blouse.  “I’m only sixteen.”

“Heh, legal then, I guess.”

With a sick grin, he yanked down my tartan and panties.  I didn’t fight him as he forced himself inside me, pushing hard, rubbing me raw.  The pain, which I felt for days afterward, made my eyes well, made me moan.  He just kept going, though, rammed faster, his queer expression dipping in and out of the shadows.  I wanted to scream, claw off his smug, depraved face, do something.  But I couldn’t.  So I shut my eyes and replayed on continuous loop my favorite scene where Johnny strides into the club and tells the Law & Order guy nobody puts Baby in a corner.

*

“Mags, you OK?” Jaime asked, concern flooding her face.

“Yeah, fine,” I said, shaking myself out of the daze.  “Just a little tired, I guess.”

Beth chortled and took a long drag from a cigarette I didn’t remember her lighting.

“Christ, how much time have we wasted here during the past four years?” she asked, after she’d exhaled a big cloud of smoke.

“Too much,” was all I said, not wanting to think about it, about how I’d spent my whole life in this shitty town.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jaime said.  “I bet we’ll miss this place.”

“They have dumps like this everywhere,” Beth muttered, stubbing out her smoke in a cheap metal ashtray painted to look like gold, “even in New York.”

“And Seattle,” I said to her.  “I heard you’re going out there soon.”

“Soon,” she said, distant.

No one asked me about my plans.  Just as well, because I didn’t have any.  I didn’t have parents with money and the right connections like Beth.  I didn’t have looks and some huge dream like Jaime.  I was the scholarship girl, the charity case, the townie.  And I wasn’t going anywhere.

“Hey, Mags,” Beth exclaimed, making me jump a little, “I think Little Miss Jaime has a wee crush on that bloke.”  She cocked her head toward some guy in a suit at the next table.  Jaime, I noticed, had turned a vivid shade of red.

“He’s kind of cute,” she said, a sheepish expression on her face.

“He’s kind of old,” I pointed out, after I’d taken a good look at him for the first time.  “I mean, he’s not old-old, but still.”

“Go talk to him,” Beth said to Jaime, shooting her a mischievous glance.  “Go.”

“Yeah, all right.”

As I stood up to let Jaime out of the booth, Beth and I shared a sly grin, something we hadn’t done in a while, maybe not since break.  It felt good, comforting somehow.  I sat down again, and the two of us hushed up and tried to eavesdrop over the clamor of rattling dishes, babbling diners, and obnoxious, squalling children.

After a bit of boring chit-chat, the British guy confided he’d just returned from London and dropped into town to visit our college president, his old prep school chum, before heading back to Manhattan.  He worked for some big talent agency, he said.  When Jaime mentioned moving to New York, wanting to become an actress, he handed her a card and told her to ring him once she’d gotten settled in the city.  They could pop over to Sardi’s for a drink, and maybe he would introduce her to some people he knew, he said, his lips curling into a reassuring smile.  Oh, could you really, she gushed, in this totally phony way that made me wince.

When they finished talking, the British guy dropped a couple of bills on the table, snapped up his things, and marched out of the diner.  Jaime lingered there, watching him leave, then came back to our table, smug.  She had this way of handling guys, getting what she wanted from them.  It made me a little jealous, maybe more than a little, sometimes.

“Did you hear that?” she asked with a squeal.

“We heard,” Beth said.

“And he’s handsome, isn’t he?” Jaime asked, not waiting for an answer.  “I love his accent.  He’s so …”

“… Old,” I said again.

“… Distinguished.”

“I think you’re insane,” Beth said.  “You don’t even know that guy.  He could be some sick rapist, a serial murderer or something.”

“But he’s like, so British,” Jaime said, cooing.

“He is British,” Beth reminded her.

“Yeah, exactly,” Jaime said, “they’re all sophisticated and intellectual, not the serial killer type.”

“Hello?  Jack the Ripper, maybe the most infamous serial killer of all time … a Brit,” Beth shot back, her eyes expanding to the size of saucers.  Taking Beth’s cue, Jaime put on a goofy, mock-surprised face, sending them both into a fit of hysterics.  For a moment, they’d channeled their old, cheeky selves, the girls who sat with me in the back of Irish lit freshman year, exchanging snarky notes while our professor jerked off to Yeats and Joyce, the girls who got my juvenile sense of humor, the girls who I loved, for whom I would do anything.

As for me, I could manage only a stilted smile.  Though I tried, even numbed out on Xanax and Jameson, I couldn’t bring myself to laugh with them.  Some sick rapist, a serial murderer, Beth had said.  The real rapist, I knew, lay buried in the woods behind the abandoned tire factory at the edge of town, his head caved in like an exploded piñata.  And the real killer, that bitch haunted me every day, lurking in the mirror, watching, judging, gnawing at me, cutting up my insides like razor blades, never sleeping, always fucking begging for something, anything to ease her unrelenting guilt.  He’d deserved it, hadn’t he?  Jesus, I really wasn’t sure anymore.  And in the end, maybe it didn’t matter.  Maybe none of it did.

The waitress returned, and we ordered a giant plate of onion rings and some Cokes and ended up staying in that booth for what seemed like a long, long time, talking about everything and nothing.  At the end of the night, after we’d pushed open the wide chrome doors and poured into the parking lot, we promised one another we would stick together, keep in touch.  But standing there on the pavement, each of us saying teary, heartfelt goodbyes under the ghostly glow of the halide lights, I doubted I would hear from either of them again.  It sort of got me down, but as I started up my rusty beater and waited for the heater to come to life, I felt something else—relief.  Relief that they would never see what would become of me.  Relief that, at least among the three of us, nothing would ever change.