I watch her reach out for the drink, bring it to her lips. She’s got a bandage on her forearm, quite like the bandage on my shin. When she takes a sip of the drink, she closes her eyes. And I can almost feel the gold of it from here. The brightness of its blue, blue skies.
She smiles to herself.
A cough. I turn to find the bartender standing over me, waiting. No bow. No ceremony. Drumming his hands on the bar. Performing his impatience with his eyebrows. Well? What’ll it be?
I look back at the woman hunched over the golden drink, glowing between her cupped hands. She’s smiling brightly now.
“The golden remedy,” I hear myself say.
Why not, right? Might help. Might delay whatever is about to descend.
For a moment, he stares at me. “We took that off the menu,” he says. “Limited supply. Limited time only.”
“What? But didn’t you just give her—”
“Limited supply,” he interrupts. “Limited time only.”
I stare at him. He stares right back at me, not even flinching.
“A Scotch, then,” I say. He pours it quick, then slides the squat, sloshing glass in my direction. I have to catch it with both hands before it slides right off the bar.
I stare down at the spotty glass filled with the dull amber drink. He’s filled it to the very brim, I see. A generous pour at least. Perhaps he thinks I’m celebrating. What am I celebrating?
The wind howls again outside. It sounds like a man’s scream. Not just one man. Three.
A spectacular crack of thunder that makes the whole bar shudder. I whip my head toward the door. Nothing. Yet. A small purple flower tumbles from my hair into the glass. How many flowers were in that bath anyway, Ellie?
Maybe it saved you, Miranda.
I look at it floating limply in my Scotch like a fly. I’m about to fish it out, but something in the look of those tiny petals stops me. The memory of baby Ellie holding it out to me like a gift. I take a long drink, leaving the flower in there. A blunt warmth runs through me. A sharpness dulled. A sense of things inside dimming, dimming. Like a light being turned very slowly out. I can see the hand on the dial, turning, turning. There now. That’s better, isn’t it?
I glance back at the woman beside me. Her eyes appear misty now, fluttering closed and then open. She looks completely lost in reverie. Lost in the blue skies in her blood. Wandering down some sunny, happy road in her mind. Each sip a footstep down the road. A dark road, I remember now. No matter how sunny it may seem in the mind’s eye. No matter the brightness of the flowers that grow on either side. Impossible colors that hypnotize. She’s oblivious to the storm raging all around. Doesn’t seem to feel the floor shuddering beneath us. The glasses rattling in their racks. The amber bottles trembling on the shelves. The headless woman above us swinging wildly from her ropes. Wish I could leave here. Drive to Hugo sitting on my front steps, waiting for me like a dream on the other side of this. But there is no other side of this, Ms. Fitch.
Suddenly the jukebox music dissolves to a drone. Another song starts to play. Still Judy. But not “Me and My Shadow” anymore. She’s singing that other song. About getting happy. About the sun shining. About getting ready for judgment day.
The storm begins to bang its fists on the walls, on the doors. Knock, knock, knock. A pounding and a pounding and a pounding. I grip the bar for dear life, bracing myself. I look at the bartender, but he also seems untroubled. Keeps polishing his glass like all the glasses and bottles aren’t now crashing to the floor. Like the tables and chairs haven’t all turned over and the bar itself isn’t shaking to the foundation. Or if it is, he’s seen this before. Seen it all, all before. He’ll stand there until the end of time in a sea of shattered glass, polishing spots that will never out. And the woman beside me keeps smiling at her reflection in the now cracked mirror behind the bar. She’s still under her blue skies, on the sun-dappled road.
Beside us, the glass window breaks. I want to take cover, but I’m paralyzed. My whole body freezes as the screaming wind comes tearing through the pub like a tentacle of mist. Lifting my hair up all around me. Blasting my bare back like a blow. I look in the cracked mirror and see it surrounding me, the shrieking wind circling me like smoke. This is it. My whole body. Filling with cold dark. Ears, eyes, mouth that’s apparently screaming though I can’t hear the sound. I can only hear their three-pronged voice in my skull. Low and steady as fire under Judy’s happy roar and the storm, which are one song. The wheel, the wheel, Ms. Fitch. Always turning. Coming back around. In the mirror, I see the smoke wrap itself around and around my throat. I see the flowers in my hair light up like tiny embers. Blooming flames encircle my head. I close my eyes and I’m nothing. Everything screaming. Every cell a roaring black.