“Do you think someone actually shot those?” I ask Grace, and then I remember Grace is gone. I pushed her away with the hands of my voice. It’s just me here now. At this high table for two by the bar. My hands cupped around my empty drink like it’s a flame about to go out.
Lights dimming, are the lights dimming? Maybe they’re closing already. I look around the bar. I didn’t realize how huge this place is until now. The space just goes on and on and on. And I’m the only one in it, it seems. Except for a few lone men at the bar, it’s just me. Alone here. How did that happen? Where did everyone go? Hello? The song seems to have melted, shifted into a different tune. Just violin. I’ve heard this before. Haven’t I heard it before? Yes. A tune Paul used to play. Not on the violin, on the piano. He played the piano each night after work and for hours on the weekend, that was his release, his bliss. Like theater is for you. Whatever this particular tune is, it was one of my favorites. Sounds like soft rain, moonlight on moving water. I’d listen from wherever I was in the house. Sometimes I’d stand in the doorway of the living room, gazing at him bent at the piano, the back of his head. I could call Paul on the phone now. Not now. Don’t fuck him over with one of your pill-addled alcoholic phone calls. Don’t cry into the crackling vat of his phone silence. Don’t simper-hiss, I miss you; do you miss me? Probably having dinner with his new girlfriend in our old house, the one I hobbled away from like it was on actual fire. You were the one who hobbled away, remember?
I need a drink, but all the waiters seem to have disappeared. How did that happen? Are you guys closed or open? Hello? The lights are still on, though they’re dimming, dimming. “Stardust” on the jukebox now. Nat King Cole and his bewitching voice. Louder than it should be. Is this a trick? How the light keeps dimming? How the light’s gone out everywhere except at the bar. Just one bartender behind the bar now, a man, pale-faced and wearing a pirate shirt. There are a lot like him in this town. Probably reads tarot cards to tourists in his spare time, though I can tell he’s not the sort to predict that all will be well. He’s the sort that tells them terrible, thrilling fates. And they actually tip him more for this, I’ve seen it.
I think you’re in great pain, I hear this sort of man say to his dupes with such feigned gravitas.
I am, I am! replies the dupe behind the curtain. Desperate.
Sometimes that voice belongs to me. Sometimes it’s me behind the curtain. Allowing myself to be fooled. Tears in my eyes. It’s true, I whisper. It’s all true. How did you know?
Now he’s wiping a tumbler that will remain dirty. The glass, I know, is for me.
I rise from the table, limp over to the bar.
The bartender, seeing me approach, pours Scotch into the spotted glass caked with another woman’s lipstick.
Instead of telling him, I just wipe it off with my thumb.
I take a very long sip. The sort of sip I never take anymore. Always small sips these days. Always so careful. Not tonight. Fuck being careful. Fuck walking gingerly. Fuck being mindful of drug interactions. Fuck how long I sit or stand. Forget it all. Just let go, isn’t that what the meditation recording tells me to do? I tried it for a while, dutifully. Even lit a candle, can you believe it? For ambiance. To set the mood. Turned on my rock-salt lamp. Lavender oil billowing into my face from a nearby diffuser. Lying on my back on the floor, my arms splayed like a corpse. It’s funny now, to think of my former faith in these rituals. How earnestly I believed that one day they would all make me well.
I allow myself a stroll further down memory lane. It’s quite like the dirt lane of the drug commercial. Flanked here and there by strange flowers. There’s a tilted wooden fence to the right, a field of swaying grass to the left. I stare down the lane with my misty vision, all cloudy around the edges, like looking at a dream. Thinking about the time when I could stroll freely. One foot in front of the other. A hop to my step. A hope to my step. I wore swishing French dresses as casual wear back then. Little cardigans with bows for buttons. I was so fucking adorable, you wouldn’t believe it. You might have wanted to kill me. Maybe you did. Maybe you cursed me quietly as you watched me pass. I didn’t even see you. My mind was blissfully blank. I was climbing crags in my heart-shaped leather heels. Digging my hearts into the earth. Velvet purse full of plays and makeup and a journal slung across my body and knocking against my thigh, where it might leave a bruise. But I didn’t care. I was invincible then. Silk stockings I wore, can you believe this? When I climbed hills! Fishnets that would rip and I’d let the run go right down the leg to the ankle, get bigger. I didn’t care about that either. I’d walk until my heels were scuffed and caked in mud. I’m doing this now. Walking up up up in my old heels on the dirt lane, which has become a trail in Edinburgh that I climbed when I came for the Fringe, came to play Helen. My twenty-four-year-old legs so pliant and strong on the trail. There’s a lookout point coming up where I’ll be able to see the whole city. I can feel Paul behind me on the path. His golden-red hair hanging in his face. Flushed and huffing. Trying to keep up. We only just met two weeks ago, after he saw me onstage. A fellow New Englander, a Mainer, just in Edinburgh for a few days, on his way to do a summer walking tour of the Highlands. But Paul never ended up going to the Highlands. Instead he comes to see my Helen each night, waits for me outside the theater. It sounds stalkery, but it isn’t. Maybe it only isn’t because he’s young and hot. I’m turned on by his aggressive attention, his confident pursuit. I spend my nights at his hotel on Princes Street instead of sleeping on the floor with my fellow cast members in a dank, one-bedroom apartment in Leith. Each night I leave the theater, the sky still a bright blue, and there he is, smiling, strapping, bewitched, waiting to take me away, to follow me anywhere—down the closes, up the crags. I’m high from the performance; I’m high from the attention of this beautiful fan, this stranger who doesn’t feel like a stranger at all, whose quiet voice and kind eyes feel like home. If I turn now on the trail, I’ll find him looking up at me. How he would look up at me with such a strange expression on his face. Admiration? Not quite. Fear? Awe.