He just looks at me. “How’s that back now, by the way?” he says.
“Limp’s gone, Ms. Fitch,” the fat man says.
“Where did it go? I wonder,” says the third man. Not wondering. Knowing. Knowing exactly. I think of Briana dragging my dead leg today in the theater. Her bloodless face slicked with sweat. Her once bright eyes dark as death.
They smile at me. “Or maybe that physical therapy finally paid off in the end.”
Mark falling forward in his chair. His pale face. My face twitching with a smile as I stood over him on suddenly straight legs.
“He was hurting me,” I shout. “It was self-defense.”
They appear to look solemn now. The fat man cries for me. The middling man looks at me with watery eyes.
“Absolutely it was. And Briana needed to learn how to act, didn’t she?”
“You could say you gave her a gift.”
“Your gift.”
I look down at the rose again. The pads of my fingers pressed into the thorns. Bleeding, but I feel nothing, nothing.
“Look at you back on your feet. Doing all this good. Making people feel. That’s the work of the theater. All’s well that ends well, am I right?”
They look at me. Bloodless faces smiling, smiling, beneath the red lights. Eyes shining with mirth. My patrons. I feel fear. Bright fear.
“Why are you helping me like this? What do you want?”
They go back to their games. The thin man is about to strike the fat man, who braces himself. The middling man takes a shot. I watch all the balls go sinking into the holes.
“What do you want?” I ask again. “From me. What’s the cost?”
They turn to me now. The fat man and the third man stop. The middling man looks at me casually.
“We just want to see a good show, Ms. Fitch. Just put on a good show.”
“A good show. That’s all?” My turn to laugh now. Can’t be. Can’t be all. “There must be something else. You must want something else.”
“What else could there possibly be, Ms. Fitch?”
My soul? My life? I look down at the rose. It’s rotted. Turned the color gray in my hands. The red petals are black, dried up, the stem shriveled. I look up, horror in my heart, ready to accuse them, ready to cry—
And then I see her. Standing at the foot of the staircase, her hand gripping the rail. Behind her just one flight of stairs. An open door that leads right to the bar. I can see the bartender who directed me down here. Still standing behind the bar, polishing his dirty glass that will remain dirty for time eternal.
“Grace?”
She stares at me, still holding the rotted rose in my hand. Like she’s never seen me before.
“Grace. How long have you been standing there?”
She turns around and runs up the staircase and out of the bar.
“Grace, wait!”
* * *
I’m running to catch up with her on the dark street. Barely lit with streetlamps. A joke of a street. Lined with shops full of fake witchery. How many times have Grace and I walked these streets together? She’s walking so quickly now. Ahead of me, as far ahead as her legs can carry her. I feel a twinge in my hip as I jog to catch up. A little lash of pain down my leg. Oh god oh god oh god.
“Grace! Please, wait. Where are you going?”
“Where does it look like? To my car.”
“But don’t you want to talk?”
“Not anymore.”
“Grace, wait. You’re walking so fast. Please don’t walk so fast.”
“Leave me alone, Miranda.”
She’s reached the parking lot. Her car is the only one in it at this hour. A sensible RAV4 shining in the dark. Silver, of course. Four-wheel drive. Spotless despite all the hiking day trips she takes into the mountains, all the drives on dirt roads. How many times have I sat in that car, in the passenger seat, in the back seat on my worst days, my legs propped on her dead dog’s pillow, the top of my head pressing into the door, while she drove me to the outpatient surgery? Waited in the waiting room, flipping shitty magazines. When they wheeled me out, she sat in the chair beside my gurney, checking her phone.
Sorry, I kept saying through the fog of Valium.
Don’t be, she said.
I remember the first time she came with me, we drove past a Jamba Juice on the way home. I thought how wonderful it would be to have an icy drink. Something brightly colored and cold and sweet, though I didn’t dare say so. And she stopped the car right in front of it. And she turned to me and said, What do you want? And I cried. It was one of the few times I ever really wept in front of Grace. She didn’t know what to do. At last, she put her hand on my thigh. I’ll choose for you, all right? How about that? She began to get out of the car.