garages. I’m Woodward, goddammit. I’ve even got the Redford hair.
“Oh, of course we lead with the vote,” I say.
Leah sits up and shouts, “Great!” I move my chair closer so I can help her. If I’m honest, I’ll take this duo any way that I can get it. I’ll be Woodward. Watson. Sundance. The sidekick. Anyone, just so long as my sidecar’s hitched to something.
9
Leah
W hen Quinn drops me back at the Stationhouse the sun is half sunk beneath the restaurant’s tarpaper roof. Henry had suggested we celebrate my first day at the family business tonight, but I know he will ask me how my day went. It went badly. I got hazed by your gene pool. It was disappointing .
But truthfully, even today, when I’ve made a fool of myself, taking notes then making sense of them on the page is good for me. I have my own ideas about what the world should be like, but when I write down actual facts in my notebook, when I smooth those facts out into a true point-A-to-point-B story, it’s like a tether that keeps me from floating away. My Gazette editor told me this made me good at the job. I didn’t just like writing the news, I needed it.
How was your day? Henry will ask if I go home. We never firmly made plans. I don’t want to go home and explain today, even though I should. In Maine, Henry told me, family rituals are not optional. All occasions are marked with mandatory dinners, toasts, parties. Hank used to throw a birthday party for June every year, even though she’d beg him not to. One year she wound up baking her own cake, a huge white-frosted vanilla one big enough to feed sixty guests. By two in the morning everyone had left except “the singers.” The singers were two men from the docks who sat with Hank in the yard, drinking and warbling old Irish songs and Hank Williams and all the dirtiest shanties. They made June join in. At four, when the night was at its blackest, dark as the inside of a pocket, Henry said, she went inside, and found Henry and Charley in their pajamas, barely awake but peering out the screen window, amazed to hear their parents singing. June scooped them up and brought them to bed, where they all curled together, June still wearing her party dress. June still smelling like vanilla cake.
And yet.
“Quinn,” I call. She cuts a funny profile standing on the porch. There is a sloppy elegance in the way her too-big clothes hang upon her frame. The sunset lights her hair up strawberry.
“Can I buy you birthday dinner?” I point at the Stationhouse.
She grins. Her scrawny face opens up, just like that. “Fuck no,” she says. “But you can buy me a dozen drinks.”
A T THE M ONKEY ’ S Uncle there’s a wooden cutout of a monkey sheepishly clutching his tail above the door. The monkey, I think, is ashamed of something he’s done in this bar. Inside, the lights are low and warm. Men with muddy boots and stocking hats hold beers. Three women, all wearing cable-knit sweaters, laugh and drink from clear glasses with limes in them. Playing pool in the corner is a gang of boys with pitiful facial hair, definitely not twenty-one. They all wear shirts from the ironworks. A line of people teeter solo on bar stools.
A woman behind the bar is waiting for me to place an order by the time I make it there. Quinn says, “Buy me a Jack and ginger, Leah.”
“One Jack and ginger,” I say, “and do you have any drink specials?”
The bartender has silver-and-black hair pulled off her face. She says, “It’s real special that we have beer and liquor.” She is tanner than a person should be, and wirier. She wears a blue thermal with the sleeves pushed up. Her arms look winnowed down to bone and muscle alone.
I order a beer and she ducks to get it from a fridge. Quinn says to me, “Sara Riley. It’s me she doesn’t like, not you.”
“I like you fine when you’re sober,” Sara says as she comes up with my beer.
Quinn wanders over to the jukebox and puts on Guns N’ Roses.
When
“Oh, of course we lead with the vote,” I say.
Leah sits up and shouts, “Great!” I move my chair closer so I can help her. If I’m honest, I’ll take this duo any way that I can get it. I’ll be Woodward. Watson. Sundance. The sidekick. Anyone, just so long as my sidecar’s hitched to something.
9
Leah
W hen Quinn drops me back at the Stationhouse the sun is half sunk beneath the restaurant’s tarpaper roof. Henry had suggested we celebrate my first day at the family business tonight, but I know he will ask me how my day went. It went badly. I got hazed by your gene pool. It was disappointing .
But truthfully, even today, when I’ve made a fool of myself, taking notes then making sense of them on the page is good for me. I have my own ideas about what the world should be like, but when I write down actual facts in my notebook, when I smooth those facts out into a true point-A-to-point-B story, it’s like a tether that keeps me from floating away. My Gazette editor told me this made me good at the job. I didn’t just like writing the news, I needed it.
How was your day? Henry will ask if I go home. We never firmly made plans. I don’t want to go home and explain today, even though I should. In Maine, Henry told me, family rituals are not optional. All occasions are marked with mandatory dinners, toasts, parties. Hank used to throw a birthday party for June every year, even though she’d beg him not to. One year she wound up baking her own cake, a huge white-frosted vanilla one big enough to feed sixty guests. By two in the morning everyone had left except “the singers.” The singers were two men from the docks who sat with Hank in the yard, drinking and warbling old Irish songs and Hank Williams and all the dirtiest shanties. They made June join in. At four, when the night was at its blackest, dark as the inside of a pocket, Henry said, she went inside, and found Henry and Charley in their pajamas, barely awake but peering out the screen window, amazed to hear their parents singing. June scooped them up and brought them to bed, where they all curled together, June still wearing her party dress. June still smelling like vanilla cake.
And yet.
“Quinn,” I call. She cuts a funny profile standing on the porch. There is a sloppy elegance in the way her too-big clothes hang upon her frame. The sunset lights her hair up strawberry.
“Can I buy you birthday dinner?” I point at the Stationhouse.
She grins. Her scrawny face opens up, just like that. “Fuck no,” she says. “But you can buy me a dozen drinks.”
A T THE M ONKEY ’ S Uncle there’s a wooden cutout of a monkey sheepishly clutching his tail above the door. The monkey, I think, is ashamed of something he’s done in this bar. Inside, the lights are low and warm. Men with muddy boots and stocking hats hold beers. Three women, all wearing cable-knit sweaters, laugh and drink from clear glasses with limes in them. Playing pool in the corner is a gang of boys with pitiful facial hair, definitely not twenty-one. They all wear shirts from the ironworks. A line of people teeter solo on bar stools.
A woman behind the bar is waiting for me to place an order by the time I make it there. Quinn says, “Buy me a Jack and ginger, Leah.”
“One Jack and ginger,” I say, “and do you have any drink specials?”
The bartender has silver-and-black hair pulled off her face. She says, “It’s real special that we have beer and liquor.” She is tanner than a person should be, and wirier. She wears a blue thermal with the sleeves pushed up. Her arms look winnowed down to bone and muscle alone.
I order a beer and she ducks to get it from a fridge. Quinn says to me, “Sara Riley. It’s me she doesn’t like, not you.”
“I like you fine when you’re sober,” Sara says as she comes up with my beer.
Quinn wanders over to the jukebox and puts on Guns N’ Roses.
When
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