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“Well dump that little fucker out,” Lily said. “Let’s have a look at him.” Charlie had described his new body on the phone but she wanted to see him for herself.
“Hi, Lily,” came a voice from inside the luggage.
“Asher!” Lily bent down and tried to look into the cat carrier, but beyond something dark reflecting two points of light—eyes, she guessed—she could see nothing.
Audrey swung the cat carrier away from Lily. “He’d prefer you didn’t see him this way.”
“Oh, hell no,” Lily said. “I agreed to meet you here where all my PTSD began, I get to look at the little monster.”
Lily tried again to squint into the cat carrier. Audrey swung it around the other way.
Charlie said, “Audrey, if you keep swinging this thing around, I’m going to be sick.”
“Please,” Audrey said to Lily. “He’s really sensitive about his looks.”
Audrey put the cat carrier on the bar and sat down at one of the stools. Lily sat and squinted through the carrier’s mesh, trying to see something. Still just points of light.
“Asher, is it really you?”
“It’s me now.”
“I feel like I’m talking to a tiny priest in a tiny confessional. But you can only hear my tiny sins.” She affected her bowed-head-of-deep-contrition look, which was new to her, so she wasn’t confident in it. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned: I once drank the last of the milk and put the empty carton back in the fridge. I drew pubes on my Barbies and posed them in a threesome with a Ninja Turtle. I sometimes wish that dicks were mint flavored. I won’t say what made me think of it. I never wished that you were dead, Asher, but when I worked here, I sometimes wished that you would fall down the stairs and land in a cake. I don’t know how the cake gets there, it’s just a fantasy.”
“I don’t think any of those things are sins,” Charlie said.
“What do you know? You’re not a priest.”
“Although he is wearing a beautiful wizard’s robe,” said Audrey.
Lily gave Audrey what she considered her, withering, silence, worm! look.
“How about I run out and grab us some beverages?” Audrey said. “Give you two a chance to catch up.”
“Skinny latte, please,” Lily said, flashing her, I am cute so all my prior bitchiness must be forgiven smile. “Here, my treat.” She took a bill from her purse and handed it to Audrey, who, having spent years as a monk begging for her daily meal, accepted it without protest.
“I’ll get your usual, Charlie,” Audrey said, and she was out the door.
As soon as the door closed Lily said, “Asher, you fucker!” She slapped the top of the cat carrier. It took the hit and sprang back.
“Ouch!” said Charlie. “Hey!”
“How could you do that to me? You fucker! You fucker!” Lily was crying now, as if she’d been saving it all for when Audrey was no longer in the room, which she had. “I thought you were dead! You let me think you were dead! You fucker!”
“Stop saying that,” Charlie said. “I’m sorry.”
She smacked the top of the cat carrier again.
“Ouch!”
“I would never do that to you, Asher, you fucker. Never! How could you do that? I thought we were friends, well, not friends, but something. You fucker!”
“I’m right here. Stop crying.”
“I’m crying because you’re right here, you fucker. I finished crying because you weren’t here a long time ago.”
“I thought it would be easier—I couldn’t keep running the shop, being Sophie’s daddy, being Charlie Asher like this. I thought it would be easier. I’m a freak.”
“You’ve always been a freak, Asher. That’s your best quality.”
