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“All you?” I ask.
“What?”
“You keep saying all you gotta do. What about me?”
He looks at me for a second, then says, “I mean us, AJ. I mean we. All we gotta do is play it smart. Then when the regime change happens, we slip away. Quietly, no drama, no debts. Just slip away.”
But he did not mean us.
He very much did mean him.
“We do this job,” Logan says, gripping my upper arm. “We finish it. We go home. We bide our time. And we get out.”
I shake my head no. “We’re not killing her.”
“It’s OK,” Yvette says from the doorway.
We both spin around to see her standing there holding a stack of clothes that she did not just happen to find in her little lost and found.
“It’s OK,” she says again, sighing with a whole lot of sad resignation. “I know that’s why you’re here. You can kill me. I don’t mind because… I don’t want to live anymore.”
Logan and I both look down at the note he’s still holding.
Her suicide note.
Which describes, in detail, how this night would’ve gone if we hadn’t shown up.
Chapter Fourteen – YVETTE
Did I want to get them clothes when I offered?
Most days I’d have said no. It was too painful to go down into that room. Seeing everything I lost laid out before my eyes was unbearable. Too difficult to endure.
But I liked having someone to care for. It’s been so long since I had that. And so here was a chance to help in some small way. To make them more comfortable.
Even so, when the words came out of my mouth I was as surprised as they were. I count the weeks between visits. And it has been seventeen now. So the count would start over if I went down there to get them clothes.
At first, in the days following the “accident”, I counted the minutes.
The bar was closed, so I didn’t have to worry about customers. And I’d go upstairs, back when everything was still upstairs, and just wallow in the emptiness as I sat in the middle of all the things that used to fill me up. Then I’d go back downstairs and do something meaningless. Like wash down the already clean bar, or rearrange the whiskey bottles so all the labels were facing forward. Or play a video game.
I stayed away from the jukebox because Chris and I had a lot of fun with that machine.
Maybe that’s why, when AJ held out his hand for me to dance with him, I did. I took it and I let him swing me around. Then let him fuck me with Logan.
I guess I could make an argument for that. But I’m not going to bother.
I took his hand because he offered it. I let them fuck me because they didn’t ask permission.
I’d have said no if they were the timid sort. The kind of men who were not spontaneous and daring. Who were not in charge and bossy.
But they were, so I let them.
I just don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to make any more decisions. I’ve made enough of those over the last year. Enough for an entire lifetime.
Three caskets in one year is too many to choose in ten years.
Two funerals. Three burial plots. Two times I had to fill this bar with friends and family so we could say goodbye to the people we lost.
And then… those minutes that came after the accident. After the last funeral was over. When everyone went home and all the food was put away, I just sat here. Alone.
And yes, Chris had family still. But they live hundreds of miles away down in New Mexico.
I wasn’t going to go with them.
Maybe the bar was empty and l was lonely, but I didn’t want to leave it behind.
So those minutes were hard. And eventually they turned into hours, and hours became days. I started sleeping on the pool table. I got pillows and blankets, stuffed them in the office, and slept on top of them at night so I didn’t have to sleep in that bed alone or walk past that empty second bedroom.
I stopped eating upstairs too. Went days without cooking, just grabbing those pre-packaged cookies we sell. Or the beer nuts and pretzels we give out for free during happy hour.
But I had to do something. I had to move on. I was here, and they were not, and I had to open the bar back up. I thought I needed the money.
Of course, I didn’t need the money. After Daniel—my father-in-law—died, Chris inherited his entire estate. So we were OK. It was a decent amount of money. But Chris and I never really married. Not legally. And he had brothers and sisters who I assumed would get the estate after the “accident”.
