Page 86 of Potion Sickness

Tiffany’s eyeliner doesn’t survive that. Dorcas hands her a napkin.

Damien arrives a few minutes later, fifteen minutes after it would have been fashionable and forty-five minutes after he told his mother he’d stay home. Skye wheels him in. The bucket hat and sunglasses are gone. The disguise was only ever for the theater. The cast party is a different jurisdiction. The room gives him a round of applause he did nothing tonight to earn, and he receives it with grace.

“Fifteen minutes,” Skye says. “Annabel said we get to stay for fifteen minutes and that you can have one ginger ale.”

He gets his ginger ale in a wine glass and asks to be wheeled to the cake, where he studies his own frosted face, then holds out his hand for the knife.

“I’ve died on camera and on a stage more times than I can count,” he says, to the room. “I have reason to believe I can survive this.”

He cuts himself a piece out of his own jaw, examines it, and takes a bite.

He works the room from the chair, one table at a time, and I watch him tell four different people that the press is what filled that house tonight. I still owe Kayla Rigsby a phone call, off the record, when I know for certain who leaked the story. I’m beginning to think I know.

Not tonight, though. Tonight, I’m off the clock.

Somewhere around eleven, someone plays ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ on the jukebox. There are groans. Vivian, who has been on her feet since six in the morning and in heels since five in the afternoon, stands up, takes off the heels, sets them on the table, and holds out her hand to Dana.

They dance, and they are terrible at it. Neither of them knows who leads. Dana counts under her breath and Vivian seems to be dancing to some other, better song that exists only in her head. They step on each other twice in the first verse, and Dana laughs into Vivian’s shoulder. Vivian says something into Dana’s ear that no one else gets to hear, and they keep going, badly, all the way through.

Moonbeam joins in, alone. Ms. Pelham dances with Cody, who submits to it.

There’s a knock at the window. Bandit is on the outside sill.

“Are we celebrating?” His voice comes through the gap. “It seems like we’re celebrating.”

“You had a whole plate of food at the community center,” I say.

“But now there’s cake.”

I glance to the bartender for approval, and she nods, and Bandit is allowed in.

She presents him with a stick of butter on a saucer.

“I’ve heard about you,” she says.

Bandit takes the entire stick in both hands and holds it to his chest. “I love this establishment.”

“That animal,” Englebert says, from the bar, “will tell every raccoon in the county to begin infiltrating this space.”

“Let him,” the bartender says. “We could use the business.”

The party thins the way they do. Skye wheels out an overtired Broadway veteran who stayed far beyond his allowed fifteen minutes. He blows kisses at his own half-eaten face on the way out. Pru leaves, ten diplomatic minutes later, carrying her flowers.

Gabe and I are somehow the last two at a table, again.

“I’ll walk you to your car,” Gabe says.

“My car is right across the street. As always.”

“I know where your car is.”

Outside, the night has cooled off. Englebert is already asleep in the passenger seat. Gabe walks me to the driver’s side and then doesn’t open the door, and doesn’t leave, and puts his hands in his pockets.

“So,” he says. “I’d like to take you to dinner.”

“It’s nearly midnight and we just had cake.”

“No, Mari. Not now. Not this. Not baskets at the Hearth with Hannah, not coffee at your kitchen table with a cat mediating, not sandwiches at a rehearsal. Dinner. At an actual restaurant. I’ll wear my good jacket. Somewhere that isn’t the Hearth & Stone, or Black Eyed Susan’s, even. Just you and me, no play, no poisoning, no⁠—”