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Maggie pours some of the thick drink into a shot glass, downs it, pours herself a little more, downs it again.
“There we go!” Georgia says, and starts to applaud.
Maggie’s throat starts burning, her eyes tearing up. “That is strong.”
“Stop trying to make me jealous.”
Maggie looks down at her empty shot glass. When she was searching for this for Nate, a store clerk told her it was banned because it could make you crazy. How long does that take? It is starting to feel like she is going quietly crazy anyway, but it would be nice to have the alcohol to blame it on. She hasn’t eaten yet today, nothing except the popcorn. She is hungry, specifically hungry, wants ginger pancakes. She tries hard to crave something else, knowing that it means she is in trouble. As a little girl, whenever she was about to get sick, or she would sense disaster striking, her craving for them would rise up, like a bright red hazard sign. She thinks it has something to do with one of her clearest memories of her mother—the two of them sitting on Maggie’s bed, early one Saturday morning, eating ginger pancakes and drinking unsweetened iced tea. Listening to the radio. She can still call it up whenever she eats the pancakes. Not just the memory. But the feeling, as if it is happening right now.
“Can I ask you something personal?” Georgia says.
Maggie turns her body so she is completely facing Georgia. “Of course.”
Georgia looks at Maggie, then back up at the ceiling. “I’m having a little girl,” she says. “I found out yesterday.”
“Oh my God, Georgia!” Maggie touches her arm. “That’s amazing.”
Georgia nods. “You’re the only one who knows.” She pauses, rubbing her belly. “You’re the only one that knows, including Denis.”
Which is when Maggie remembers how this started. “And what’s the question?”
“Do I have to tell him?”
“Why wouldn’t you tell him?”
“Denis really wanted a boy. I didn’t care, as long as the baby is healthy, but Denis did, and I found out because I wanted to surprise him, if it were a boy. Now that it’s not, I am worried.”
“Worried about what?”
“That he won’t be happy. That he’ll be disappointed and unable to hide it.”
Maggie looks over at Georgia, trying to think of how to calm her nerves, trying to calm her. “I’m sure he is going to be thrilled. When that baby comes into the world, it will be the only baby he wants.”
“How do you know?”
“I think that’s just the way it works.”
She smiles, uncertain. “In the movies?” she says.
“And television,” Maggie says.
Georgia’s smile gets bigger, starts to light up her face, just as Maggie hears a loud vibrating noise, and Georgia pulls her cell phone out of her jeans pocket. She holds out the phone so Maggie can see DENIS on the caller ID. Then she flips her feet over the side of the bed and sits up, so she can answer.
“Hey, baby,” she says. “Where are you? Please tell me that you are at the airport, getting on the plane.”
From the expression on Georgia’s face, which goes immediately back from happy to far less so, it is clear that, wherever Denis is, it is not at the airport getting on the plane.
Georgia gets up and Maggie thinks she is going to leave the room, but she goes into the closet, closing the door behind her. Maggie looks down at the shot glass in her hand, trying not to listen to Georgia’s voice, which is getting increasingly loud.
And suddenly, the closet door is open and Georgia is standing there, no cell phone in her hand.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she says.
Maggie nods. “Okay.”
She looks pissed and for a second she thinks Georgia is going to take the absinthe bottle and down the whole thing. But she doesn’t. She just gets real close to Maggie.
“Let’s get out of here,” she says.
