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The girl peered around at the bar but appeared not to notice anyone was there. She caught what she was looking for on the other side of the room. She took off at a run, limping between the tables, toward the fire escape. She slammed her hands on the lever and exited. The fire bell exploded with noise.
A pair of police officers entered the bar. One nodded to the other. “You go through here. I’ll head around the back.”
The entire bar watched as the overweight officer sprinted past the revelers and took off through the same door the girl had gone through.
The moment the fire escape door slammed behind him, the alarm turned off and the silence erupted into hushed conversations, everyone wide-eyed with wonder at what had just taken place.
“Well, what do you think’s going on there?” I said, turning to Nighteko.
I was only talking to myself. He was gone.
Feeling a little bummed and more than a little putout, I downed the last of the fruit juice he bought me and moved over to our table. Maybe I didn’t get his number but I could have done, I told myself. That, at least, made me feel a little better.
“Alice?” Sirena said. “I think you ought to come outside. Hazel’s being sick.”
I gathered up my things. “Get the others and meet us at the parking lot. I’ll meet you there.”
I jammed a fistful of tissues in my pocket. A maid of honor’s job was never done.
Hazel groaned and emptied what remained—I hoped—of her stomach across the dirty alley floor.
“I swear,” she said between gasps, “I’m never going to drink another drop of alcohol ever again.”
I rolled my eyes. It was a good thing she couldn’t see me. She’d said this—or something similar—about a million times in the past. I doubted she meant it this time either.
I tapped her on the back comfortingly with one hand and held her hair back in a tight fist in the other.
“There, there,” I said. “You’ll be alright. There, there.”
This was one of the benefits of being the designated driver. I got to see my friends get sick and do idiotic things. It reminded me to pace myself when I wasn’t the designated driver.
I sighed and looked for something interesting to look at while my friend pumped her stomach. We were on the fringes of Main Street where the biggest establishments pumped out the loudest music. It wasn’t all trance.
Over there, at the Irish pub, a live band played modern folk music. And next to it, a wine bar with gentle jazz tunes. The women there were dressed up smart and enjoyed a quiet drink and conversation. Further along were the nightclubs, mixed in a thick miasma that gave me a thudding headache.
“Do you have any tissues?” Hazel said.
“Huh?” I said, my mind still miles away.
“Tissues,” Hazel said. “Do you have any?”
“Uh, yeah,” I said, digging in my pocket for the ones I’d snatched from the bar.
She dabbed at her lips. “Thanks.”
“How do you feel?” I said.
Her makeup was smudged and her mascara ran down either side of her face.
“I shouldn’t have done it,” she said.
I helped wipe her smudged makeup off. “I guess playing tongue hockey with a stranger is never the best idea in the world.”
“Not that,” Hazel said. “I mean Tom.”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine. He’s not likely to hear about it from any of us, is he?”
She just looked at me. My eyes danced between hers. She wasn’t referring to the random hot stranger.
