Free I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl by Kelle Groom

keep my bottle low while I’m driving down the highway. It burns in stages, like an elevator. By seven o’clock, I’m drunk. Drive to the Night Train. It’s just one big room. This is where I’d cocktail-waitressed briefly in 1982, almost two years ago.
    Three bars. Black vinyl booths with cigarette burns. On the tables, round red glass, beveled, each with a candle inside, a yellow living room. Calm. The band starts at ten. When I worked here, I had trouble counting money in the dark, keeping it wrapped around my fingers all night.
    Bill’s not busy yet—he’s at the door. Kisses my cheek. “Don’t charge her,” he tells the bouncer. “She doesn’t even drink,” he says proudly. At first, it’s blindfold dark. I sit at the bar, back to the wall. Bill happy at first, friendly. Clatter, clink. It gets busy. I want a drink, but Bill won’t serve me. I’m not thinking that I’ve just lost almost six months sober, definitely not thinking of going to a meeting. I’m thinking of not being lonely. I’m waiting for the fun to start, for Bill to love me.
    He laughs scared when I order from the other bartender, but his face is serious with concern. The short glass against my lips, lift my chin. Drink it in front of him. He tries to grab the glass. I giggle. People are calling his name—he’s too busy to stop me. I’ve won—he can only give me nervous glances. I am very drunk, writing on damp cocktail napkins when Susan arrives. She sits down, blond and compact, flirts with Bill.
    The light in the empty ladies’ room glares like a hospital. No door on the toilet. I smash my glass on the enamel tank. Tiny red bubbles on my right hand. Back on the barstool, I flirt with the guy to my left, hiding the glass. A few nights before I’d dreamed that I saw the date of my death inscribed on a stone: August 6, 1944—age 63. Wondered who I was. The bottom of the glass intact, and I slid the edges into my wrist. Eight little bones in two perfect rows. The bone next to my thumb is a boat; the bone beside the boat is a moon. A bracelet that lets my fingers work. I don’t look down. The word for skin used to be grass covering an open place. I quietly set the broken glass on the bar, blood on it. Bill is funny, so predictable with wide eyes, mouth open. The open place is spilling out.
    I blacked out. A few months later, Bill says, “You don’t even know what happened.”
    “Tell me.” He’ll turn away. We’ll be back in the other train car bar—he’s got his old job back. I won’t be drinking, won’t drink again. But it’s crazy that I’m there, standing that close to him, allthe bottles shining. He won’t move away after all. He’s right there. He tells me I had sex in my car with someone I didn’t know. Got a condom from the bouncer. What kind of man has sex with a woman with blood on her hands?
    I don’t know why I left my car in the parking lot, along with my keys, coat, my tights, panties, purse. I come out of the blackout walking down the highway. Black elfin boots, legs bare to my thighs, my skirt. No idea of time. The all-night Denny’s bright, and I go in to use the pay phone to call Bill. But I don’t have a dime. Stand in the light looking at the phone. Walk out. Back to the highway. How do I find Bill? It’s cold. Even in Florida, January is cold.
    This is how girls disappear. Walking until they become darkness. A van stops. Someone vanishes.
    A car does stop. Window down. The driver has dark hair. “You look like you could use some help,” he says. He’s older than me, but not old. Maybe thirty. Pale. His car is small, our bucket seats close together. I get in the car. He doesn’t ask what’s happened. He doesn’t ask how I am. “Where do you want to go?” he asks me. I tell him.
    “Turn left at the apartment complex …Here.”
    Bill’s apartment. The time in between seeing him at the Night Train and now is like a black Polaroid. I don’t get out of the car. Bricks in front of us,