Free And Also With You by Tandy McCray

ONE
     
    The problem with whiskey is that when I run out I’m left not with an empty glass or a pounding head but the aching, paralyzing noise of my own mind.
    Most bars close early on Christmas Eve. It’s one of the busiest nights of the year for taverns but they usually still close since even peddlers of sin give up on the devil this one night a year. The liquor stores will close soon, too. If I want to make it to Brady’s for another fifth to get me through Christmas Day, I have to hurry. Kyle, the proprietor at O’Reilly’s Irish Pub, tries to pull a Mr. Martini on me as he’s closing up shop.
    “You want me to call you a cab, Miss Robin?” He’s messing with the blinds on the picture window up front, staring at what looks like more snow than we’ve had all year. It’s still coming down, too. Picture perfect. How absolutely lovely for all the little children and families.
    “No. I kin walkeht jas finh.”
    I don’t remember my coat being this big and octopus-like when I put it on this morning but I’ve been here all day. I might’ve lost weight. It’s possible. I have walked the thirty or so steps to the green-tiled bathroom at least eight times. I know I have.
    “Miss Robin.” Whoa. Kyle’s really close to me. I don’t know how he made it back to the bar so fast. I try to focus on him, on his big blue eyes or the dime-shaped hole in his chin, or even on the fat band of gold on his third finger that ties him to the lovely Arelia, but I cannot seem to really see anything for too long. Everything swims. Everything whispers. Everything goes away.
    “Miss Robin?” Is he talking to me? I guess so. I don’t think there’s anyone else left here but me. “Let me call you a cab. It’s freezing out there. You’ve a long walk, lass. Yah don’t need to be out in thau wind. You’ll catch a right cold.”
    “Es’okay.” I wave him off, blundering toward the door. I know just how to walk it. I’ve walked it so often, through so many last calls. I can go there in my sleep. I need to go just two steps this way, beyond the jukebox, and then twelve to the door, or fifteen if I have to take my time and watch my feet. “I know tha’ wey. Thanks yeh, though.”
    He’s grabbing some things up from the bar. It looks like his puffy coat and the deposit bag, and probably somewhere in the pile, his revolver. “Hang on, then. Let me call Arelia. I’ll just take yeh on home meself.”
    Why do men always think they need to save a girl? I don’t want to be saved. I am beyond it, and I have made peace with it, and I am welcoming of the fall. Come for me, Lucifer. The sooner we meet, the sooner I can stop burning through my inheritance and leave something for the children at St. Jude’s who will receive the entirety of the assets I will leave behind.
    He is wrestling with the register tape and calling for me to stop. I get the door open and the cold. Lord Almighty. It hits me like a wave of seawater to the eyes, stinging and burning and blinding. It sobers me up a bit, and Christ knows I can’t be having that. Brady’s is less than a mile. It’s slick as snot out here but I’ve got my good boots on and I can make it. I can. It’s not so much snow. I’d say only about fifteen inches so far and the plows are out. Their amber lights remind me of whiskey which reminds me of how O’Reilly’s closed, and I start to walk as fast as I can on the cobbled sidewalks, gritty with sand and salt.
    I get down to East Broad and make a split second decision to duck into the alley beside the tattoo shop. The concrete wall makes a chilly cushion against my face, but I lay my cheek against it, staring at the sidewalk six feet away and waiting for O’Reilly’s heavy steps.
    The plow truck goes by at just the right time, throwing a wall of snow up over the walk, covering my path into the alley. The snow is running down the gray concrete. My fingers make little swirls against it, pushing at the porous surface. It’s just like a