Free Miss Misery by Andy Greenwald

imagined.
    â€œYou look different,” she said. “Did you cut your hair?”
    â€œMaybe,” I said. “It could just be the light.” I hadn’t expected her to recognize me. What was that about?
    â€œI’m gonna get a drink,” she said sprightly. “Why don’t you move to the table in the shade?”
    Such a simple solution! I slid across the room to the opposite booth. She didn’t sound Canadian, I thought. At least not yet.
    When she came back to the table, holding something mixed in a highball glass (was a Tom Collins yellow? I couldn’t remember) and another pint for me, I finally managed a decent look at her. Her cheekbones were what I expected; her left arm was ensnared in what looked like a dozen fluorescent club wristbands, there was an ADMIT ONE stamp fading on her right hand, and her eyes were dancing. But she looked young. High-school young, and breakable, too—there was a purplish bruise on her left knee and a tic-tac-toe board of red scrapes on her right. Her mouth was twisted into something like a grin, and I realized she was as nervous as I was.
    â€œNo,” she said, putting the drinks down. “You look really different. Maybe it’s the daylight. Maybe you’re like Batman!” She giggled and squeezed a lemon wedge into her drink. “I’ve never known a superhero before.”
    She fumbled in her bag for a moment and came up with a bruised pack of Parliaments. “Elsie lets me smoke in here before six as long as I’m quick about it.” She exhaled right in my face. “Do you want one?”
    â€œI don’t smoke,” I said before I could catch myself.
    There was a pause as she scanned my eyes for the joke, and then she burst out laughing. “Okaaaaay!”
    She smoked well—too well, probably, for someone so young. But she had a real flair about it, letting her wrist flounce about just so as she inhaled, flicking the ash without ever looking to see where it was falling. Still, it wasn’t what I expected. Miss Misery was slick, in control, alluring, and impossible. Cath Kennedy had a nervous laugh and a tendency to play with her hair. She was just a kid, and I was about to confuse the living Christ out of her.
    â€œSo,” I said.
    â€œSo,” she said. And clinked her ice cubes. “I was thinking a lot today about what we talked about the other night.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œYeah. I was. And I think I’ve decided that I was right.” She took a drink and stared at me.
    â€œOK.”
    â€œYou don’t remember what we were talking about?”
    â€œNot really. Um. I’m sorry.” Why was I apologizing?
    â€œMan, that must have been better coke than I thought. We were talking about that movie, with Jim Carrey. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The end of it. Remember?”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “I remember that movie.”
    â€œDo you remember what the last line is? After Kate Winslet hears the tape of him complaining about her and she runs out of the apartment and says all this stuff about how it’s pointless because they’re just going to drive each other crazy and everything’s going to end badly? What he says next?”
    I took a drink of my beer. Someone at the bar was handing the bartender what seemed to be a wind chime. It tinkled lazily until the killer hushed it with her palm. “I do remember, yeah.”
    â€œHe says—”
    â€œâ€˜OK.’”
    â€œExactly!” She stubbed out her cigarette. “And you think that he meant—”
    â€œHe meant OK, like, ‘OK, I’m aware of that. But it’s worth it. Let’s give it another shot.’ Like, ‘Some things are inevitable and meant to be.’”
    She snorted. “But why would he say that? They just found out that everything that they feel about each other is a lie—that everything is doomed to repeat itself and be