It couldn’t be and it was.
Joey.
My breath. I couldn’t catch it. My hands burning on the ice, my throat torn wide open and howling. I gulped, gulped at the night, until air finally returned to my lungs to scream again.
16
Someone had their hands on me, pulling me up, but I tore away. My palms scraped against the rough pavement, blistering ice. I looked up, up from a deep well, darkness, and was among strangers, could barely tell where one figure ended and the next began.
Then Alex was there, jacketless and grim. The sight of him, the feel of his flannel shirt against my cheek, his arm around me. I came back to the alley from wherever I’d gone.
“Is that someone she knows?” a man’s low voice said.
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “Doll—”
I was shivering, and not just from the cold. My throat was raw. My mouth was dry and tasted of metal. “It’s Joey,” I said.
“Joey,” Alex said.
“The boyfriend?” It was Silent Jim standing there.
“He’s gray,” I said into Alex’s shirt. “He’s… I think he’s…”
“I’ll take care of it,” Alex said.
But he couldn’t fix this.
I buried my face in his shoulder, catching the scent of his deodorant and something more animal that I couldn’t identify. It scared me. What was it? I couldn’t stop shaking.
What was Joey doing lying in our alley? Dead.Dead.
Dead? I pulled my face away from Alex to make sure I hadn’t imagined it.
Joey, wrapped in the blue curtains from our bedroom.
A real crowd had gathered, all the people getting their weekends started early emerging from the warmth of the pub to stand aghast, staring and whispering. Pascal stood at the corner, his face long. Silent Jim wore an expression I couldn’t quite grasp, more surprised than concerned. He was already looking past Joey, down the alley, as if looking for the waiter who’d brought the wrong dish to his table. Behind him, Primary Jim had the humanity to look startled.
Then I realized Primary Jim had turned my way.
“She’s in shock, Alex,” he said. “Here. I’ll take her inside, get her a glass of water. Or something stronger.”
Alex transferred me to him.
“But…” I reached for Alex, but this young Jim was capable, strong. I couldn’t seem to put up enough resistance to hold my ground. He steered me through the crowd that had gathered. I looked back, once. Alex, barely visible.
Then we were along the street, heading to the pub, and I had time to worry who was watching the tap with Alex away from the bar. No one was. Most of the customers had rushed out to watch the spectacle, but there were faces here, too, staring.
Jim was saying something.
“No,” I said, not sure what he had asked. I sank into the nearest chair before my legs gave out.
It couldn’t be Joey, right?
Joey, who would nod his head along to our songs, tapping the heel of a boot on the floor. He’d be wearing one of his short-brimmed hats, a Bat-Signal to the crowd that he was in the music scene, too, not just a hanger-on. Not just a boyfriend.
He had wanted so badly to pull his banjo from its case and join in, and now I wished I’d broken the band rule and shared the stage, justonce. I thought of his curly hair, a little too long most of the time, wild at the best of times, his slow smile spreading across his face—
Had he not left me high and dry after all? I didn’t understand, didn’t know how to feel. Not that I was being given a choice. I didn’t feel anything.
