A siren called out, a thin needle in my ear, tiny in the distance but building, heading toward us.
Primary Jim appeared at my side. Time had passed because he placed a steaming mug in front of me. I tried to wrap my hands around the cup but I was far from steady enough. I shook in my seat, afraid I might knock over the table.
Outside, the sirens wailed up and down their scales and back again, drawing near. My mind leapt to the vocal warm-up I’d used to shut Marisa up.
Was that only yesterday? Yesterday that I had stripped Joey’s drawer of wool socks out of spite?
The siren had compressed and swallowed all the air. I could barely stand the volume. Then it cut out abruptly. A fire truck filled the pub windows, jerking to a quick stop against the curb.
Joey’ssister. What would I say to her?
Jim was saying something again.
“No,” I said without hearing the question. The rattle of doors and equipment from outside had my attention. I couldn’t look away. “What?”
He sat across from me. “I said, that’s the guy? The one who used to come watch you perform?”
“Joey.”
“Joey, yeah.” He sucked at his teeth. “I’m sorry. That must be… terrible?”
Was heasking? I couldn’t sit still. I stood up, and he did, too. I didn’t know where to go. There was nowhere to go where this wasn’t happening.
I sat back down. He hesitated, then sat down across from me again.“Was he maybe… mixed up in something?” he asked. “Something bad?”
“Joey? Joey wasn’t mixed up inanything. Like, nothing.” Joey worked at a trampoline park in a strip mall for a buck over minimum wage and routinely got written up by his manager, a guy younger than him, for talking to the customers too much. He played banjo for a group that never quite launched into a band, with Ned on pedal steel guitar. Pedal steel! Might as well be a pianoforte, the instrument was so precious and disjointed from modern times. And heavy. They could have been a theremin and xylophone duo and got more gigs. For fun, Joey argued with people in pubs about free will until they gave up their spot in line for the dartboard.
He had wanted more for himself. For us. I was the one who hadn’t been game to try.
“Oh, God,” I gasped, curling into myself.
“No drugs? Nothing like that?”
I sat up quickly. “He barely drank,” I barked. “No! I don’t… I don’t know. Why are you bothering me about this right now, Jim?”
“I’m not… My name’sQuin,” he said.
I wiped at my nose with the back of my hand. “Is it?”
“It’s weird, him ending up in that alley in a rug.”
I wasn’t sure which part of what he’d just said to argue with. That it wasweird, that he could possibly be named anything other than Jim. That Joey was rolled up in—
“Curtains,” I said.
Quin leaned over the table. The room closed in. “What about Alex?”
A long moment passed, until I realized he was serious, that my body had gone still. “What about Alex—what do you mean?”
“Is he into anything dirty? Costs a lot to run a place like this in the city. To keep hold of it, keep it open.”
“He inherited it,” I said. “McPhee, that’s his name. His family. His great-great-something, his grandpa, his dad. And now him. If he’d started his own business, he never would have chosen abar…”
I’d said too much.
“I know about the drugs,” Quin said.
I turned to the window and the commotion outside. “What drugs?” I tried casually.
