“No.”
“Oh,” she said. “Can I go with you?”
“I guess? How old are you, really?”
“Twenty-two,” she said.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “You can come with me but you can’t sit at the bar.”
“Deal,” she said, smiling like she’d actually made one. “Where are your dogs?”
“With their mom,” I said. Maybe I shouldn’t have used that word fordogs, but Sicily didn’t seem to mind.
“Oh,”Sicily said.
“What?Oh, what?” As we walked through the kitchen, the juddering of some big machinery started up somewhere in the other half of the building.
“That’s totally cool. I’m, like, an ally.”
I went to the wall and pounded on it, but it wouldn’t do any good.
“What? No, the dogs belong to my roommate.” I walked toward my room to grab some socks and shoes. Sicily took that as an invitation to follow me. “I just walk them sometimes, as a favor.”
“See?” Sicily said. “Youarenice. I knew it.”
I shook my head at her and went to the closet. I couldn’t wear my Fryes without unpacking the shards of songs crammed into them in front of Sicily, so I grabbed my red boots again, and a pair of the heavy wool socks I’d nabbed from Joey’s drawer at the old apartment. I was tired of being cold. I sat on the edge of the bed to pull them on. “I’m not as nice as you want me to be,” I said.
“Well, you let me in,” she said.
True, but I was in a weakened state. I didn’t want to talk to her about it.
“I have to dry my hair or I’ll never get warm,” I said. “Five minutes. Please don’t—you know.” I waved my hand to acknowledge my room, generally. “Just don’t.”
“I won’t,” she said.
It was Oona’s hair dryer, of course. It was Oona’s everything.
When I went into Oona’s room to grab it, I heard a faint noise, a thin, sharp whine a lot like the wind rushing through the storeroom toilet downstairs.
I guess that would be why Oona believed in the pub ghost. The window in her room leaked.
Alex could fix that, no problem.
At the thought of Alex, it all came back to me. Had he thought he was fixing something forme?
Back in the bathroom, I turned the dryer up high and loud, hurrying in case Oona came back and started making Sicily pancakes.
Bathrooms had such great acoustics. I put in a full performance of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and planned a humble speech thanking all my influences and the institution of the Grand Ole Opry for inviting me to their esteemed stage. I imagined myself in a Western suit, black velvet cut to nip in at the waist and bejeweled boot heels that would sparkle in the stage lights, while I gave a tearful remembrance of Joey—
The fantasy fell apart. I turned off the hair dryer.
The banging around next door hadn’t even paused. What were theydoingover there? It took me an extra second to hear the singing.
For once, it wasn’t me.
I eased open the bathroom door and listened.
She wasn’t bad. Not great, but not bad, and she wasn’t singing lyrics, exactly, just a sort of la-la placeholding mumble track instead of words. So even though the melody was familiar, I couldn’t quite catch hold of the song. I’d heard it recently, hadn’t I? Something by Kacey Musgraves, maybe? Lainey Wilson? I didn’t listen to as much contemporary music as Lourey thought I should, but I listened tosome.
