I’m going to fall out of my chair and get trampled.
I’m going to have a heart attack and get carried away on a stretcher.
I’m going to die.
Dean is looking around, not paying attention to me. He’s looking for an out, any way to abandon me.
“I’m going to die.” I catch his attention with my comment, and I look Dean directly in the eyes. “Do something.” I’m beginning to hyperventilate.
“You’re not going to die, Madeline.” Dean looks back. “I don’t need to do anything. Just breathe.”
“I am breathing.” I wave my hands up and down with my breaths, which are long and slow, yet I still feel like I’m hyperventilating. My heart is racing. This is it. Just like Andy. I’m going to die in a dive bar in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of strangers and none of my loved ones. My fucking garden.
My vision is fading in and out like I’m going to pass out. I’m heaving and huffing, and Dean grabs my cold, dead, fish-like hand. He squeezes my hand into a balled-up fist and nods, and then flags down a cocktail waitress. He orders me a ginger ale and himself a beer.
“Exposure therapy. Huh? That’s one way to go about it,” He reassures me.
“Right.”
“What did I tell you?”
“If it was a heart attack, I’d know it. I’d be on the floor by now.”
The waitress arrives with a ginger ale and the beer. She sets them on paper coasters. I gulp down about half my glass in half as many seconds. I bring a massive intake of air into my lungs.
I’m not dead yet. Not dead yet. Not yet. Not now.
There’s a man, albeit a strange man, who cared enough about me to drive me here. I pull it together. “I—I can see why Andy liked it here so much,” I stutter, begging my body to get a grip.
“Yeah? Why?” He takes a sip of his beer, totally at ease. He doesn’t seem to mind me.
“The music.” My eyes dart around. There’s a three piece set. A saxophonist, a drummer and a singer. “It’s right—right up his alley. This is his sound. One of them anyway. Andy loved jazz.”
“But he wasn’t a jazz singer?” Dean asks.
“No.” I take a sip of bubbly ginger ale. “He was not.”
We’re silent, and we listen to the set. I don’t know much about jazz music, but I like it. I think Andy would have liked it even more. There’s something about a saxophone late at night that makes you wish you were dancing. There’s many others dancing, but Dean and I stay still at the high top table, lest I freak out any more.
“You don’t have to stay,” I tell him.
“Oh, I’m staying.” He orders another drink. This time a shot. He downs it before he finishes his sentence. “Someone needs to watch you.”
As much as I want to deny it, someone does need to watch me. But I don’t know why he decided it has to be him.
“Maybe someone needs to watch you,” I say. “You’re sure drinking a lot for someone who has somewhere to be.”
“My thing can wait,” Dean says, the wrinkles in his forehead appearing. Then why did he need a rental car so damn bad?
I swing my feet above the floor and pivot to watch the music.
There’s a small, tight wooden stage in the corner of the bar area, where three or four lights are shining on the band. The singer is an older man, dressed to the nines. His face is radiating in the lights. He was made for this. His bandmates are following his lead. The song ends and the singer takes a gulp of water—he’s sweating. It must be hot under the lamps in that suit. The cocktail waitress arrives with Dean’s third drink.
“What is that?” I ask as he stirs in an olive on a toothpick.
“Have you never seen a martini?”
“It’s been a while. I didn’t peg you as the kind of guy who goes for a martini.”
