Page 326 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

In the back of a Rolls-Royce, in a Poinsettia-red silk dress, I ride through the city to the Clover, passing concrete towers and hollow alleys, snow tapping against the window’s glass.

With every mile closer to Andrew,

the car turns airless.

I want to heave out the nerves, retch Celie’s words out onto the leather seat, but it’s too late, the car slides up to the curb, the neon green Clover sign buzzing above.

The driver exits and rounds the rear,

opens the door.

“I’ll only be a minute,” I tell him, noticing passersby slowing to ogle the car.

Soon as my heels hit the sidewalk,

I glance down at them.

My ankles are wrapped in liquid champagne—gold that looks poured onto my feet in a single, bubbly stream.

In the story by the Brothers Grimm,

I’m neither Cinderella nor something good. Instead, I’m the stepsisters, hacking off my own toe, slicing away my own heel to make the shoe fit, mutilating myself just to stand in a feeling, a moment I don't deserve.

Now I’m half-frozen, lungs punching out frost, staring down at my feet as I stand on colors of cinder and ash, trying to find a way to take another step without taking my heart with me.

So before I glance up,

my eyes glaze over,

as if a mask’s sliding down my face.

Like stepping into a fairy tale⁠—

Once upon a time, I tell myself,

a girl in red approaches the bar…

The heavy oak door groans open, and for a heartbeat, the winter wind chases her heels as she steps out of the gray winter slush of Manhattan and into an Irish pub dressed in 1920s vintage.

Soon as the door thuds shut behind her, the crowd that was singing “Fairytale of New York” goes deathly still—every head turned, a slow-motion ripple stare as she stands there, red wine wrapped around a torso.

Her dark hair cascades in waves of night-shade, waterfalling around her shoulders, crashing down at her waist.

Oh, how she’s never felt so out of place.

But it happens exactly as she’d write it in one of her songs, with the noise falling away, the crowd dissolving into the shadows, leaving a wide path straight to him.

He’s huddled at the till with another bartender—female, hot, brunette, tall, five-foot-fuck-her—their heads close together as they count bills, her laughing over the roar of The Pogues, her shoulder bumping into his chest.

In that moment,

he doesn’t see her so much as feels her.

His eyes lift off the co-worker, forgetting she exists, and he turns toward Allison, smile severed, leaving his face exposed and aching. The light from the Christmas tree catches the glass in his eyes, his pulse fluttering frantic at the base of his throat.

Allison stands by the door,

knots in her belly.