“Something like that,” I mumbled.
Setting the envelope on the bar, I ordered another beer. I didn’t know if I wanted to look. Pandora had gotten with the times and had stuffed herself into a USPS envelope.
“What is it?” Georgia crossed her arms over the bared skin of her stomach.
“Don’t know.”
“Who’s it from?” She seemed hesitant in her questioning, but I was grateful for her voice. It kept the panic attack a few feet back.
“Someone back home.” I kept it simple. Describing David would have meant discussing Rae, and the things I purposefully hadn’t packed for my trip to San Diego.
“Georgia! Food!” The cook’s voice carried over the sound of a ringing bell.
She jumped as we both shot back to the noise of the room. It was as if she’d been sucked along with me into the foggy silence of my impending slip into madness. She took two steps backward, keeping her eyes between me and the envelope, then turned and walked to the kitchen.
With another Guinness warming my veins and numbing my fear, I picked up the envelope again. David’s words fell off the bar and wedged themselves between my foot and the bar when I stopped the paper from hitting the ground.
It’s been six months, Regan. Just see what it is. It won’t kill you.
It might.
Before I could talk myself out of it further, I reached my hand into the envelope, wrapped my fingers around the flat, square item inside, and pulled it back out and set it on the bar.
Yes ... it might kill me.
It was a card. A square, sealed white envelope, with my old address in Barnstable written front and center, and Rae’s Concord address written in the top left corner.
Her handwriting.
I’d always found handwriting incredibly intimate. Whether words or notes on a page, they were the visible expression of the emotional and internal life spilled out through ink for the eyes to witness. View. Study.
“Regan.” Lissa stood behind the bar, knocking her knuckles in front of me.
My head snapped up. “Yeah?”
“Wings.” She set the plate down and looked at my glass. “Another Guinness?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Liquor. Something brown.”
While I waited for her, I grabbed the edge of the envelope, standing it up and tapping the corner on the bar a few times. I watched Georgia carry food and drinks across the bar twice before Lissa finally showed back up. Looking around, I realized the bar was growing thick with customers seeking their own elixir. Some to enhance. Some to numb. Some to just ... something.
I stared at the way Rae’s R’s curled up a bit at the tail. In my name and hers. Only, on mine, she hadn’t taken her pen from the paper before sketching a tiny heart at the end of the letter. I dropped the envelope onto the bar and closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose until I was sure it would pop off.
Then I looked at the liquor.
And that’s the last thing I remember.
Georgia
The longer the night wore on, the worse Regan looked. A piece of paper, the first one he’d removed from the envelope, was held against the bottom of the bar by the tip of one of his worn Converses. The more offending piece, it seemed, sat in the form of a square card. One that he’d look at, pick up, and set back down again between shots of whiskey.
Lissa robotically poured another shot and placed it in front of Regan. I’d have done the same on any other night, with any other customer. Watching this exchange, however, made my skin crawl. I didn’t know what was in that envelope, but I knew that I hadn’t seen Regan drink more than a pint or two whenever he’d been in here. It’s quite a gap between that and shots of whiskey without much of a breather in between.
I looked around at the cast of regulars surrounding the bar, wondering how many of them walked in here for the first time after a letter of their own. Sure, some were well-seasoned alcoholics, and the rest on their way. But, the first sip after a letter like that differs from the first sip ever.
My father had received a letter like that once. A goodbye letter from my mom, taped to the bathroom mirror one barren morning in January. As his feet screamed against the frigid tile floor, his world fell apart.
Followed 15 years later by his liver.
Sure, he’d been a heavy drinker before that. But ... it was different after the letter.
A half an hour later, the last of my dinner tables left, and I watched Regan’s forehead settle onto his fist as he leaned over the bar. I thought about calling CJ, wishing he were right around the corner as he’d always been on the weekends early in high school. Intuition whispered that this wasn’t a common scene for Regan, though, so who knows what advice CJ could have offered. Three thousand miles away, no less.