I PASS ROSSO’S APARTMENT on my way to the Orchard. I can hear Julie’s and Nora’s voices through the window, the Living rhythms that once stirred me like music. I still marvel at how effortlessly they converse, how smoothly they transition between speakers with nearly no break in tempo, much less the long, awkward pauses I’m used to, but it no longer enraptures me like it did. I don’t stop to listen, I don’t close my eyes and sway. My mind is full of hornets.
Although I’ve only been to the Orchard once, the route through the plywood labyrinth unfolds for me like I’m a regular, and I find myself standing in front of the pub’s thick oak door with little memory of how I got here. The yellow tree painted on it has flaked a little since I saw it last. The aluminum siding still bears two head-sized dents. A satisfied smile starts to creep onto my face, but I halt it. Why did I make those dents? What was I trying to achieve by cracking Balt’s head? Was I bringing justice to a man who preys on young girls, or was it just a brain-stem reaction to someone insulting my mate? The kind of primitive reflex that drives the lives of people exactly like Balt?
While I stand there staring at the door, it swings open, smacking me between the eyes. I nearly tumble off the mezzanine.
“Oh hey, sorry!” says the soldier who opened it, reaching out to steady me. “I didn’t see—” He recognizes me. He pulls his hand away like I’m a hot stove, straightens up, and leaves without further comment.
I lean against the railing, rubbing my forehead. What do I expect to happen for me in a pub? Am I going to strike up a conversation with the fellows at the bar, talk about sports and cars, wave a beer in the air and lead everyone in rousing anthems of Us vs. Them? No. My ambitions are nothing so grand. I’m just here to make my brain stop working.
Grigio’s prohibition is over, so the noise levels are now appropriately high, the atmosphere adequately raucous, and the amber nectar in the shot glasses is finally not apple juice. The pub is once again what it was built to be: a place for people to lower their drawbridges, to let others in and themselves out, to remember that life is more than the dimly lit tragedy of the daily grind. A warm, woozy light at the end of the day’s tunnel.
This will, of course, not be my experience here. I slip through the crowd and find a stool at the far end of the bar, and I can feel a dozen eyes on my back. For a variety of reasons, some good, most bad, I am famous. I am the first of the Dead to challenge the plague, the one who triggered a change that’s still spreading. I am the disease that cured itself. And I am the monster that kidnapped General Grigio’s daughter and brainwashed her into falling in love with it. I am the demon that lured legions of skeletons to the stadium and caused the deaths of hundreds of soldiers, and that may have personally infected General Grigio and thrown his converting corpse off the stadium roof. I am the reason there are zombies roaming their streets and eyeing their children. I am the reason nothing makes sense.
I avoid eye contact with everyone but the bartender. When he finally nods to me, I pull a bill from the small stack that Rosso gave me to help me “find my footing” and I set it on the bar.
He looks at me uneasily. “Uh . . . what can I get you?”
Another choice. Another opportunity to tell the world what kind of man I am. What do I wear? What kind of music do I listen to? What is my favorite drink?
I shrug and mumble, “Alcohol.”
He takes the hundred-dollar bill, which amounts to little more than a drink ticket in the stadium’s sad little private economy, and pours me a shot of whiskey. I dump it down my numb throat and stare at the bar top. The thick pine slab is completely covered in initials, doodles, and crass little dialogues. I peruse them like book spines, trying to imagine the stories behind the titles.
It goes on and on, all down the bar. Love, hate, jokes, and the simple urge to be noticed, scrawled onto the wood year after year. The bulk of the inscriptions are on the top of the slab, bumping and overlapping like chatter at a party, but leaning down, I notice a few on the underside, as if never meant to be seen. Most are standard crush confessions: Jerry loves Jenny, Jenny loves Joey, Joey loves Jerry. But one entry catches my eye. It appears to have been carved and then promptly scratched out. I can just barely piece the letters together.
I wince. Cold needles in my chest. I don’t know why this word stings; I pull my eyes away from it. They fall immediately on another line deep in the corner, scratched so faintly I almost miss it in the dim light.
I close my eyes, hoping for saltwater to ease their sudden burn. When I open them again, the bartender is looking at me. I slide him another hundred.
? ? ?
“R?”
My name hits me like a splash of cold water and I peel my face off the bar. The room spins for a moment before I can anchor it down and bring Julie into focus.
“What are you doing here?” she says. Her eyes are bright blue beacons in the blur of the bar, wide and worried.
“Drinking.” I don’t know how many times I’ve emptied the glass in front of me; it could’ve been just twice, but my body is still defining its limits and I do believe I’m drunk.