Heaped on each other, fingers clamped between the knuckles, my hands squish down on the bride’s grandpa. Squish the chest part where his tie hung half a Macarena ago, before he leaned against the buffet table and clawed the tie off. With every mash my healing copper bracelets launch elbow high then jangle back down at my wrists with a different engraved wisdom facing up.
Mash – Obstacles are chances.
Mash – Intuition > Intellect.
Across the walls of the Infinity Ballroom rainbows twist, thrown from the DJ’s lights. Twist past the dance floor crowded with laid out guests. Past drooling mouths and across the super cringe banner that says: Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Carson Lanza.
Hammering everyone’s ears is the too-fast beat of some bouncy eighties banger. This girl group earworm roaring in the DJ’s speakers about Venus and fire and it’s wonking the pace of my CPR’ing. They sing something like:
Hmm-mmm Venus… hmm-mmm fire… you’re expired…
Scooping wedding cake out of grandpa’s mouth with two fingers, the smell of raspberry buttercream burps up. My pinch fingers lock the old man’s pockmarked nose shut and the others pry down his chin. Today’s horoscope said: Seize opportunities for positive change with both hands. Into the slick mess my mouth clamps over his, huffing breaths into this stranger grandpa. Except everybody here’s a stranger to me. Minus Lilah.
Lilah cruises the emptied out bridal party table and plucks up a champagne flute. All in-charge, all unchecked Scorpio energy, she dumps the leftover swallow out on the carpet and whips it dry. Her diamond white minidress sucks tight across the bits they’d blur out on network TV and not much else. She tilts her calfskin clutch to the flute’s lip and golden liquid fills the thing up.
I’ve been support-netting Lilah through work trivia nights. Orbiting her during Margarita Mondays. When Lilah’s vodka-sponge coworkers wanted to pound pitchers after third quarter business reviews, it was me beside her. Retrograde. Ready to throw myself in front of any incoming Patron shots. Before me, these same friends howled at Lilah when she took a drunk header into a lobby sculpture at the Four Seasons. Forever after that they called her Lilah-bility.
But Lilah-bility hadn’t touched a drop of the sauce since the winter solstice under my watch. Harmony. Moderation. Lilah pays me in cash for my balanced scales, my whole Libra vibe. If she had a legit sponsor they’d be on her case about slippery places. A proper sponsor would’ve had her repeat the line about how our secrets keep us sick. Or how patience takes patience. The way whiskey-hounds need advice that fits in a single sentence.
Hmm-mmm Venus… hmm-mmm fire… your new hire…
This ancient song’s caught in a forever loop since the DJ dropped. Buttercream smears along our smooshed together mouths as more of my air puffs into grandpa.
Inviting your ex to your wedding, it’s such a Leo move. Such a twist-the-knife play on Carson’s part. Nobody ever counts on the other half of the last trainwreck RSVP’ing yes like Lilah did. But water sign Scorpio versus fire sign Leo? Neither sign knows how to back down. Although if sun signs were the whole deal on matchmaking then me and Selene would still be a thing.
For real though, who plans a wedding when the Sun is conjunct the North Node in Taurus? Now Carson’s trying to thump his mom’s chest back to life. The bride’s slouched against the baseboards plucking air conditioning vents. On the abandoned microphone Lilah slur-screams, “We throwing a bouquet or…?” She flips the champagne flute over her shoulder.
From far off sirens whine over each other, getting louder. In the windows red and blue strobes swirl with the rainbow of DJ lights. My palms feel for the hiccup of a heartbeat while the rush in my own chest thumps harder. The up-facing bracelet right now says: Panic is poison.
At Lilah’s place that first time, her featured Zillow listing place, she prodded me into her walk-in pantry. She waved a hand at the Costco shuffled shelves and said empty them. Everything. At Lilah’s you’d want to take a good sniff on the blood orange grapeseed oil before you drown your glazed salmon with citrus vodka. Pour a jar of piccata pan sauce without taking a whiff first and you’d sop your panko crusted cutlets in Lemoncello.
Lilah’s dog, her wispy little mop of white fur dog, circled my feet while I glugged bottles down the kitchen sink.
Lilah hollered, “The pistachio oil, Bangles. That too.”
Bangles because of the copper bracelets stacked up my wrists. My constellation of Libra horoscope wisdoms, each picked by me special:
Not every opinion needs attention.
Don’t dwell. Ever forward.
Lilah wrestled the dog’s head while I walked out more hidden liquor to the sink. She wormed cheese into its snout as he corkscrewed out of her grip. Rolling its tongue over its teeth, the wispy mop horked a chalky pill onto the floor. Another trip to the sink and Lilah was wedged against the dog, squeezing his middle. Trying to smuggle the same chalky pill into him with peanut butter.
“Heartworms,” Lilah said.
Lilah yelled from the kitchen how she used to keep booze in legit bottles. Until Carson ultimatum’d her into going cold turkey. She had to make a big show of chucking all her hooch.
“For a minute, there, I was good,” Lilah said.
Then Carson wrecked one too many pestos with whiskey in the olive oil bottle.
Through the pantry wall Lilah yelled for me to skip the topmost shelf. That there’s no secret sauce up there in the packed together rows of organic rice. Curious Libra me, though, I tippy-toe snatched a top shelf box and picked off the tab of clear tape that held it shut. Inside the box my fingernail picked at a brick. Like a brick if you slice it in half the long way. Half a brick skinned in clear plastic and underneath was the staring face of some founding father. Secret stashers, they’ll hide anything.
Hmm-mmm Venus… hmm-mmm fire… poor attire…
From the entrance comes the thump of paramedics shouldering the door. Trying to bulldoze the unconscious someone’s body blocking it. The warm in grandpa’s skin keeps fading under my frosting smeared lips. More and more his pink cheeks are turning the color of Lilah’s shrink wrap dress.
Another heavy body slams the entrance. Selene’s almost definitely out there. On shift for the weekend in her cute blue cargo pants and her brown ponytail fixed tight. Trading codes with dispatch over her radio. Textbook Aries Selene, she’s barking orders and oh my god she’ll be right up in your face if you don’t do everything her way. One vein like blue pencil lead threading up her temple, she’ll call you flaky. Woo-woo.
My mouth forms a word on repeat with every mash on the old man. A whisper word only for me and the shape of it is please.
After the pantry clean-out, the Instagram of Carson’s fiancé became my obsession.
Lilah doing ab burn challenges, holding side planks on her living room floor. The dog licking sweat off her neck while we hate-watched Say Yes to the Dress.
Eyeing my phone I’d say, “This fiancé’s photoshopped. That butt’s unreal.” And Lilah’s teeth would squeak together as her crunches sped up. Lilah would grind out HIIT sessions, me saying, “Who even cares that Carson’s fiancé teaches Barre?” Throwing her a towel I’d say, “Let’s see how good she looks when she hits your age.”
Nights of Lilah steaming broccoli and logging every calorie on an app, I’d brush a hand past the meatiest spot on her hip and say, “The fiancé’s aerial workout post today is so cringe.” And Lilah would hack the broccoli until you could almost drink it.
Hmm-mmm Venus… hmm-mmm fire… door of wire…
My wrists are an angry pink where the bracelets bounce. Plastered on my face, slicked through all my fingers is the raspberry buttercream smell. Powering the weight of me down through locked elbows, my palms feel something bust. The crack of a boot through iced over gutter water and grandpa’s chest doesn’t spring back anymore. The up-facing bracelet says: Shatter resistance.
All my Lilah-work cash, it’s for the Seven Sisters Reconnection Center. Pinned images on my vision board imagine the center in Milos, Greece. On the Aegean island where they found the Venus de Milo statue. At SSRC we’ll take meditative strolls along the pale gray landscape of volcanic rock carved smooth and lunar-like by the elements. On full moon lunations you’ll skip stones imbued with all your worries into the dark ocean.
If your heart’s in it you could be a sober companion tomorrow. There’s no official training. My spiritual advisor friend, sandwiching my hand between his bony ones, he talked how this was my calling. In that church basement an equinox ago, our styrofoam cups sitting on the floor full of burnt coffee. He said my stars had an evolution in store for me. This same friend counsels the fragile outgoing souls for Earthshine Addiction Center. Counsels women with Lilah money who aren’t about to leave their cush Earthshine suite for some sober living house. Now when he builds a discharge plan for the gin-junkies returning to real life, he snags a referral fee for dropping my name.
Hmm-mmm Venus… hmm-mmm fire… more desire…
Mashing down hard on grandpa, every time getting less pushback inside from anything hard, I make myself picture a spoon. Just a spoon cracking away at the caramelized crust on top of a creme brûlée topped with raspberries. Solar flare bursts of my own pulse whip inside my ears. Please. Please. Please.
All day yesterday, before Carson’s big ball-and-chaining party, Lilah wouldn’t answer her phone. All day call-less. Text-less. MIA into the night so long I had to drive around hunting the dot of her on Find My Friends. All to end up here in the dead of night, this same Infinity Ballroom place. Lilah’s BMW sat jammed over a parking block in the lot, open and dinging. On the dumpster side of the ballroom the service door swayed on its hinges.
Inside the place, I pushed into the kitchen through the swinging doors. Where Lilah sat cross-legged on the floor, a bottle of well vodka propped up in her lap. Think of the rubber mat that catches the overflow when bartenders get sloppy with their pours. She reeked like that. Her head drifted in a slow seesaw. With another bottle she held by its neck Lilah hammered at a pile of something scattered beside her. Lemon candies.
Clunk!
Tiny rectangle candies, but only the lemons.
Clunk!
She struggled to pinch up a sprinkle’s worth of the candy dust with her black fingers. Food-gloved fingers. Holding the pinch over the mouth of the bottle in her lap she peppered in the candy dust like you’d feed a goldfish.
“How long since the dog’s been out?” I said.
Her hammering bottle thwacked the floor. More candy dust. All compassionate but firm, I told her to give me her car keys and the house alarm fob. I’d hurry to take care of the dog. I’d get her an Uber.
I said, “A relapse is just part of your journey.” Me doing hurt parent. Doing not mad, just disappointed. Spotting my hand sneaking in Lilah tucked her clutch tight into her armpit.
She said, “Nobody’s ever gotten dead on Xannies.”
The moon hanging full in the kitchen windows, the whole vibe was: Don’t stand in the way of growth. Of consequences.
“Sometimes,” I said, ”the best teacher is a capital B Bottom.”
Hmm-mmm Venus… hmm-mmm fire… you’re a liar…
Keep your eyes on grandpa. Right here. Anywhere but over there. The scrambling paramedics. Where the girl who threw flower petals down the aisle bobbles limp in that screaming lady’s arms. Blue shirt paramedics that aren’t Selene hustle around pairs of feet that aren’t moving. Oxygen masks on aunt-somebody’s face. Uncle-somebody’s pupils blasted with a pen light. The blur of Selene’s face near the flower girl.
The screaming lady yells, “She only had a little!”
There are drunks who love sneaking kids a sip to watch their little faces scrunch up.
Lilah-bility into the microphone: “Say it with me,” lifting her clutch to the room, “God grant me the serenity to change the things I cannot accept…”
Some paramedic shouts for Narcan, yelling goddammit someone get him Narcan and Selene yells back, “We all need Narcan, man.”
My piled up hands keep mushing into the custard feel of grandpa’s chest. Both of us smeared and tacky with cake frosting. The crème brûlée crust of him chipped away gone. All that needed to happen was me in Lilah’s house without her there. The house alarm turned off. Me and the white mop dog all alone for less time than it’d take you to down a flute of champagne.
Somewhere a plug’s pulled and the girl group earworm finally shuts up. The DJ’s rainbow drowns in brutal white as the lights snap on. Selene slides in next to me on the knees of her cute cargo pants and bumps me aside. Hard. So hard my elbow barely gets down before my head smacks the dancefloor. She takes over mashing on grandpa.
Without missing a compression Selene spits, “Of course you’re here. Of course. Queen Shitshow.”
Her tight brown pony tail frays apart more with every downward push. She rags about how I trainwreck special days like it’s my job. Smudging the sticky off my mouth with the back of my hand I say, “Go chew out that one.” My chin points at Lilah.
What’s hilarious to Selene, what’s miss-a-compression funny is me telling her I’m just the sober companion. “Somebody put you in charge of keeping her sober?” she pulls her head at Lilah, “You?”
Without a doubt Selene can be counted on to tell the cops about Lilah. Aries the narc. Aries the credit whore. She rattles coded talk into her shoulder radio, her hair hanging all the way loose now. Nobody had a gun to Lilah-bility’s head, I say. My lips still gluey, I say nobody made her load the booze with Xanax.
Selene lifts an eyebrow, pulls back one corner of her mouth. She says, “Xanax doesn’t get you Narcan’d.”
If you’re lucky, the bad choices you make wasted won’t be the Lilah kind where you’re buying bottles of Xanax from a friend’s friend you’ve never met. Selene lectures how these wannabe pharmacists like to hook newbies good that first time by sweetening the pills with a kiss of Fentanyl.
A gurney with the flower girl rushes past us. Then another with the white train of a bridal gown drooping down. Lilah throws elbows, chicken wings her arms wide as the cops force her wrists behind her.
“Bangles!” She drops to a squat, digging a heel out in front of her. She shoves back against the cop handcuffing her.
“Give the dog his meds!” She yells.
Floating into the air, hauled up by her ankles and elbows, her tight dress cinches and slips. Lilah-bility’s still yelling as she’s trucked out the doors by cops. All the way a Scorpio exit.
Selene snatches up my wrist. With her long brown hair draped over my bracelets she reads, “You are enough?” She shoves my arm away with a punctured tire hiss. Except her head yanks along with it and she says ow. Gnarled up in the clasp of a bracelet are strands of brown Selene hair. She shouts, “Take the goddamn thing off.”
Aries the order-giver. Aries the everything-her-way-always.
Fast as downing a tequila shot my arm swings wide behind my back. Selene yelps as her head jerks. Holding a palm to her scalp, her jaw’s half-open. That stupid blue vein threading up her temple as her eyes swell up wet. Those always thick lashes heavy with tears. Selene backs up. She doesn’t get in my face.
Aries the stunned. Aries the taken-down-a-peg. She says this new me, this helper me, I’m not pulling it off. Her cheeks shiny wet, she says, “You’re still the same shitty you in a new dress.”
Grabbing control of a gurney loaded with a not moving Carson, Selene hollers for people to make a path.
Since they found her in Greece, the Venus de Milo statue should really be named the Aphrodite de Milo. Venus and Aphrodite goddess’d over different things, but people can’t hold two versions of something in their heads. They have to make you one thing or the other. A recovering drunk can be a sober companion though. My spiritual advisor friend, he can also be my AA sponsor.
To the building’s front entrance I jog with the gurney grandpa’s been scooped onto by other blue shirts. With him still in motion, my feet stop short of the door. Grandpa sliding away I thumb a clump of frosting off his cheek as he’s rushed into the storm of red and blue outside.
My sticky fingers pick up the calfskin clutch that glugs out the last of its insides. The bracelet facing up on my wrist, the one with a tail of Selene’s hair floating with it says: Pain is growth.
My advice that fits into a single sentence.
Tucked away by the same service entrance we snuck in last night is a table lined with party favor bags of rice. Outside this door there’s no red and blue storm. But there’s Lilah’s BMW. My one licked clean fingernail flicks a grain of rice like you’re not supposed to do after weddings anymore.
Flick.
Rice like the sneaky boxes on Lilah’s pantry shelf that add up to more than I’ll need to get myself to Milos and change my name. Change whatever about me I want.
Flick.
Boxes of not-rice enough to talk Greek real estate on the Seven Sisters Rejuvenation Center.
Flick.
In the clutch my thumb glides over the fob button that’ll disarm the house alarm. With the moon above crossing into her South Node she’s calling for me to manifest the images on my vision board. Today’s stars said to seize opportunities for positive change. After I give the little purse dog his pill I’ll pack his toys and buy him a vest with emotional support on it. A companion to me for once. What’s left in the party favor bag, I chuck it across the parking lot and a million grains of rice become shooting stars flickering into the dark.
***
Favorite drink recipe (before sobriety):
Manhattan
2 parts Maker’s Mark Bourbon Whiskey
1 part sweet vermouth
2 dashes of bitters
Fancy cured black cherry.
***
Neil Krolicki is a Stoker Award nominee whose stories have appeared in Chuck Palahniuk’s Burnt Tongues, NoSleep Podcast, EXPOUND and Here Comes Everyone.
***
image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 