Girl in Pieces

Temple passes me the phone. “Hurry up, okay?” she whispers. “We want to make it to the Tap before last call.” I look at her enviously; all the girls here go out together at night after work, to bars, to parties; they never ask me to go along. I’ve been trying to talk more with them, but their group seems tight. I’m too young, anyway, to go to bars. Only Linus seems interested in me, mostly in a motherly way, pushing plates of potatoes and bowls of lentils to me across the grill island. Linus does not go out with the girls. Sometimes she’ll tell me she’s headed to a meeting after work. “Addiction isn’t nine to five,” she’ll call out cheerfully. “You can feel like shit twenty-four seven. That’s partly why I work all these shifts. Have to keep busy, keep the demons at bay.”

“Charlie. Sweet Charlie.” It’s a woman; her voice is throaty, assured.

I twist the phone cord between my fingers. “Who is this?”

“Charlie Davis, soul sister, after all the time we spent together, all that time sharing our blood stories, and you don’t recognize my voice?”

My heart drops clear to my feet; my entire body goes up in flame. “Hello, Blue.”