He’s been dead maybe ten minutes. Maybe thirty. Long enough for the ice in his Jameson-and-ginger to turn thin, to drift apart, their edges fraying into the map of something broken.
She sits cross-legged between the couch and table, still and grounded, as though she’s practiced this a hundred times, a black line of lace vanishing into her hip bones. The club’s VIP room smells of Pine-Sol Lemon Fresh and Gucci Guilty that never quite reached the skin. Smaller than she remembers. Her mint vape blinks blue, then dies.
His tie is half undone. Hanging there. No intention behind it. Loose. Off. She traces the thin scars on her forearm. Almost invisible but he noticed.
The music outside thumps generic. 808s pulsing like a heartbeat. Trap with no edge. The kind of beat that thinks it’s dangerous, but never gets arrested. There’s a shard of broken glass, weeks old, under the couch. The streaks from cleaning the tabletop stop halfway. There’s small spots of white powder interrupting their pattern.
Her eyes move to his wrist. His watch Swiss, but not a Rolex. What did he say? Mido? He touched her wrist too hard once, or maybe like someone else had. He kissed her after. She let him. It was either that or remembering being fourteen alone with her mother’s boyfriend. She doesn’t check his pulse again. She already knows. The stillness of a man no longer performing.
“Same spot every time,” she says, not to him, to the air that now owns him. It comes out already memorized. She’s said it before. With someone still breathing. Or in the mirror.
His wallet’s on the table, a fifty partially sticking out, raised in surrender. No blood. No twitching. Just this low-rent sarcophagus of vinyl and neon, red lights making everything glow with that sticky red sheen, lacquered and unreal. She glances at the door. The glow reminds her of the duplex where she grew up, the front door hand-painted red by her father. It left flakes on her hand every time she knocked. She had her own room with a lemon tree outside the window. Her mother said it matched the house.
Her hands slide over his wallet. She takes the fifty. It was always for her. She tucks it into her bra. He wouldn’t have done that, garter, probably, or just hand it to her. She puts the wallet in his jacket’s inside pocket. The red lights puddle in the cracked worn vinyl of the couch.
She stares at his shoes. Polished. Tacky. Square-toed. He dressed for a party no one living was invited to. He invited her to a party once. She didn’t go. She wouldn’t have liked the food. He introduced her to sushi.
Out front, someone laughs. Big and fake.
There’s a second glass on the table. Not hers. It’s empty. She doesn’t remember anyone else being there, but the room forgets things on purpose. The glass is smeared with lipstick.
Her shade.
She brushes dandruff, or something similar, off her bra. Maybe hers, maybe his. Her fingers pause. She stares at the red light hitting and fading back. The white specks stay in her eyes.
He used to talk about his dog. The way she’d dance when he got home. Daisy? A rescue. Border collie or something. Could’ve made that up. Could’ve been testing her. He laughed like her father used to.
“Don’t fall in love with the job,” someone once told her. Or maybe she told herself. It’s hard to remember who’s narrating. Or what the job is. At least he sent the Venmo first. Even then it didn’t feel worth it. No more good morning or good night texts to leave on delivered. She’s gotten better at ignoring them.
The couch sighs when she stands. For a moment she pauses, thinking he might have moved.
She doesn’t cry. Doesn’t scream. Doesn’t run. Just collects her things with a silence one only learns by pretending to care too many times. She slides her phone into the blue Marc Jacobs bag he bought her back when his texts made her heart skip a beat. The cracked screen catches her face. She wishes she had her black Coach.
When the bouncer knocks, she says, “Almost done.”
And she is.
One last glance as she hits her vape:
His hand rests on his knee, still and expectant, a gesture caught mid-routine.
