Page 45 of Potion Sickness

We take the booth by the jukebox, which was a mistake. There are two men at the bar in a slow arms race about it. So far tonight we’ve heard “Islands in the Stream” three times.

“Where’s your cousin?” Gabe asks.

“Meeting a person.”

“A person? That’s vague.”

“That’s what I said.” I take a pickle out of my basket, which is a mistake, as it’s hovering around the temperature of molten lava. “She’s meeting a person, in an undisclosed location. She was smiling at her phone at lunch.”

“Is Pru seeing someone?” Hannah asks, leaning in. “Who is it?”

“I have no idea.”

“You have to have a guess.”

“I can’t let myself have a guess, because if I do, it’ll turn into a theory, and if it becomes a theory I’ll investigate it, and then Pru will stop telling me things for the rest of her life.”

“That’s very disciplined,” Gabe says.

“I am very disciplined.”

“You told me you went through a stranger’s medicine cabinet last week.”

“I was investigating. It’s my job.”

Hannah gets us through the first round talking about the Community Center’s electrical panel, which she describes as ‘a war crime’ and the second round on her mother, who has the girls tonight and who has been serving the same four dinners since 1994. Emma has requested the menu rotation in writing. Emma requests most things in writing.

“She made me sign a chore contract,” Hannah says.

“Evidently she’s been spending too much time with Pru,” I say.

“It’s wild,” Hannah says. “It’s like, an actual contract. There’s a section for disputes.”

“Who arbitrates?”

“Lily, which was Emma’s idea, because Lily can be bought with a popsicle.”

Around eleven, Hannah checks her phone and stands up. She’s got a foundation pour at seven in the morning.

“Besides,” she says. “I’ve overstayed my welcome. I can tell when I’m the third person at a table for two.”

I roll my eyes.

The bar thins out after that. The jukebox men reach a treaty.

“Can I ask you something that isn’t about a play or a poisoning?” Gabe says, finishing up his second beer.

“Please.”

“How long are you staying? In Duskboro, I mean?”

“People keep asking me that. I don’t know.”

“And you keep saying that, but it’s a non-answer. It’s the same non-answer you gave in June.”

“It was true. It still is.”

“And yet,” Gabe says.