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A level of frustration I never knew I could reach burns inside me. Frustration from a complete lack of control that, before my reconciliation with my family, before this trip, was unfathomable.
I shift, fully facing my mother. ‘I don’t know, maybe because if my father had been less uninhibited our family wouldn’t have imploded the way it did.’
Our mouths drop in tandem, both of us equally surprised at what I just said. My admission to feelings on a matter that I have thus far refused to talk about.
It’s coming up on a year since I facilitated the incarceration of Stanley Winston Moore. It was completely justified and very much overdue, but that doesn’t mean I like to talk about it. Talk about him. The man I spent my entire life compared to. A philanderer, narcissist and swindler. My father.
George reaches us. I notice he’s carrying a Chanel quilted handbag.
‘Yes, Emily?’
Snapping my mouth shut, I glare at my administrative assistant. ‘Since when do you call my mother Emily?’
His eyebrows surge above the top of his glasses. I don’t think I’ve ever taken such a harsh tone with him before. With anyone, really. My loss of control is a fast-spreading infection.
I don’t like it. No. I loathe it.
Without a word, Mother takes the purse from George and rummages inside, coming up with a gold-hinged millefiori pill case. ‘Here.’ She clicks it open and shakes two white pills onto her hand. ‘For your eye.’
She thrusts them at me and I stare, unmoving. I don’t like medication. If I wanted to play psychologist, I might admit that dislike probably stems from my displeasure of not being in control.
I look around me at the drag queens, Blow Job shots, and general merriment in the face of fire evacuation. Control? What a laugh.
George blinks, looking shocked. And I realize I actually laughed.
My mother doesn’t budge, her hand outstretched, pills on her open palm. It’s like we’re having a duel, but instead of dawn it’s dusk. Instead of a dirt road, it’s a paved sidewalk filled with people of ill repute. And instead of instrumental spaghetti western music, it’s a baritone of Bette Midler’s greatest hits.
The shrill whistle of a man in a hotel uniform breaks the tension. ‘You are clear to head back into the hotel!’
Cheers erupt around us.
‘And as an apology for the inconvenience, the hotel bar will serve free drinks for the next four hours, compliments of Thomas Moore.’
Louder cheers.
My eyes cut back to Mother, whose own are wide with surprise. ‘Chase,’ we both say.
Ignoring the way my eye pulses as I grind my teeth, I grab the pills from my mother’s hand and toss them in my mouth before stalking toward the groom.
Like the Red Sea before Moses, the crowd parts, as if knowing on some subconscious level the menace that awaits them if they impede my path. Even with such a short, easy walk, when I reach my brother, still hugging his ugly sack of bones to his chest while his fiancée coos at its head poking out the neck of Chase’s shirt, my temper fades almost as quickly as it sparked. Because it isn’t my brother that I’m mad at. It isn’t my sister for running away. It isn’t my mother for her way of handling her divorce. It isn’t even my father, currently locked up in a minimum-security prison.
It’s me.
Mikey tries to dart out from beneath Chase’s shirt, but Chase does some sort of ninja squat, grabbing him before his paws hit pavement. Still crouched low, I catch sight of my bottle of Old Pappy that Chase somehow kept hold of during the evacuation and shoved in his back pocket. The seam of his jeans threatens to pop from the strain of his recent movement.
Chase catches sight of me and smiles. ‘Don’t worry T-money, I…’ He trails off, as does his smile, while he looks at me. ‘Thomas?’
He flinches as I reach out, yanking the whiskey bottle out of his back pocket.
Then, continuing my way toward the hotel without so much as a backward glance, I flag down a concierge who needs to jog to keep up with me.
‘I need a new room. And I need it now.’
* * *
Alice
Tell everyone to fuck off.
