Page 32 of A Better World

“We tried to delay her eviction,” Rachel said. She rested her headin her hands, pulling the skin back so she appeared wide eyed. “But she pissed everybody off.”

“There’s nothing that can be done for her kids, even though they’re sick?” Linda asked.

Still looking down, Rachel flinched. A tear splashed. It was always the toughest talkers who were the most sensitive.

“You see how she is,” Daniella said. “She fibs. She makes threats. We did try. We petitioned all the right people. She got in her own way. You throw her a life preserver, she uses it as a cinch to pull you overboard.”

“Winch,” Anouk corrected.

“I understand,” Linda said, still shaky. “I’m not blaming you. It’s just sad.”

“Areyouokay, Linda?” Daniella asked.

Linda looked up at the stained glass, which she only now realized was a caladrius, surrounded by green grass, a blue sky, and a godlike halo of cadmium-yellow glass slats. “I’m not the one who fell,” she said. “But I have to be honest. This is the bat-shittiest job interview I’ve ever been on. You’d better give me the job!”

For a second, total silence. And then Rachel barked with laughter.

Their ordeal acted as a relationship accelerator.

The food finally arrived—family-style pasta and caladrius eggs served with a treat: four ounces of cow meat each from a fresh kill at Parson’s Farm. Oh, she hadn’t eaten beef in years. It was so good. They ate and drank even more wine—four bottles, all told. Linda did her best to pace herself, but the drinking was a tension release. She’d been carrying a lot lately, and it felt good to drop it on the floor.

Dinner plates were removed. After-dinner whiskey appeared, along with a chocolate brownie sundae, which they shared. Daniella and Rachel jousted spoons, and it reminded Linda of the easy friendships she’d had back home. More whiskey arrived. Anouk, drunk and loose, recited a poem she’d written called “The Inheritors.” Linda especially liked the ending—

It is impossible to worship

A thing with feathers

that does not fly.

—A barricade

with capricious walls

—A gilded cage

without a key

For the princess

there’s nothing left

but to dig

A city within a city

wrought of skin and bones.

“Huh. It’s almost critical,” Linda said.

Anouk’s voice went low, and for the first time, Linda could see she’d been raised by a leader because she knew how to talk like one. “It’s not worth our time to criticize the things we hate. Only the things we love.”

There was clapping, and more laughing, and even shouting, and then, suddenly, the lights in their private room went bright so that the stained-glass bird shone like a visiting ghost. Drunkenly, they filed out, the last customers in the whole restaurant.

A moonless, cloudy night, made bright by streetlights. There were just a handful of cars in the lot. The flat emptiness of the midwestern terrain carried the sounds of their cackles and footfalls. Linda was giddy, the evening odder and more poignant than she’d expected. She’d forgotten how good it felt to laugh. “This was amazing,” she said, working hard not to slur. She’d have added that she’d had fun, but given what happened with Gal, the sentiment seemed inapt. “I hope you have me back.”

“Oh, we will,” Daniella promised.

Linda clasped her hands and lifted her arms—giving herself the same champion shake that Keith Parson had done at the Beltane Crowning. “I rock! You rock! We all rock!” she said, feeling welcomed and understood, and also quite drunk, becauseI rockisn’t something you say when sober.

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