Page 80 of Love at a Funeral and Other Awkward Conversations

I slouch into a seat in the last subway car, raising the bottle above me as a woman sings a Whitney Houston song in the corner, hitting all the high notes. I flip the light on my cell phone and hold it in the air. It’s like our own personal subway concert, and I don’t know why no one else is enjoying it. She finishes, and I applaud her. The woman cuts me a nasty look. I smile at her. She rolls her eyes.

At Penn Station, I traipse off the platform, my legs like rubber. I stop for a slice of pizza and a can of beer. Drinking wine makes me thirsty.

Once I finish everything, I go to the bathroom, pinballing off the wall on my way. I laugh when I knock my head on the sink as I try to pull my pants up, but I stop when I notice the red mark on my forehead.

“What are you? Drunk or something?” I ask my reflection in the mirror, but there are marbles in my mouth. I don’t bother drying my hands and wipe the water off on my jeans. Out in the corridor, my vision blurs as I study the digital board for my track number. Someone in a rush bumps into me and says, “Watch it.”

I stumble, throwing them the finger.

The walk takes forever, and I slump against the wall to take a few breaks before I get to where I’m going. I move to the end of the platform as the train pulls up, and I bend sideways to a short woman in a pantsuit. “This is going to Middletown, right?”

She rears back and cringes at me. “Uh…yeah.”

I follow her to board the train and collapse into the first open seat I can find. I bumble around for my phone and blink at the time. It’s blurry. I get up to ask the person behind me for the time.

“Quarter to six,” the man answers, his head down over a book, his sandy hair artfully ruffled in waves. I tilt my own head, something familiar about him.

“Excuse me,” an older woman says to my left. She wants to sit in the seat next to me, so I spin around to make room for her. She scoots in and places shopping bags at her feet. I can’t help but sit up tall, craning my neck back to study the man behind me, but the train wrenches forward, and I rock in my seat.

“Sorry,” I apologize to the woman when I accidentally knock into her shoulder. She doesn’t respond, and I twist fully around. The man has on reading glasses like the ones my brother used to wear. He’s got on a big, clunky watch, his suit jacket in his lap and his sleeves rolled up enough to display muscular forearms. Everything about him is so familiar.

I shake my head to clear my eyes but it throws my body off-balance, and I bump into the older woman next to me again. “I’m sorry.”

“Be careful,” she snips.

I’m surrounded by mud, my limbs can’t trudge through it, my mind slogs along in it, my words and breath slowed down by it. “Ray?”

He doesn’t look up.

I lean over the back of the seat and touch his shoulder. “Raymond.”

The man looks up, his thin eyebrows angled down. His light-colored eyes obviously annoyed. “What?”

“You’re…” I immediately start to cry. I can’t help it.

I knew it wasn’t him. I knew it.

But I hoped.

“You’re not…” I choke, and the woman next to me says something I don’t understand. Tears stream down my face, and I can’t breathe. I need help, but I can’t force the words out to ask for it. I reach for the man.

I need help.

I can’t breathe.

I’m going to be sick.

He’s talking, I can see his mouth moving, but my ears are filled with a buzzing sound. I gag, my throat constricting again and again until I throw up.

CHAPTER 29

It’s static in my brain. It crackles in my ears, louder and louder, until I force my eyes open. The bright light hurts, and I shut them again, throwing my hand over my face.

“She lives.” The female voice sounds far away, but I can tell it’s filled with laughter.

I blink my eyes open and peer between my fingers, slowly gathering it all together as my body comes back to life. There’s a pain in my hip, and my head pounds like someone hit it with a bat. My shoulder’s against something hard and cold. I lower my hand and arm with quite a bit of effort and move to my back so I am staring up at square ceiling tiles.

“I worried there for a bit,” a different, male voice says, this time closer as something clanks. I blink over, barely lifting my head enough to view the bars of a jail cell open. I groan and let my head fall back down.

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