Penny, shivering with wetness, considered them with what could only be wretched mourning. Manny tipped a can of tuna into a bowl; it sat ignored, pungent, next to the bar. Hootie tried to entreat sad Penny to her side, but she was resolute in her vigil outside of Carl’s office. The door was closed. It felt kinder to let her hope.
“Drink,” Manny said. He stood behind the counter, poured something into a glass.
“I’m beginning to think that none of that was true,” Hootie said. She sat opposite Manny at the bar.
“What was?”
“Did you make those things up? About your mother’s painting? Is your father even dead?”
“You think I would lie about something like that?”
“You could’ve done it to distract me.”
“Did your father really die from a heart attack?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Well, there you go. Drink, Hootie, please.”
Hootie would not. She wanted to be herself in her own head, to be there for whatever came.
“What are we supposed to do with the dog?”
Manny made a strange sound.
“Why did you put up Jesus in our room? Just all of a sudden?”
“Look.” Manny placed his hand over Hootie’s. Strangers’ hands, touching. “Carl being dead is terrible. But if it was a heart attack, there was nothing we could have done anyway, you get that? You’re getting scared. You’re scaring me. It’s just a scary night. The weather… Carl. The dog. But it will clear. When the lights come back, we will call the hospital to take him away. Everything will be back to normal tomorrow. Things will be as they always are.”
Hootie pressed her fingers, cooled from the ice in the glass, to her forehead. Thunder. Lightning. Leaving the drink, Hootie walked to the boarded-up window. Through the small space between the shutters, she looked out into the night. Utter blackness. Somewhere out there was a dead man in a truck. The glowing red martini had gone dark.
Hootie turned back towards Manny, asked: “Can you remember the name of this place?”