daria’s addition

 

 

 

 

 

©2007 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)

Daria and associated characters are ©2007 MTV Networks

 

 

Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com

 

Synopsis: What could have happened after “Jane’s Addition”: Daria finds a new friend that comes in a bottle and is 80 proof.

 

Author's Notes: This story is rated R for language and adult content. It is an alternate history involving various Daria episodes from “Jane’s Addition” through Is It Fall Yet? The song to which Daria sings is Courtney Love's "Violet," from the album, Live Through This, by Hole.

 

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Scissors MacGillicutty for his PPMB Iron Chef of May 2007, asking for scenes revealing the consequences of Daria drinking alcohol. Thanks to Ranchoth for his thread along similar lines that spawned the Iron Chef, and to smk for finding errors.

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

One can drink too much, but one never drinks enough.

 

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

 

 

 

 

          That was a great waste of a bad evening,” she says under her breath as soon as she comes in front door. The cold of March comes in after her. The house is silent; no one else is visible. She glances at her watch, then stomps up the stairs. “They’re probably still eating pizza and sucking face between slices,” she grumbles. “That’s just great. That fits perfectly into my calendar: Monday night, nothing to do. Well, that’s great for me, because that’s how I like to start off my week, with a Monday night filled with stimulating conversation for one. Screw all that amiga bullshit, we’re back to square one, folks, back to basics: basically nothing.”

          She opens the door to her bedroom, takes off her school backpack, then drops it on the floor by her desk. After shutting the door and locking it, she takes off her glasses, drops them on her desk, and rubs her face vigorously with the palms of her hands. “‘I'm not taking your friend away,’ he says. ‘You'd have to be pretty stupid to think anything or anybody is going to shake your friendship with Jane.’” She sighs and puts her glasses back on, then gestures grandly at the empty room. “Thanks for the Band-Aid, Doctor Mengele, but look around a moment. Is Jane here? Is she going to watch Sick, Sad World with me tonight? Well, then, time to torture someone else for a change.”

          For a while she stands there, chewing her lower lip. She raises a hand to her mouth and starts to bite her fingernails, then puts down her arm in irritation. “What a stupid fucking evening,” she says. “I would have to be pretty stupid to think that you were going to take away my only friend. I’d have to be, because you already took her, you dumb son of a bitch.”

          She walks over to her CD/tape-player boom box and stares down at it. For a moment she looks as if she might bend down and turn it on, but she doesn’t. She walks over to the TV on the wheeled stand by her bed, picks up the remote, and turns the set on—then turns it off again before the picture comes on. “Fuck that,” she whispers, tossing the remote back on the TV stand. She turns and looks out one of her windows for a long second, looks as though she will sit down on her bed, but then walks back across the room to her desk to look at her books.

          There’s lots to do on a Monday night,” she says, staring at the rows of books. “Lots.” She continues staring at them, then sighs heavily. “Tough day on the farm,” she says in a lower voice. “Just another tough day on the kolkhoz. No one to share my bread with. No one to share anything with. Just like back in Highland. Just like everywhere I’ve ever been, except for a little while here. Now it’s gone.”

          Her head lowers. Her gaze goes through her desk, noticing nothing. One hands raises and her fingers run over the smooth surface of the desk, tracing an aimless pattern as she feels the wood. “Nothing,” she says again.

          Her hands drops to her side. She stares for half a minute at the desktop. “‘Maybe we just have different ideas about what a commitment is.’ Uh-huh. ‘I always kind of felt you understood the way I think.’ Oh, I do, I do. I knew it all along. What I didn’t know was that you knew what I knew. I didn’t know you saw it all. ‘I guess it wasn't such a great idea for us to get together.’ I guess not, but you weren’t talking about the multimedia project just then, were you? I knew right then that you had read me like a book, word for word, all along. I must have been so transparent. Silly little self-deluded girl. You must have laughed watching me sniff around you, burning up with heat. Poor little bitch. I didn’t really understand the way you thought, after all. I had a pair of rose-colored glasses I wore when you were around. How funny.

          “And of course you couldn’t really do anything, since I was underage, but you could have at least had the decency not to tell me, to my face, that you knew how I felt about you all this time. You could have just shut up, but no, you had to tell me, and I had to cover up and make nice like everything was a-okay, and then you went away and left me with a lame-ass apology for no thirty seconds of music for my project, which I got an A minus on anyway, and I worked damn hard just to get that. Jane and I worked our asses off just to come up with something that would overcome your lack of commitment, your lack of belief in deadlines because they stifle your lack of creativity, and then you deliver the pièces de résistance,  your oh-so-cool insight into why you and I would have sucked as a couple, oh that was perfection, that was right fucking dead on target it was, the real blockbuster of the evening, how you let me down so easy: ‘Hey, four-eyes, sorry about your pathetic delusional fantasy of us making romance together like a Harlequin novel, that was pretty funny, an underage nerd girl and a twenty-something slacker suck-ass musician who couldn’t write a real lyric to save his life.’ That was rich how you gave me the low-down on the real world. ‘Sorry again about, you know, everything.’ Yeah, sure, anytime. ‘See you around,’ and you didn’t have to kiss me, you stupid bastard! You didn’t have to kiss me!

          Tears hot enough to burn her face slide down her cheeks and splash on the desk. “You didn’t have to kiss me!” she yells at the top of her lungs, her voice breaking. Her glasses come off and clatter cross the desktop as she covers her face and gives herself exactly twelve seconds to cry. On the thirteenth second, she feels stupid and refuses to cry anymore, sniffing back her tears as she wipes her face on her green jacket sleeves and puts her glasses back on, then takes them off in disgust and finds a handkerchief in her jacket pocket to wipe them off.

          “You son of a bitch!” she says as she cleans her glasses. “It’s better that your sister isn’t here. It’s better this way. One day in the life of Daria Bitch-o-vich, one hard day on the kolkhoz. That young Thomas is such a smart one, isn’t he? Oh, you are one lucky girl, Jane. You will never have to feel completely alone again. You are one lucky girl there. Enjoy your pizza with young Master Thomas. He is one clever young man, very very clever. I hope he makes you happy.” She bites her lower lip again, her face tight and red, then puts her glasses on, wipes her checks with her fingers, and goes to the door, unlocks it, and goes out into the hall to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

          After the toilet flushes and the sink faucet runs, she comes out of the bathroom and goes downstairs through the family room to the kitchen. No one else is around. There is a note on the refrigerator door, which she reads aloud after adjusting her glasses: “‘Girls, Dad and I will be at the Fishbecks until nine or ten-ish, make whatever you like as long as it’s the leftover pasta from Thursday, leftover chicken from Saturday, or—’ Oh, fuck it.” She opens the refrigerator door and stares in at the available selections for dinner with a face cut from stone. She stares for a long time.

          “I knew this was coming,” she says in a low voice. “I knew it, ever since you wandered off from me at Brittany’s party to trade spit with Bobby what’s-his-name, who used you like an all-day sucker. I knew what it was even then. Biological imperative. Boys, boys, boys, gotta catch ‘em all, dump your friends as soon as you reel one in, ‘cause they’re not as important as that one true guy. The romantic fallacy, that’s all there is in life to any teenage girl. I knew it when you ran off to be with that guy Evan and run track and win medals, it was the biology talking, not you. You could do anything, as long as you did it for a guy. Just like me and my piercing, wasn’t it? It’s always gotta be for a guy. Funny how you left track only after you broke up with him. No guy, no track.”

          She is silent for a long minute after that, then swallows. “At least I had the decency,” she says in an even lower voice, “to moon around after your brother, so we wouldn’t be so far apart. I was stupid, I know, stupid like anyone with hormones running their brain, but at least I did that. I never abandoned you. You were always there somewhere playing yenta, keeping me hoping even when he started going out with Monique again.” She lets go of the refrigerator door but blocks it from closing with her body. She looks down at her stomach as she opens her jacket and pulls up her amber T-shirt, then inspects her bare stomach, pinching the small roll of flesh over her abdomen. “I don’t know how she does it,” she mutters. “She’s thinner than a pencil. I was so stupid.”

          After letting go of her stomach, she looks up and reaches for the orange juice bottle, pulls it out, and slams the refrigerator door. She puts the juice on the peninsular countertop behind her, turns and opens a cabinet door to get a small glass, shuts the cabinet, and sets the glass beside the orange juice. She stares at them, hands and arms braced against the edge of the countertop as she leans in, head down. Her auburn hair shrouds her face except for the edge of her glasses.

          “Ted liked me for my mind,” she says to the empty glass and the orange juice. “He was a geek, but he was a nice geek. Maybe he was gay. He never said a thing about sex. Maybe he just didn’t know about sex the way he knew about Goya. Whatever.” She pours herself a small glass of juice, puts down the bottle, and plays with the glass without picking it up. “Ted said I had it all. He was such a . . . he was a nice guy. Quinn was right, he was cool and interesting. He’s probably not gay, either, just . . . slow. He knows people, though. He said I was shallow, and he was sort of right. I like being shallow. I don’t have to work so hard at things, blowing people off, keeping everyone away from me, except Jane, who does just fine anymore keeping away from me. She does that very well with young Master Thomas.” She stares at her glass of juice and breathes through her nose, then looks up to her right, out toward the family room.

          “What the hell,” she says, and she leaves the glass of orange juice on the counter as she walks out to the family room, toward a large cabinet near a potted plant. She opens a cabinet door and before her lies a large selection of alcoholic drinks in various colorful, different-sized bottles. For half a minute she studies the bottles, thinking, then reaches for one and carefully lifts it out. The bottle is half filed with a clear liquid. She studies the label without expression. “Well,” she says at last, “it has a cute animal on it, so it must be good.” She squints. “‘Product of Russia.’ I think that’s good enough for a screwdriver.”

          She walks back into the kitchen. Frowning at the orange juice glass, she drinks down half of it, pours in several inches of vodka, then recaps the vodka and goes into the family room and puts it back in the cabinet. She returns to the kitchen and fills the glass with orange juice to the top, then picks up the glass and smells it.

          “Nothing,” she says, and sips the smallest bit of it, licking her lips. She raises her eyebrows as if mildly surprised.

          Then she throws back her head and downs the whole glass in three gulps. Exhaling, she drops her head forward and the glass cracks down on the countertop. For a moment she gets a strange look on her face and she feels her throat with her right hand, but then she leans on her arms on the countertop for a half minute, swallowing and running her tongue around the inside of her mouth. “That wasn’t so bad,” she says. “Burns a little. Not bad. ‘Screwdriver.’ That would be a good name for a detective novel. I should write that down somewhere.”

          She sniffs and sighs and looks down at her glass, then picks up the orange juice and pours another half-filled glass. Another trip to the family room results in her return with the vodka. She pours more vodka in the glass until it is full, then makes a return trip to put the bottle away. She comes back into the kitchen to find that she forgot to put the cap on the bottle, so she takes the cap to the family room, puts it back on the bottle and screws it down, then is back in the kitchen again. She puts the orange juice away in the refrigerator, then picks up her glass and leaves the kitchen to go upstairs to her room. There she shuts and locks her door, puts her glass on her desk, and takes off her green jacket and hangs it in her closet. She leaves the closet door open, pulls out her T-shirt from her black skirt, and sits down at her desk and unties her boots. She kicks the boots off against a wall when she’s done, then settles back with a toss of her long thick hair.

          “Good evening, Mister Smirnov,” she says to the glass on her desk. “I’m Daria Morgendorffer. I’ll be your guest tonight. Host, I meant. Hmm, no, I was right the first time, your guest. Lead on.”

          She reaches for the glass and takes a drink without gulping. After making another face, she sets the glass down and looks at her desk and its contents. “I was hoping for better company tonight,” she says absently, “but you’ll do just fine. Gotta try everything once. I was left high and dry once again. Jane and I just had different ideas on what a commitment is. It wasn’t such a great idea for her and I to get together on this after all. I guess I understand the way she thinks. I understand it all too well. Same old thing, same old pathetic mating dance. That was Trent and me, too. Jane and Tom, me and . . . well, me and nobody. Same old pathetic mating dance.”

          She stops to take another drink, then puts down the glass and fans her face, which is becoming flushed. “Jane warned me,” she continues to no one, “I should stick to vandalism and loitering on a first date. I should have listened to her. Too late now. It’s me and a one-room apartment and lots of cats and newspapers from now on. Me and you, Mister Smirnov.”

          Her gaze wanders around her room as she fans herself until it lights on her boom box. She gets out of her chair and walks over to kneel by it, sort through a pile of CDs on the floor nearby, then pop one CD in and turn the machine on. She gets up and goes back to her desk as the music begins with a fast guitar riff. She sings along with the song in a soft, low voice. She knows all the words by heart.

 

 

And the sky was made of amethyst . . .

And all the stars look just like little fish . . .

You should learn when to go

 

 

She gets up from her chair, arches her back, and shouts at the ceiling:

 

 

You should learn how to say no!

 

 

then bobs her head to the rapid music, throwing her long hair forward and back. She is not a dancer; she jerks her body if being electrocuted, standing in place by her desk, shouting the lyrics much louder than she ever has.

 

 

Go on! Take everything! Take everything! I want you to!
Go on! Take everything! Take everything! I want you to!

 

 

          She goes over and turns the volume up on the boom box as high as it will go, then walks aimlessly around her room, singing. As she passes her desk she picks up and drains her screwdriver, putting the glass down and blowing out a huge breath just in time to pick up one of her favorite lyrics.

 

 

Hey, I’m the one with no soul . . .

 

 

Then shouts:

 

 

One above and one below!

Go on! Take everything! Take everything! I want you to!
Go on! Take everything! Take everything! I want you to!

 

 

Her voice falls to almost normal.

 

 

I told you

From the start

Just how this would end:
When I get

What I want

Well, I never want it again

 

 

Her head then snaps back and forth, hair flying, her voice growing hoarse as she screams.

 

 

Go on! Take everything! Take everything! I want you to!
Go on! Take everything! Take everything! I want you to!

Go on! Take everything! Take everything!

Take everything! Take everything!

Take everythiiinnng!

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

          Two months pass. Her fingers fly over a computer keyboard, her gaze glued to a monitor in a wall-mounted cubicle in a library room. Though vaguely aware that some adult has walked up behind her, she doesn’t stop writing until that someone clears his throat.

          “Hello, Daria,” says a friendly male voice with a French accent. “I'm your one-on-one counselor. Are you sending an e-mail to a friend?”

          “No,” she says, reaching for the mouse. “To myself.” She clicks the mouse three times: Send. Log out. Close.

          The monitor returns to its standard desktop format: a vertical row of icons on the left, over a photograph of an ivy-covered estate building done in gray stone, two stories high with gables jutting from its red-slate roof. Quiet Ivy Retreat, reads the script at the bottom of the screen, over the admissions center driveway and manicured lawn. She turns around on the swivel chair and looks up at a handsome young man wearing a knee-length white lab coat. Under the immaculate open lab coat he wears a light gray silk shirt and dark silver tie, black wool trousers, and leather shoes that shine like anthracite.

          “You are sending e-mail to yourself?” asks the man in the lab coat, his eyebrows raised.

          “Why not?” she says. “No one else is worth talking to.”

          “Why not write to a friend?”

          “I got rid of the only one I had.”

          The man’s dark eyebrows rise still farther. “Why would you do such a thing?”

          “It freed up more time for my writing,” she says, and waits.

          “Daria,” says the man with the French accent, electing to start over, “I am Doctor Jean-Michel Millepieds, a psychiatrist on the staff of Quiet Ivy. Would you come with me to my office for a nice chat?”

          “Why not here? Then I can go back to writing to myself when we’re done.”

          “There is more privacy in my office to talk about personal issues; too many people can overhear us in here. If you would prefer a female staff member was present while we talk, I can have a—”

          “Kinky,” she says in her usual monotone, “but no. The two of us will be fine.” She gets up and dusts off her skirt.

          The doctor gives her a mildly reproachful look. “This meeting is only for talking about your family situation, you understand.”

          “That shouldn’t take long at all, then.”

          She follows him as they leave the library, go down a series of light pink hallways, and reach an office door that he opens for her. She enters a room done almost entirely in shades of gray and green. “You may have a seat in a chair,” says the doctor, “or, if you wish, lie down on the sofa in the corner. Whatever you like.”

          “A traditionalist,” she murmurs. “How quaint.” She sits on the sofa before swinging her legs up to lie down, her head on the raised pillow at one end. “I hope you don’t mind my boots,” she adds. “I stayed out of the flower beds, so they should be relatively clean.”

          “Not a problem,” he says, settling into a chair. “Now—”

          “Why are you even bothering to talk with me?” she asks, staring up at the ceiling and not at him. “Do you really care what I think? Can we just go through the motions so you can check off a few items on your list, write up a report, and let my mother can make full partner at her law firm? Could we call it a day with that?”

          “Daria,” he says patiently, “I do care what you think. You are an important part of your family, and—”

          “My family leaves me alone, and I leave them alone,” she interrupts, still talking to the ceiling. “It’s not so difficult. They have their agendas, which don’t include me, and I have mine, which doesn’t include them, except as necessary to keep up the fiction that we are a family.”

          “A fiction?”

          “You use that reflection technique very well. Yes, we’re a fiction. My parents spend most of their time at home arguing, my sister spends most of her free time out with girlfriends or on dates, and I stay in my room and keep out of everyone’s way, which pleases them immensely that I am not adding to their daily overdose of angst.”

          “I want to come back to this issue of your family in a few minutes, if you don’t mind, but first—”

          “Whatever you like.”

          “—but first I want to return to something you said earlier, about your friend.”

          She glances at the psychiatrist for a moment, then looks away to the wall opposite her, her face blank with surprise. It is apparent that she was not expecting this topic.

          “You said you had one friend, but you got rid of her.” The psychiatrist has yet to make a note with his pen, which he idly twirls in his fingers.

          After a beat, she says, “Yes.”

          “What was she like, your friend?”

          “It doesn’t matter. She’s no longer my friend.”

          “What happened?”

          “What does it matter what happened?”

          “Humor me, Daria.”

          For an instant, her expression turns feral with rage. In the next instant, she again assumes the surface appearance of calm. “Humor you. Well, fine. She and I were good friends, even best friends, and then she met a guy and dumped me. That’s it.”

          “She was your only friend, you said. You were her only friend, too?”

          “Yes, I think I was.”

          “But you said earlier that you dumped her. You got rid of her, you said.”

          A pause, and then she takes a long, deep breath. “Well, we had a project in economics class in which we had to pick a real-life economics kind of thing to do, like set up a business plan or see what we’d have to do to buy a car, and Jane and I weren’t doing very well together at the time, so we picked other people to do the project with. Then I got into a big fight with the girl who was working with me, and when it was all over Jane and I still weren’t doing so well. We were drifting apart when our principal got it in her head to create an adventure club for the high school, and a bunch of us had to go marching around in the wilderness during a blizzard, some of the students got frostbite and their parents sued, and—”

          “Jane was with you on this, uh, adventure?”

          “No. I think she would have come if I had bribed her—we used to bribe each other to do things so we’d be together—but I didn’t. Probably just as well. I didn’t care anymore. I slept through the whole disaster in a cabin. When I got back, Jane tried to get together again, but I said, forget it, this isn’t worth it. I sort of dumped her back, and we stopped talking to each other. We didn’t have a fight, we just . . . stopped.” She exhales. “It was a relief, looking back on it. She was free to go out with Jay Gatsby, and I was free to write, which I’d been neglecting because I had thought Jane was my friend and wanted to spend time with me, but now that misconception has been corrected and there’s nothing more to tell.”

          She swings her legs off the couch and sits up. “Thank you for seeing me. I will be on my way. I’m dying to get back online and see what I wrote to myself, so if you’ll excuse me—”

          “Do you miss her?” asks the psychiatrist. He makes no move to prevent her from leaving.

          She stops anyway as she stands up, and she looks up at him coolly though her large round eyeglasses. “Do I miss her? Jane? Not particularly. My work is filling enough.”

          “What work could possibly fill the space left by the loss of an only friend?”

          She continues staring at him without moving, long enough that there is a sense that she is about to spring at him with claws extended. She pulls back, however, then looks down at herself and straightens her skirt and jacket. “My correspondence with myself, of course.”

          “Do you think your parents are about to divorce?”

          Visibly reluctant to stay, she slowly sits down on the edge of the couch. “I certainly hope so,” she says in a low voice. She looks down to inspect her hands. “At least they wouldn’t fight so often.”

          “I’m sure that your parents are discussing their own views on the matter with the other counselors here,” says the psychiatrist, “but what do you think the problem is between them?”

          “What do I think?” She shrugs. “I think they’ve spent too many years running away from their problems, and now they can’t run any longer. Mom works night and day at the law firm to keep from having to do anything with the family, and Dad pretends he’s clueless and screws up his consulting business so he’s always chasing down problems at his office instead of facing them at home. He flew out to a business conference a few weeks ago and had some kind of panic attack on a balloon ride, so he’s got shrink bills to pay. On top of that, they both drink. It runs on both sides of the family. My dad’s father drank heavily, usually beer, made him kind of abusive, and one of my mom’s sisters is an alcoholic. The other sister drinks, too, but I don’t know how much. I guess Mom and Dad are alcoholics by any definition you’d care to use.”

          “What do they fight about, your parents?”

          “Money. And Dad wants us to move, and Mom doesn’t. Dad’s got a thing about property values falling because the high school’s football team is losing.” She rolls her eyes. “Whatever. I think they fight mainly because they won’t face their own failings. It’s easier to fight than be honest.”

          “What about your sister, Quinn?”

          “I don’t know if she drinks—she probably doesn’t—but she runs away from problems like everyone else. She’s very good at acting stupid while she manipulates the hell out of her beaus and one-ups her girlfriends. She’s all about dating, but never into boys so much that she ditches her girlfriends. Maybe she’s got something there. She’s loyal, even if her head’s stuffed full of fashion crapola.”

          “Is she running away from problems at home?”

          “Certainly, but also from herself. She’s been vapid so long, she’s afraid there’s nothing left inside her to build a future on. Being a neck model, come on, she knows that will never happen.”

          “Do you run from your problems, too?”

          She looks amused and shakes her head. “I used to. I used to have this mental game in which I’d always try to come out with some nasty quip every time someone said anything to me, to drive everyone away. I had some pretty good one-liners. I still do it on occasion, but lately I don’t bother so much. No one ever really goes away, no matter how hard you try to make them. You have to get to a point where you say, ‘This isn’t worth it,’ and act as if you mean it. It’s better to keep your own little boat afloat and not worry so much about all the ocean liners going down around you. So, to answer your question, I don’t run from my own problems, but I do ignore, to the best of my ability, everyone else’s.”

          “How much do you drink?”

          “I—”

          She stops there, takes a moment to shift mental gears, then gives the psychiatrist a crafty look. “That was clever,” she says.

          “How much do you drink?” the psychiatrist persists.

          She takes the time to mull over an appropriate answer. “A little,” she says. “Enough to get comfortable in the evenings while my parents fight downstairs or in their bedroom.”

          “How much does that take?”

          She sighs, tiring of the game. “Whatever it takes to shut them out and focus on my writing.”

          “What are you writing?”

          “Letters to myself. Really, I thought we’d already covered this.”

          “Who else is reading those letters?”

          A long moment passes. She leans forward, resting her chin on her hand with her elbow on her knees, and gives the psychiatrist a narrow look. “I think we’re done here,” she says. Point made, she gets to her feet and shows herself out. He watches her go. He has not written a thing on his notepad the entire time.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

          The adults have left the table, and the door from the dining hall to the parking lot has thumped shut, cutting off the incoherent screaming match between her parents and the fruitless attempts by their psychiatrist to mediate. Alone except for her sister, she closes her eyes and inhales, slowly and deeply—holds her breath: one, two, three, four, five, six—then lets it out. Her eyes open. Now her sister has left as well and is nowhere in view.

          She is seated at a large round dining table set for five with beautiful china and elaborate silverware. The food on every plate is untouched, the white linen tablecloth unstained. The few diners present at other tables, most of them Quiet Ivy staff members by their dress, return to their meals or look out the hall’s great windows at the resort grounds and distant hills. A few shake their heads as if they have seen this scene too many times before.

          With a tiny sigh, she reaches down into her right boot and pulls out a curved pewter flask, unscrews the cap, and pours the clear liquid into the orange juice she ordered with her meal. She pushes her plate away from her—asparagus, a veal cutlet, a small mound of mashed potatoes—and recaps the flask. She starts to put it back inside her boot, then shakes her head no and puts it on the table in front of her after removing the cap again. She picks up her screwdriver and swishes it around, then takes a deep swig, a third of the glass. She visibly relaxes and closes her eyes.

          “A girl always remembers her first love,” she whispers.

          Soft footsteps approach over the carpet.

          “Daria?” says a man with a worried French accent.

          She opens her eyes halfway. It’s Dr. Millepieds, of course. He stands by the table a few feet from her.

          “Was that your parents?” He looks concerned. “I heard some people arguing and—”

          “Yes,” she says. She closes her eyes again but keeps a firm grip on her glass, holding it near her lips in case he tries to take it from her.

          “Was that Doctor Bacon with them?”

          Her lips curve into a smile. “I believe so. She’s quite the ham.”

          A chair is pulled out from the table, and she hears someone sit near her. She makes a slight frown, then opens her eyes and looks at her table partner without enthusiasm.

          “Sorry about the ham joke,” she says. “Old habit.” She opens her eyes and takes another deep swallow from her screwdriver. Her face flushes red.

          “You don’t look as shocked as I thought you would be,” says the psychiatrist. “You must have seen them argue before, many times.”

          “It wasn’t the usual rerun,” she replies, staring at the tablecloth as she shakes her head. “The shrink had them role-play each other, or what they liked least about each other, then somehow they started role-playing what they were going to say to each other in court during the divorce proceedings, and at the climax we went to a commercial break. Stay tuned for more, though.”

          The doctor groans in pain at her news. “I am so sorry. Do you think they were serious?”

          She licks her lips, then looks at the ceiling as she thinks. “I don’t think Dad’s ever called Mom the c-word before in public, so yes, I think they were serious. Sic transit gloria mundi.” She raises the glass to her lips and drains it, then sets it back on the table and eyes the other glasses around her. “Excuse me,” she says, and stands up to reach across the table for her mother’s filled wineglass.

          The doctor’s hand intercepts her arm. His touch is gentle but insistent. “Before you do that,” he says, “please listen to me, just for a moment.”

          She eyes him with annoyance, then settles back in her chair. “For a moment,” she says. “Then I would like to finish my meal.”

          “I am afraid for you.” He leans forward and opens his hands to her, elbows on his thighs. “Your family’s problems are deep seated and severe, I will not deny that. I am most worried about how you are coping with this great turmoil. Alcohol is not the answer.”

          “There is no answer,” she says without inflection. “A drink here and there gets me through. It’s not the problem and not the answer. It just gets me through.”

          “You are drinking a great amount, enough to damage your health and your mind. You are far too intelligent to be ignorant of that.”

          She shakes her head, her eyes never leaving his face. “I don’t understand your point.”

          “You cannot save your family, but you can save yourself. You said the very same thing in my office. You said you wanted to keep your own little boat afloat.”

          “I did,” she says. “But, you know, maybe those sinking ocean liners know something I don’t.”

          “You cannot be serious.”

          “Serious? Serious? My parents are out in the parking lot sharing a warm family moment at the top of their lungs with the whole world listening, my sister’s run off, and you’re telling me not to have a little drink? If I don’t celebrate now, when the hell am I going to celebrate?”

          He doesn’t smile. “Daria, we often use humor as a barrier to prevent others from trying to get too close, especially when we’ve been gravely hurt.”

          She chews her lower lip for a moment, studying him with narrow eyes. “You sound like my mother,” she says at last. “I’d say you’re eighty percent of the way there. The next thing you’ll tell me is that I’m hiding behind an antisocial mask that’s going to become my real face one day. Mom’s said that a couple of times lately, when I’m more honest with her than is good for either of us.”

          “Perhaps your mother is right.”

          She nods, then reaches for the doctor and touches the back of one of his hands.

          “Look at me,” she says. “Really look at me.”

          He does in silence.

          “Do you see me?” she asks softly.

          “Yes, I do.”

          She leans closer to him.

          “This is my real face,” she whispers.

          She holds the moment, then withdraws her hand, stands, reaches across the table, and downs the contents of her mother’s wineglass in one motion. Picking up her pewter flask and its cap, she pushes her chair up to the table and gives the doctor a little curtsey.

          “If anyone asks,” she says, “I will be in my room having a snack.”

          As she walks out of the dining hall, she raises the flask and chugs it with her head thrown back, the auburn waterfall of her hair swinging back and forth. It is the last he ever sees of her.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

          Club Glamour turns out to be a ramshackle red-brick block of a building that was considered an eyesore when Eisenhower was president. The first floor is a cavernous firetrap with a decrepit bar on the right, a low band stage in the far back, a wooden dance floor in the center, tables on the left, and spilled beer, cigarette butts, and peanut shells everywhere underfoot. Its patrons are in the eyesore category, too. Twenty-something punk/trash/grunge enthusiasts meander through the dim smoke, half-yelling to one another over the canned music before the next band comes on. It is early evening in mid-August. The bar has no working fans or air conditioning, but the work day is over, everyone is drinking, and no one seems to mind.

          She sits in the darkness against the wall on the left, next to a badly painted image of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock partially obscured by fluorescent-orange graffiti done with a spray can. Her table is just big enough for her elbows, a blackened tin ash tray, and a six-ounce kamikaze in a tumbler. Her drink smells strongly of lime. She doesn’t look like her usual self, with the red print kerchief tied back over her hair, the torn jeans, and the unbuttoned plaid men’s shirt worn over her amber tee. Her boots and glasses are the same, however.

          She watches the next band set up as she nurses her kamikaze. Mystic Spiral, says the gothic lettering on the red wall banner behind the stage. The tall, slim lead guitarist/lead singer adjusts a microphone and says testing and can you hear me into it. He still has the messy black hair and goatee that carried off her heart when she first saw him two years earlier. He never looks in her direction, though he would likely not see her if he did. She is glad he cannot. She reaches for her glass.

          “Drinking alone?” says a familiar voice in her right ear. She jumps and bumps her glass and spills a little of her kamikaze. A tall lanky shadow plops into the empty chair on the other side of the little table, setting a full highball glass next to the tumbler. “By incredible coincidence, I’m drinking alone, too,” says the lanky shape. “Mind if I join you?”

          Jane?

          “I’ve been called that, among other things.” The shadow picks up the tumbler and sniffs it. “Mmm, I like that. What is it?”

          She stares at the shadow who was her best friend.  “It’s . . . uh . . . uh . . .”

          “Here, try this.” The shadow pushes the highball glass an inch toward her. “This is an electric screwdriver, double size. Seriously, try it. It’s a killer.”

          Too stunned to do otherwise, the girl with the glasses gingerly picks up the tall glass. Condensation chills and wets her fingers. The drink smells of orange juice, peaches, and sweet almond extract. She takes a sip. It is very good.

          “Like it?” says the shadow, taking a drink from the tumbler. “Remember to pour it on the floor if the cops raid the place. They don’t like underage drinkers as much as the bartenders here do. How’ve you been?”

          Fine, she almost says, but she stops herself. “I’ve been better,” she says instead, closer to the truth. “You?”

          “Better than I was,” says the shadow. “Trent told me you’ve been following the band around for a few weeks. Thinking about old times?”

          “I . . . how did he know it was me?”

          “Well, duh, who else wears big round glasses like yours? The boots sort of give it away, too, and your height, or lack of same, and your build, your face, and everything else. Trent didn’t want to bother you, but he said maybe you were looking for me. Are you?”

          She flushes with shame. She lowers her head, bites her lips, then nods yes.

          “Well, if you’ve been looking for me at home, I’ve not been there for, oh, six weeks now. I’m staying at an art colony in Ashfield, out in the middle of cornfields and cow pastures, painting my heart out.” She drinks from the tumbler again. “What little I have left of one, anyway. So, what’s new with you?”

          It is impossible for her to look the shadow in the face. “My parents separated,” she says. “They’re getting divorced in November, around my birthday.” She swallows. “Quinn’s staying with one of my aunts until things settle down. I’ve been going back and forth between Mom and Dad. Things fell apart in May.”

          “Huh. How are you handling it, or is that a stupid question?”

          “I’m okay. I mean . . . I’m okay.”

          The shadow puts down the tumbler and trades for the highball glass. “I see,” she says. “Well, I guess I’m doing okay too.”

          “How . . . how’s Tom?”

          “I dunno. I haven’t seen him since before the abortion.”

          Her head comes up and she stares with horror into the face of the shadow. “What?

          “His parents were pretty decent about it. They paid for the clinic and everything. They would have paid for the counseling afterward, but I didn’t want it. Tom said he would drive me there, but then he bailed and Trent drove me. That was, what, second week of June, right after school was out. I don’t think anyone else knew about it, but I guess it doesn’t matter.” The shadow takes a long drink from her glass. “I haven’t heard from him since. Just as well.”

          The conversation lags for a while until the shadow turns to her and leans across the table. “Are you still writing for that magazine, Val? You were the one writing that column, right? ‘Over the Edge,’ by ‘D the Anti-Teen’?” When no response comes, the shadow adds, “No one is going to hear you with all this noise, or even care.”

          The girl with the glasses remembers to breathe. “That was me,” she says, her chest tight. “I e-mailed the magazine in March and ranted about life, and for some reason they published my letter and used my pseudonym. They published the next letter I wrote, too, and then Val wrote to me and asked if I’d like to write a guest column, half a page, and say anything I wanted to about life. She knew it was me, but she said she didn’t care. The magazine got a big response from the readers. Most of them want to hang me, but they keep reading my stuff anyway and the circulation’s gone way up. I don’t know why. Crazy.”

          “Sounds like you did pretty well, then. Pay well?”

          “I guess. Few hundred so far.”

          “That could be helpful. You got a new pizza partner?”

          “Uh . . . no.” She flushes with embarrassment. “No one.”

          “Oh, right, I remember you were . . . eh.” The shadow waves it away and changes the subject. “I sold some paintings. The colony director’s an old friend of my mom. She liked my stuff and drove me over to the college, and I made a few hundred last Saturday myself. It’s all just different shades of black on canvas, most people don’t get it, but some people like it, I guess. She swirls her drink and stares into it.

          Mystik Spiral is tuning up but having a feedback problem. They wait to continue until the electronic shrieks and the bar patrons’ cries have died away.

          “I should have listened to you,” says the shadow to her drink. “Going out with him was a bad idea. He was okay, really, but . . . we screwed it up. It was my fault as much as his. I didn’t have anyone else to hang out with, and we got curious, and . . . whatever. Live and learn, eh, amiga?” A few seconds of silence pass. “Sorry, old habit. Didn’t mean to rub it in.”

          “It’s okay,” says the girl across from her. “You can say it.” She reaches up and wipes under her glasses with her fingers. Her voice is hoarse. “I screwed up, too. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

          “Forget it. I missed you.”

          “I missed you, too.”

          “Life sure sucks, doesn’t it?”

          The two shadows laugh together in the darkness.

          “It does,” says the girl wiping with her fingers under her glasses. “It really does.”

          “Yeah. Two more weeks, we’re back at school . . . or are you moving?”

          “I’m staying. Hope so, anyway.”

          “Okay. I’ll be around.” The shadow lifts her highball glass. “Cheers,” she says.

          “Cheers,” says her friend, lifting her tumbler. The glasses ring together. They drink deeply and long.

          From the stage, the tall, slim singer/guitarist looks in their direction. The stage lights make it impossible to see anyone in the audience but the cheering, clapping metal fans in front. He still thinks he can see them together in the darkness.

          He turns away. “Hey,” he says into the microphone. “We're Mystik Spiral.”

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Original: 03/22/07, modified 06/04/07

 

FINIS