“What are you on?” George asks.

“Excuse me?”

“What are you on?” George says. His expression is inquisitive rather than angry. “You just lost your mom in a tragic accident, Carson. You know what? My sixteen-year-old sister was killed by a drunk driver when I was in college, so I get it, I’ve been there. And because of that, I want to know what you’re taking because there’s no way you can come back two weeks later to do a job that requires breakneck speed, laser focus, the patience of Mother Teresa, and a sense of humor without some kind of chemical help. Tell me the truth, please.”

Tell him the truth?

Carson wakes up every day around noon, brushes her teeth, then pours Kahlua into her coffee or drinks a screwdriver. For lunch, she smokes some weed or eats a magic cookie. Before work, she drinks three shots of espresso and snorts some cocaine. Sometimes that’s too much, she can feel her heartbeat in her throat and her temples and her ass cheeks, so she tempers the high with a Valium. Some days—most days—she hits productive equilibrium. She comes to work and knocks down the crowd like she’s John Dillinger with a machine gun. During work, there’s more espresso and a bump or two in the ladies’ room. After work, the serious drinking begins—a couple of cocktails first, shots, then beer. Then weed and an Ativan or a Valium to fall asleep.

“I’m not on anything,” she says. She’s surprised by how convincing she sounds. “I mean, I smoke a little weed on my day off and I usually grab a drink after work…”

“But no oxy, no pills, no smack?” George says.

“No!” Carson says, sounding affronted, feeling affronted. “Oxy? Smack? Do I seem like a junkie to you, George, really?”

George takes a visible breath. He’s a lot grayer now than he was when Carson started here three years ago, but Carson likes the gray. Zach has some gray at his temples, and she finds it very sexy. “I’ve been in this business thirty-eight years, so I have to ask. One drop, fine, accident. Two drops and I begin to think there’s a problem.”

“I had a bad night,” Carson says. “That’s allowed, isn’t it?” She thinks back over her previous summers working at the Oystercatcher. “What about when Gunner reached across the bar and jacked that guy up because of something he thought he heard? At least I didn’t assault a customer.”

“You’re right. Gunner had a temper, which was a liability I chose to ignore because he was a big draw—handsome, charming, never forgot a drink—and because he made us so much money.” George points. “You, Carson Quinboro, have the potential to be even better at this job than Gunner was.”

Carson reels back a little. This is high, and unexpected, praise. Gunner—Greg Gunn—is a living legend. He tended bar at the Oystercatcher for four years until he was “discovered” by one of their hotshot customers, who offered Gunner a job on Wall Street.

“I don’t know what to say. Thank you?”

“You’re gorgeous, and I say that with all due respect, and no, I’m not hitting on you. You’re a little cold, a bit indifferent, you’re witty and quick but not flippant, you’re tough on the barbacks, and you should be, they need to shape up. I heard about the card to Lemon Press for Jaime. That was a strategic move.”

Carson smiles in spite of herself. “I’ve been where they are,” she says. “I know how to manage them.”

“More than one person on the staff has come to me saying they think you’re doing drugs in the bathroom,” George says. “You display a marked change in temperament when you return, they tell me.”

“Because I’ve relieved my aching bladder and gotten off my feet for thirty seconds.”

“If I find out it’s true or if you have another remarkably bad night like you did tonight?” Greg points a finger-gun at her. “You’re fired. Consider this your warning.”

Carson walks through the dark parking lot to her mother’s Jeep. She’s so chastened that she skips her usual post-shift Corona but not so chastened that she doesn’t do a bump once she’s safely in the car.

The cocaine makes her angry. George says he understands because he lost his sister, but clearly he has forgotten how challenging it is to focus when your thoughts are soaked in grief like a bar towel that has fallen into the slop bucket.

“I lost my mother!” Carson cries out. The tendons on her neck stand out, she’s enraged. “Someone killed her and drove away! I need her back!” Now the tears come, and the snot, and the sadness, impossibly deep. Carson will never stop being sad.

The radio is playing “Stone in Love,” by Journey. No way! This is the last song Vivi ever heard, one that Carson selected for her playlist because she had a long-ago memory of her mother turning it up on the radio and singing along. Carson sings now in an unhinged voice, wondering if somehow her mother is watching her. Maybe her mother had this song play on the radio to let Carson know that she’s around, in the air, up above.

Carson pulls out her phone and texts Zach: Meet?

There’s no response.

“Stone in Love” ends and “Everybody Wants You,” by Billy Squier, begins. Carson is listening to Classic Rewind on Sirius XM because she’s driving Vivi’s Jeep and these are Vivi’s radio stations (No Shoes Radio, the Bridge, typical old-person music). It’s no great magic that Carson heard “Stone in Love” because this station plays Journey and other music from beyond the grave all the time.

She’s losing her mind.

There’s still no word from Zach. It’s a quarter to eleven; he’s probably asleep. Maybe Pamela came home from her little “night out” and they slept together. It happens occasionally, he admits, and Carson hates how much this bugs her. The agony is the price that she, and every other woman out there, must pay for falling in love with a married man. She wants to go out. She needs company, other people, even if they’re nameless.

She grabs some napkins out of the center console and mops her face. She lets her hair out of the tight braids and runs her fingers through the kinks. Earlier today she bought a black paisley halter top at Erica Wilson; the shopping bag is in the back seat. She changes right there in the car. In the zippered pocket of her bag are her mother’s silver Ted Muehling earrings; she takes them out and slides them through her ears. She has long coveted these earrings and on several occasions asked Vivi if she could borrow them. (“No, you’ll lose them, I know you, Carson.”) Carson had considered stealing them but then decided her mother was right. Now they’re hers; everything is hers. She borrows Vivi’s clothes, shoes, and jewelry; she sleeps in Vivi’s bed. Why? Is she trying to become Vivi? Oh, who knows. Her mother had great taste, and the bed is comfortable. The earrings shine against Carson’s dark hair. She’s good to go.

The line at the front door of the Chicken Box is long but Carson, with her new cachet as head bartender at the Oystercatcher, doesn’t have to wait. She walks around to the back door, where the bouncer, Jerry, who is Nikki-from-work’s fiancé, lets Carson right in and gives her a cold Corona while he’s at it.

The bar is packed; bodies are crushed in so tight that Carson has to turn sideways and wedge herself between people in order to get to the row in front of the stage, where there is at least room to breathe. The band, Maxxtone, is popular; they play cover tunes. The lead singer, Aaron, sees Carson and gives her a thumbs-up. He and the band came into the Oystercatcher the night before for dinner. Carson tips back her beer and tries to get lost in the song—“What I’ve Got,” by Sublime.