Rosemary

I walked into a bar to watch football. I only gave a damn about the game because I had five of my last three dollars on it. Losing would overdraft my bank account, but my bookie didn’t need to know that.

Reggie was waiting for me behind the counter. He smirked as he said, “Right on time, Mista Whipple. I saved your seat.”

A quarter-full highball glass marked my spot.

I grimaced and said, “A lot of empty seats in here.”

“My main customers ain’t here for the booze.”

The weighty thud from someone rolling a skee-ball reminded me that the bar was secondary to the arcade.

A distant memory of the accident flashed before my eyes. It started here that day so many years ago. The details of which are hazy now. My muscles tensed as I imagined feeling the impact. The air smelled faintly of burnt rubber and rosemary. I mumbled, “Alcohol.”

“What’s that, Mista Whipple?”

“Um alcohol—surprised you have any alcohol.”

“Only order once a year, right after your annual reemergence.”

Another year, same lousy joke.

I told Reggie, “The game’s on.” It was as polite as I could say, leave me the fuck alone.

He shrugged and said, “You’re distracting me anyway,” and went back to filling Coca-Cola orders.

Hearing him say distracting reminded me of what they said caused the accident, distracted driving. The worry crept into my mind that my secret wouldn’t be a secret much longer. They never checked me for alcohol.

I wanted to hear the game, but here at the fun zone, music took precedence. A new tune had started playing. A familiar one. I tightened my grip around the glass as I tried not to listen but heard it anyway. I heard there was a secret chord.

I attempted to distract myself with the game and I thought I was, until some exotic bird ran onto the field and people in yellow jackets chased it around. I didn’t know what the ad was selling and didn’t care. Another commercial followed whatever the bird thing was. A young family lounged on an exorbitantly priced ass cushion. The dad was tossing the youngest in the air and a small boy bounced next to them. The mom had a book in her lap but was watching and laughing with the others. If they only knew how tragically it all could end.

A hint of rosemary took my attention away, not that I cared to watch any more commercials. I looked to my right, to my left, but only saw Reggie mixing a drink and artfully placing a green stem on top. He called himself a mixologist. I’ve never understood why he’s not behind the bar at the Ritz instead of this establishment.

I was transported back to the accident again. The smell of rosemary was stronger than before. In the distance, faint sirens rang. I was staring out at a blue sky with smoke or clouds adrift overhead. No kids playing games. No click-clack of an air-hockey table. Just a dying voice trying to sing, I heard—there was—a—secret chord.

I shook myself out of it and whisper-shouted, “No,” and downed what was left of my humiliating drink. I held the glass on my lips and let the ice cubes that clung to the bottom crash down. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t still dreaming.

Reggie hustled over and asked, “You alright, Mista Whipple?”

The ice cubes fell back into the glass as I threw it down on the counter, creating a ripple in the graveyard of watered-down whiskey. I pointed to the glass and said, “Mo—more,” as I rushed off to the bathroom.

In the bathroom, I relieved my bladder but nothing else. The song seemed to be playing everywhere, taunting me. I barely recognized the voice. It was one I hadn’t heard in a while. I tried to ignore it but the eyes in the mirror, my eyes, appeared more gray than blue. Gray like her eyes.

I was back at the accident. I could feel the hard and cold blacktop underneath. She was there too. Her head was motionless. Her gray eyes were honed in on me. Her arm stretched away from me and I followed it from the shoulder to the elbow, past the forearm that was snapped like a broken tree limb. She was pointing, reaching for something, the other car, her family, God.

Her last words rushed back to me unsolicited, “I forgive you.”

She was the only one who knew the truth.

I splashed cold water on my face to bring me back.

I kicked open the bathroom door. The music amplified and arrested my movements. I could hear her again as she sang, I’ve seen—this road—I’ve walked—this floor. The door crashed into my shoulder as I shuffled out of the bathroom.

As I walked back in a drunken stupor, I bumped into a young woman. I caught a flash of light out of the corner of my eye and heard a heavy thump. I turned around just in time to catch her snatching something rectangular off the floor before she ran out of sight. The scent of rosemary hung in the air but I was watching a gaggle of teenagers shooting basketballs, not reliving the accident. This was real.

The back of my neck began to tingle.

I returned to a refilled glass. I scooped it up before I sat down, spilling its contents over the rim onto my hand and the counter.

The smell of rosemary returned. I looked at Reggie, realizing it was no dream, but noticed he wasn’t looking back at me.

The young woman took one of the two empty stools beside me, humming the song under her breath. I observed her like she was an exotic animal running wild on my playing field.

She said to Reggie, “Bring me two of what he’s having.”

Reggie said, “Sure thing Miz Hilliard,” and grabbed a bottle off the counter behind him.

She said, “The cheap stuff, huh?” before looking me over. “Scrap that. Make it two of what I normally have.”

Have we met before?

Reggie grabbed a bottle from the highest shelf and brought over two decorative highballs. The prick had been holding out on me. I watched Reggie pour more into those glasses than he ever did for me.

“It pays to have friends,” she said and added a wink.

I grunted and poured the contents of one glass into the other and said, “I prefer a little burn.”

After a few minutes of hearing tapping from her thumbing away on her phone, she slapped her phone on the countertop, leaned over, and whispered, “You hear it too, don’t you?”

“What’s that?” I said as I leaned away from her.

“Her voice. The song she was singing before she—” she paused and took a sip, “—before she passed. I saw it on your face, in your eyes, when the song came on.”

“You got the wrong idea, lady. You best—”

“I’ve seen you here before too. Do you remember me?”

“Honey, my memory is a bit like the stars on a cloudy night. See them clearly for a moment, maybe more, then they’re gone and another one appears.”

“Well, I remember it like yesterday. There were no stars. Just a blue sky—”

She took another swig of her drink.

I pulled mine into my chest.

“—and I remember you. I was barely a teenager then, just started driving, but I remember playing air-hockey right over there—”

She turned and pointed beyond me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.

“—and seeing a sad man at this bar and I remember the same sad man sitting in an ambulance watching them roll my mom away in a black bag.”

The glass slipped out of my grasp and shattered on the floor, joining the other permanent fixtures of vomit, stale beer, and salty tears.

Only Reggie reacted by leaning over the bar.

I was fixated on her, her on me.

Her breathing was strained, her chest rose and fell in quick succession, and her cheeks were redder than an apple, as if she had just run a marathon.

She turned to Reggie and said, “Hallelujah—it’s the asshole that took my family from me. They won’t say it but I will. Murderer!”

Murderer.

I’m not a murderer. Am I?

Reggie’s head whipped around. I could hear his chin swipe across his jacket.

I was shot back to the accident. I could see her piercing gray eyes and her freakish dead arm pointing to something away from me, but this time I said it. “I forgive you.”

Who was she forgiving?

Hearing her shout, “Forgive…me?” brought me back from my quick journey to the past.

I tried to speak but could only clear my throat.

I pushed myself back from the bar counter, partially slipping on my spilled drink. She held her phone out as if she were about to swing it across my face.

I found my footing and rushed out of the bar, squeezing through a mixture of teens and parents who were drawn to the ruckus, a lot like the onlookers from the accident.

I punched the entrance doors open, but the light from a cloudless sky impeded me, forcing me to turn away, back inside.

When my eyes readjusted, I saw Rosemary’s reflection in the bar mirror. She was hunched over, glaring at her phone. Her thumbs frantically moved across the screen. A couple young kids were pushing, shoving each other, around her, but she didn’t see them.

Then a thought crossed my mind. What did they call it? Distracted driving.