Molly had given up smoking. She’d quit three times, and the third time it stuck, because three is a magic number as everyone knows. The week after she gave up smoking she went out with a friend to a bar where they played country music and served beer in boot mugs, and later to a party at the brother of the second guitar player, where she passed out for the first time in her life.

She didn’t remember anything between the point in time when she was sitting on an upholstered stool in the basement while a number of people were jamming on an unrecognizable song, and the second point in time when she woke up lying on a bed upstairs. Not so much woke up as became aware again, because her eyes had been open for some time. The bed was unmade and rumpled, but Molly was the only occupant.

She could hear music and laughter and shouting downstairs but in the bedroom it was quiet and still. There was still a buzz in her brain. She lifted up her arms and then her legs to see if they were functional. A man was sitting by the window, looking out. He was wearing jeans and an unbuttoned shirt and she didn’t know him. Or rather, she didn’t know him, but she knew who he was – the bass player of another band, one of the basement jammers, in fact. She didn’t know him but she knew his name was Eddie. He turned to look at her and said, after a minute, “Don’t worry. Nothing happened.”

“What kind of nothing?” Molly said, and he laughed. “How did I get up here? Did you carry me?”

He shrugged, a who-me sort of gesture. “You walked up your own self. You were walking but the lights were out.” He pointed to his eyes and then to hers. “You got to know your limits,” he said. “It stands to reason.”

“I never pass out,” she said.

He nodded, which she took to mean something like I’m humoring you but come on.

“It’s because I quit smoking,” she said. “I used to light up, take a drink, smoke, drink, smoke, drink. You know. The whole process was slowed down.”

“Or,” he said, “somebody slipped you something.”

“Who?”

“Well, now,” he said, “I’m not the all-seeing God, am I? or a mind reader. So I don’t know.”

Molly propped herself up on her elbows and surveyed herself. Her clothes were relatively unmussed, her jeans zipped, her shirt tucked in. She wanted to ask why he was sitting there, and she also wanted to know who had seen her when her lights were out. Her body felt heavy and unmovable.

Eddie was looking out the window again. He had a half-full glass on the sill, bourbon probably, with some melting ice cubes. “There’s a cemetery across the street,” he said. “Did you notice that?”

She shook her head.

“One side of the street is the houses and the other side the cemetery, behind a fence. I don’t know as I’d like to look at that when I got up in the morning. Like every day reminding you, hey, life is short and you could be dead tomorrow. Could be down under here cozy in your casket.” He took a sip from the glass and pointed it at her. “Don’t you think?”

“They probably got used to it.”

He hummed, sipping and swallowing. “Probably they don’t think of it at all. They’re not the sort.” He sipped again and stretched his legs out. “You know them, right? Bill and Carol?”

“Not really.” She didn’t know them at all.

“They could drink you under the table and all the furniture in the room, honey. Bill is sleeping with Holly, you know her?”

She shook her head.

“Nice girl, curly hair, big armful of woman. She’s a country groupie.  And Carol is sleeping with the lead singer. But they’re both jealous as hell. By the end of tonight, they’ll probably have a shouting and throwing fight.” He paused, looking out the window again. “Carol helped me walk you up here.”

Molly tried to remember something about this, her feet on the stairs, someone holding her up, but no, nothing, just a black space in her head. “I should get up, I guess.”

“You going to rejoin the party?”

“I think I should go home.”

“Country road,” he sang, “take me home,” in a practiced, smooth tenor.

She sat up carefully and ran her fingers through her hair, which felt snarled and sticky.

“I’ll walk you down,” he said.

“Why were you sitting in here?” Her purse was sitting on the floor beside the bed.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I thought you could use the company.” He pointed the way to the stairs. “And maybe I was feeling a little sad. Country sad, When the sky is too big or the wrong color, something like that. Should I walk you to your car?”

They were halfway down the stairs and it was if they were wading into the noise and light of the party, cigarette and pot smoke swirling around their ankles, then their knees. “I’m fine.”

“If you say so.”

Molly could see her friend on the other side of the big room, dancing slow with someone even though the music was fast and jumpy. “I’ll be fine.”

He took her hand and led her to the front door. His hand was calloused and smooth. “I know you will.”

When he opened it, she saw the cemetery for the first time, its smooth green lawn lit up by the streetlights. The gravestones looked like miniature houses from here, like a city for dolls, stretching away into the dark. He handed her purse and reflexively she opened it and looked inside.

“What if I was to look you up?” he said.

“You don’t know my name.”

“Hmmm,” he tapped his chin. “I could ask Carol.”

“I don’t think Carol knows either.”

“Oh, honey,” he said, “Carol knows everything. Now if I look you up, don’t be surprised.”

“That’s OK,” she said. “I mean, don’t bother.” Molly walked down the steps, looking for her car, which was only two houses down the street. Two houses or eight gravestones. When she got there and unlocked it, she looked back. He was still standing in the open door, still holding his half-empty glass. He waved at her and she waved back although she didn’t mean to do it. Her car smelled like cigarettes because it was only a week since she’d quit.

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Mary Grimm has had two books published, Left to Themselves (novel) and Stealing Time (story collection). Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Antioch Review,  and Mississippi Review, as well as in a number of journals that publish flash fiction, including Helen, The Citron Review, and Tiferet. A collection of short stories, Transubstantiation, is forthcoming in Fall, 2024. Currently, she is working on a series of  climate change novellas set in past and future Cleveland. 

ART:

Olga Roshchina
Strange Navigation
120 film, 2022