Page 53 of The Comeback
My mind is a mess when I finally go to meet Phoebe. The door handle is odd in my hand, and I look twice before I realize it’s a bronze cast of the arm from a record player.
Longplay. LPs. I open the door to a tiny room. Vinyl records cover the walls, and in the center is a rectangular bar that opens to a back room blocked off from patrons. The bar surface is covered with record players.
“Hi, sis.” Phoebe waves from her seat. She’s dressed simply but accessorized so well that I feel almost aggressively unexciting. My sister is comfortable in her skin and her clothes in a way thatI, camouflaged to blend in with the rest of the corporate drones at Yesterly and Havings, am not. “Isn’t this place cute?”
There’s a couple sharing headphones on the other side of the bar and a few loners lost in their private music. I smile at her, genuinely enchanted. This wacky hole-in-the-wall has a great feel. “I like it.”
“I knew you would. Drink?”
I look at the menu, glad the drinks and the bar provide talking points until alcohol takes the edge off. “How do you get a drink called No Weddings and Four Funerals from three fruit liqueurs, soda, and grapefruit juice?”
“You going to try it?” She flips over the menu.
That thing is a hangover in a glass. I’m exhausted and should have a Perrier. Instead, I nod as my usual distaste of sweet drinks gets pushed aside by curiosity. “Yeah.”
“I’ll get the Cat on a Cold Brick Wall.” She smiles and glances up to the bartender, who’s lingering in the door to the back room. “It has Chartreuse. The queen of liqueurs.”
We order and I look around. “It’s cool you can listen to records.”
She pulls over a couple of albums and a set of earphones that are split so each person gets a side. “It’s not great for stereo sound, but here you go. They sanitize everything between customers.”
The bartender comes back with our drinks in a few minutes. Mine is a pastel dream complete with swirls of smoke begging to be posted online with a pithy hashtag. Phoebe’s is a poisonous green with a single ice cube shaped like a cat’s head floating in it.
We tap glasses, sip, and silently swap. She tries mine and wrinkles her nose. “Fruity.”
“Herbal,” I manage to say about hers as I try to wipe the taste off my tongue by rubbing it against the roof of my mouth. It’s like melted cough drops—the gross kind.
Drink ratings complete, Phoebe puts on PJ Harvey. I considerand discard several topics of conversation before I settle on, “Your place in Montreal sounds nice.” That’s neutral, since I didn’t tack on athanks a lot for telling me you moved. Phoebe left when I was thirteen and she was twenty, and it’s possible our relationship was tainted because of all the ego and agony of my early teens.
“It’s fun. I’m in a good neighborhood, and it’s close to the ad agency where I work.”
“You work in an office?” I’m surprised. This doesn’t match my perception of Phoebe.
“When I need. I do freelance web design, so I can usually do that from anywhere.”
I stare at her. “Since when?”
Phoebe pauses with her drink halfway to her mouth, and through the curve of the glass, the melting cat’s face is malevolent. “A few years ago. I dabbled and found I liked it, so I did some online courses.”
“I thought you worked as a barista,” I say.
“I did. I pick up shifts at a friend’s place for fun when I feel like it.”
I hide my confusion in my drink. Phoebe seems content with her mix-and-match life, but I don’t understand how. “Did you see Mom and Dad today?”
She rolls her eyes. “You’d think rapini had been put on this planet solely to torture Dad. He was mad because Mom won’t let him back to work more than a regular workday.”
That’s like Dad. “Remember when he brought his files to my swimming lessons to pick us up and the wind blew them into the pool?”
“He jumped in after them fully dressed and held them over his head like trophies as everyone cheered.”
We grin at each other. When we were growing up, we spent most of our free time together since she watched me after school when Mom and Dad were working. There’s security in these memories, and Phoebe is the only person to share these experiences with me.
We order a second round of drinks. I blow caution to the wind and order a Little Trouble in Big China, a party of green tea and Sortilège, a liqueur made of whiskey and maple syrup. Phoebe decides on Kiss of the Titans, with ouzo, banana soda, and mint.
“How’s Hana’s cousin?” she asked. “He was a cutie.”
“Out with Hana. She came back yesterday.”
