Lost in my own thoughts, it took me a minute to realize that Mrs. Patel had stopped bagging my Doritos and was staring at me with a strange look on her face. Definitely not concern, but her weathered face showed, at the very least, a level of interest that I’d never seen in the year since I’d first come toSwagat. It took me a moment to register her expression as one of thinly-veiled confusion.
Wow, I really must’ve looked like shit if it was enough to catch Mrs. Patel’s eye.
I guess I probably did look a bit dazed — like Jamie had that time when we were fourteen and he’d accidentally shocked himself trying to fish a bagel out of the toaster oven with a fork. The prongs hit the metal andzap!
Instant brain fog.
Everything felt slightly removed, out of focus, as though I were watching my own life play out on a fuzzy dark projector screen while I sat in the audience eating popcorn with only a vague interest in what was happening to the heroine or where the plot-lines were going to twist next.
I met Mrs. Patel’s narrowed eyes and shrugged my shoulders at her before forcing my lips up into what I hoped could pass for smile.
From the way her face contorted in response, it wasn’t hard to guess that my lackluster grimace fell short of the mark. Her eyes flickered away from my face to study the exposed wine bottle tops peeking out from the paper bag I was clutching to my chest like a safety blanket, before returning to examine my features. A beat of silence passed between us before she opened her mouth and spoke. As in formed words, made conversation, actually communicated with me for the first time ever, which, I might add, left me dumbfounded and utterly unable to string together a coherent thought.
“Are you alright, Miss Lux?” she asked in perfect, if accented, English.
I started, shocked that she was — freaking finally — speaking to me after a year of resolute silence.
“I— uh, I’m…” I stammered, at a loss. “I’m fine.” I swallowed roughly, again fighting welling tears. You know those idiotic people who, when they’re upset and someone is even the tiniest bit nice to them, immediately burst into tears?
Yep. That’s me.
“You don’t talk today,” she noted, her head tipping sideways as she studied me intently. I don’t think she blinked once — which would’ve been totally creepy if I’d had anybrainpower left to dwell on things that weren’t the ex-love-of-my-life.
I nodded, unable to speak.
Abruptly, her head snapped upright and she nodded briskly in return. Without further ado, she reached beneath the countertop and pulled out a bottle of top-grade, black label scotch, followed by two stout glasses. Before I could fathom what was occurring or even begin to muster a protest, Mrs. Patel had poured two fingers of amber liquor into each glass and was shoving one across the counter at me.
“I— what—“ I began, feeling like a bumbling idiot.
“Drink,” Mrs. Patel snapped at me, her shrewd glare back in full force, pinning my feet to the floor. Jesus, she was scary. No wonder her grandkids were so well behaved whenever they were in the store with her.
I nodded, grasping the glass with my free handand watching as she lifted hers into the air — toasting god only knew what — before throwing back her scotch like an old pro. She didn’t even wince as it went down and only when she had again trained her glare on me did I realize I’d been frozen, staring at her in open-mouthed shock.
Hastily, I threw back my own shot, gasping at the fire that burned down my throat, stole the breath from my lungs, and blasted an inferno of warmth into my empty stomach. My eyes a watery mess, I spluttered — clearly I was not in Mrs. Patel’s league — and leaned over the counter, heaving in large gulps of air. When I’d finally regained my composure, I looked up at Mrs. Patel who, if it weren’t such an impossibility, I would’ve sworn was smiling enigmatically at me from her maroon chair.
“Thanks?” I whispered through a hoarse throat. I wasn’t quite sure what had just happened, or why ancient Mrs. Patel was forcing me to do shots with her at two in the afternoon, but I wasn’t about to argue. I’d always been more a lover than a fighter.
Mrs. Patel eyed me speculatively once again. Seemingly satisfied with whatever she saw in my bewildered expression, she nodded sharply and snatched my empty glass from the countertop. Within an instant it had disappeared beneath the counter along with the bottle of scotch, and she’d folded her hands back in a demure grip on her lap. I stared at her in wide-eyed expectation, waiting for some wise words of Indian wisdom or, at the very least, any kind of explanation for the past five minutes.
I should’ve known better, honestly.
“That will be $8.99,” Mrs. Patel said with her usual perfunctory disregard, one liver-spotted hand outstretched for my money.
Numbly, I handed over a ten-dollar bill and watched as she deposited it into the cash register.
“Thank you,” I told her haltingly, as I accepted my change.
“Come again,” she told me indifferently, as though I were a stranger rather than the girl who came in nearly every day spouting chitchat and who, at the moment, apparently looked like she could really use a good dose of high quality scotch.
Shaking my head in confusion, I walked outside with my bag of snacks and my bottles of wine, the door swinging shut with the telltale tinkling of bells at my back. And there on a busy New York sidewalk, with a shot of liquor in my bloodstream and the hot August sun beating down on me, at two thirty in the afternoon on the worst day of my life, I threw my head back and laughed and laughed until tears were streaming down my face and the passing tourists were eyeing me with a wariness generally reserved for hookers and homeless people.
My life was a freaking mess.