[Always Happy Hour 01] • Always Happy Hour by Miller Mary

Author:Miller, Mary [Miller, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9781631492198
Goodreads: 30730691
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
Published: 2017-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

WHERE ALL OF THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE GO

I’m on a cheap raft, pink and deflating, trying to keep my body balanced in the center while Aggie sits on a step churning the water. She’s high on pills and has recently chopped off all her hair. Her mother has been dead for six days.

I brought cookies from the grocery store, apologizing. I feel bad about the cookies—I should have baked something—though Aggie’s family is the kind that prefers Chips Ahoy! to the homemade variety.

“My mother always told me I was too big and clumsy, too much like my father. Mothers are supposed to tell their daughters they’re beautiful,” she says, and it makes me sad because it’s true—it’s what all girls most want to hear. I hope I never have a daughter because if I had a daughter and she wasn’t beautiful, I’d have to lie and tell her she was and I don’t like to lie, not even the nice white ones. Sometimes I think the people who believe they’re the most honest are the biggest liars of all. When I start to think this way, nothing makes sense.

“You are beautiful. And you’re talented. You’re so talented.”

“Do you think it’s bad?” she says. “Do you think I’m a bad person?”

“Of course I don’t think you’re a bad person. You’re in mourning. People do strange things when they’re in mourning—they don’t think clearly.” She doesn’t say anything else so I give her a few more variations along these lines, trying to sound as supportive as possible.

When Aggie found out her mother was dying, she applied for credit cards in her mother’s name. She received a number of them with limits from three hundred dollars to three thousand. I can imagine some of the stuff she ordered off the TV—charm bracelets and clothes that don’t wrinkle, gimmicks to help you cook breakfast foods more efficiently. She purchased a new set of living room furniture, which should arrive any day now. Maybe today. She’s very excited about this new furniture; she has never had a whole matching set before. I don’t care about things like this so it’s hard for me to understand, but I also don’t have a husband or a house or kids. Maybe if you get a husband and a house and kids you automatically want a nice set of matching furniture so badly you’re willing to steal for it.

I wish I had a dog. I think about dogs a lot. In the past month, I’ve been to the pound five or six times, but I can’t make a decision; I don’t trust my judgment. They don’t even call it the pound anymore. My sister says I only like the neurotic ones, the ones that will only love me, that will snarl and nip at the heels of anyone who isn’t me. But I also think: What’s so wrong with that?

Sometimes I call to ask if the dog I like is still there. Is Gunner still available? I ask, and then

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