The Bartender's Cure by Wesley Straton

Author:Wesley Straton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

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And then it’s Friday morning, and it’s my birthday. How did we get to my birthday already? Leaves fallen from the trees, radiator in my apartment clunking at all hours of the night and day, houses all over Bed-Stuy decked out with spiderwebs and jack-o’-lanterns and animatronic skeletons. My father calls me in the morning, my father and his wife, Diane. My father is concerned when I tell him I’m working on my birthday, but the truth is it’s a relief. What else would I do? Have a party? It would just be me and Hayley, and Ben, and everyone else in my life would be at work. Plus I can’t stop thinking about my birthday last year, undeniably terrible, and I’m looking forward to being too busy to dwell on it.

Besides, Friday nights at Joe’s are actually pretty fun.

We wish we could celebrate with you, Diane says, and I know she means it. Diane is a nice lady, genuinely; I have opinions about how soon she and my father started dating after my mother’s death—just over three years, which I guess is not so soon, but which when I was a miserable high school junior seemed downright offensive—but still, she’s no evil stepmother. She is, if we are all honest with ourselves, much more pleasant than my real mother ever was; I am sure she’s much easier to be married to.

When are we seeing you next? she asks. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Working, I tell her; not quite true, we won’t be open on the day itself, but I’m certainly not taking the time off to go to Arizona. Same with Christmas. Getting holidays off work like a normal person: another thing that will be much easier when I am a lawyer.

Not that I am in any hurry to go back to Arizona anyway. Obviously. Two months living with my father and Diane was more than enough. My father and I, as I’ve mentioned, have not been close since I was a kid, and his attention in Arizona felt forced at best, performative, if not wholly artificial. Diane attempting to mother me out of some sense of moral obligation or Christian charity or just habit. I’d rather be alone.

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