“Do I know you?” she asks, and her voice is low, musical.
I shake my head. “No—” My voice catches, and I have to clear my throat and try again. “No. I was…I was a client of Cheyenne’s.”
“Oh.” But her eyes are on me, like she sees something in me that doesn’t jive with my brush-off answer. “It’s just…she had so many clients over the years and…”
Why am I here? That’s what she’s getting at.
I move to my feet, keep my cane planted in the grass so I don’t pitch forward. “Sorry to intrude, and I’m sorry for your loss.”
I move past her, take a rose from the vase and toss it onto the casket, stand there for a moment wondering if I should say something or just have a moment of silence, and then I shake my head and limp back through the cemetery where a taxi is waiting for me, the meter running.
I’m climbing into the taxi, cane between my knees, when I hear feet approach on the gravel drive, and then the girl is in the taxi with me, shutting the door.
“Nearest bar, please,” she says, her voice choking.
I’m at a loss. Her shoulders shake, and she’s clearly crying, and I have absolutely not a single fucking clue as to what to say or do, especially with this girl, the daughter of the woman whose death can be laid at my feet.
She takes a deep breath, then wipes at her eyes. “Sorry. Sorry. I just couldn’t take it anymore, Grandma and Grandpa hovering, Father Mike hovering, everyone hovering.”
“I—” Words fail me, but I’ve got to say something. Something, anything, damn it. “It’s fine.”
Wow. I mean really? It’s fine? Is anything fine anymore? But she doesn’t reply, just puts her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands.
I feel an odd compulsion to comfort her, but I don’t know how.
The taxi pulls into a parking lot. It’s a dingy dive bar, only three cars in the lot, an open sign flashing, red letters lit one by one—O…P…E…N. “Thirty-nine fifty,” the driver says.
I hand him two twenties and a five, and then I’m hobbling after the girl, who’s already in the bar, sitting on a stool with two pints of beer in front of her, and two shots of whiskey. I take the stool beside her, lean my cane against the bar, and look around as I take the first sip of my beer. This place is a shithole. The bar is sticky, scratched, and pockmarked. There are a few small square tables covered in shitty plastic red-and-white checkered tablecloths surrounding a makeshift stage with cheap in-house karaoke equipment. A dartboard on one wall, a pool table with ripped felt and only three sticks, a pinball machine, a TV tuned to poker on ESPN 3, and an electronic poker and lotto machine on the far end of the bar.
The girl’s got half her beer gone already, her shoulders hunched, her hair pulled over one shoulder. She’s got her high heels and a small clutch purse sitting on the stool beside her. Her cheeks are streaked with black.
She glances at me, grabs the shot glass with her left hand and holds it up to me. “To Mom.”
I clink with my own shot glass. “To Cheyenne.”
We down the whiskey, Jack Daniel’s I’m pretty sure.
“I’m Echo,” the girl says, glancing at me.
“Ben.” I’m a little impressed: she didn’t make a face after downing the shot. Clearly she’s no novice at shooting whiskey.
We drink our beer in silence for a few minutes and, strangely, it’s not at all awkward. I’m loath to break the silence, to start a conversation, lest it turn into telling her how I knew her mother, why I was compelled to go to the funeral even though I’d only known her for a month. I’m sipping my beer, Echo is guzzling hers. She lifts a hand and the bartender—a wiry, greasy-haired old guy with an untrimmed goatee—silently pours another pair of Coors and sets them in front of us, and then goes back to staring at the TV.
“So. Ben. Let’s try this again. How’d you know my mom?” Echo pivots on the stool, angled toward me.
I shrug. “I told you. I was her client.”
“But out of all the clients she’s had over the years, even the ones she was currently working with, why are you the only one at the funeral?”
I almost shrug again, but don’t. I move my nearly empty pint glass in circles on the slick yet sticky wood of the bar top. “She was a friend when I needed one.”
Echo nods. “That’s Mom for you.”
“Yeah, seems like it.”
“You work with her for long?”
I shake my head. “No. Just over a month, not quite six weeks, I think.”
“So you barely knew her.”
“Guess so.”
Echo wipes at her right eye with a finger and sniffs. “She made everyone she worked with feel like they were important. It was what made her so good at her job. You always had her full attention.” She lifts the empty shot glass and the bartender refills it, and mine. “I can’t believe she’s gone.” She knocks back the shot without warning, and I follow suit.
“She was patient,” I say. “But she had this core of…I don’t know. Hardness. She wouldn’t give up. Like the priest said.”
“Father Mike. I grew up calling him Uncle Mike, actually. He was one of Mom’s first clients, and he was a friend before that. I think he was a little in love with her, to tell you the truth. I mean, he couldn’t and wouldn’t do anything about it, and didn’t as far as I know, but the way he looked at her, I knew he always wanted to help her however he could.”
I nod. “Sounded that way, the way he talked about her.”
“It was hard not love my mom, though. She just had that way.” Echo’s voice breaks, and she puts her face in her hands and breathes deep several times, and then blows out a harsh breath and shakes her hands.
Watching her struggle with her emotions is hellish. “I’m sorry,” I can’t help saying.
She shakes her head. “Why? You didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Ouch. That cuts. Because I very much did, only…how do I say that? Answer is: I don’t. I don’t dare.
“I just mean—”
“I know what you meant,” she interrupts, not looking at me. She lifts her shot glass again, and as soon as the whiskey fills the glass she tips it back. “I’m sorry if I’m being a bitch. I’m just…I don’t know what to do…how to handle this.”