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Caroline Alarie works in a Fritte in Jamrock in the year ‘48. She is sixteen years old. She is not allowed to sell alcohol, but she does anyway, because she is in high school and will take the night shifts that no one else takes. Her favorite color is lavender. She’s saving up for a new shirt, one with lace patterns. She will never get the shirt. There will be too many emergencies first.
None of this really matters.
What no one tells Caroline about working shitty night shifts at a shitty store that sells shitty alcohol and is open twenty-four-fucking-seven is that she will run into a lot of drunks. It soon becomes abundantly clear why no one wants the night shifts at Fritte, aside from the time. A lot of them like a pretty blonde girl behind the counter, so she dyes her hair brown and refuses to sell to them if they look like they want to get handsy.
“What are you going to do?” she barks at them, when they start looking around the store for something to throw. “Fucking report me? Do it! Do it. Tell them the fucking kid wouldn’t sell you booze. I’m sure that’ll go over fucking great with management. Do you really want to walk another five blocks to the next Fritte after you get banned from this one? Fucking piece of shit.”
She’s Jamrock, through and through. The secret is to be meaner than the drunks, and to keep yelling if they start to cry. So far it’s worked every time.
Caroline’s favorite drunk is the cop. She thinks he’s funny. The great RCM officer, sworn to protect Revachol, trekking through the rain to buy a couple cans of cheap beer, and then a few hours later coming back for wine. He’s always sort of shame faced, like he thought that just the beer would be enough. It never is. Once Caroline throws in the Commodore Red for free, because fuck it, it’s not her alcohol and it’s not her money.
“What’d you do that for?” the cop-drunk asks. His voice is already slurred.
“I don’t want to see your ugly mug again tonight,” Caroline replies, bagging it and sliding the purchase across the counter.
The cop-drunk looks dejected. Oh, God, the macho man is a sad drunk. Of-fucking-course. Exactly what Caroline needs on a Thursday evening. She shouldn’t have made the joke. “Is it that bad?” the cop-drunk says, touching his face self-consciously.
Caroline studies him. Yes, it’s that bad. Maybe it’s worse than “that bad.” “I was just kidding,” she offers. He nods like he’s read her mind.
“Sorry,” he says, picking up the plastic bag. “Sorry. I won’t come back.”
Jeez, Caroline thinks as he walks out the door. Something is wrong with this poor motherfucker. Outside, the cop-drunk doubles over by a payphone, clinging onto it like there’s a number he could dial to save himself. Caroline shakes her head. He’s funny. Reminds her of her dad, before he died.
A lineup of the rest of the drunks, from best to worst: first, all the ones who are clearly single and live alone. At least they aren’t going to subject anyone to their rages or their mood swings. They are usually the saddest, and they are usually the most likely to tell Caroline something she doesn’t already know. The sad, lonely drunks will stop by the Fritte just for conversation when they’re broke, their gazes flitting between Caroline’s face and the cabinet of untouchables behind her head. The second best drunk is named Francis. He has a degree in chemistry from the university. He studied the Pale and it drove him out of his mind. Caroline spends more time than she should hoping that Francis doesn’t kill himself.
The next category is the shameful ones. The argument could be made that all drunks are shameful, but there are some for whom the shame outweighs everything but the drink. They’re good customers, at least. They never harass Caroline and they’re always in and out. They tend to buy the same thing every time and it’s usually hard liquor. The shameful drunks load up as much as they can and then don’t show up for a week or two. They are the ones with jobs and families and misery that is eating them up alive.
The second to worst are the drunks that think Caroline will give them a chance. She won’t. Caroline will scream that they are fucking creeps until they buy their drinks and leave. Sometimes she thinks about calling the cop-drunk on them, dialing into Precinct 41 and saying, There’s a man here hitting on me and I’m sixteen. Send me your drunkest and most fucked up cop. There shouldn’t be one drunker and more fucked up than him I don’t think. Unless the RCM has really let itself go these days. Anyway, you’ve got to have one cop that goes to this Fritte. Send him. But that’s just a fantasy. There’s a gun below the counter. Caroline can turn off the safety in half a second.
In most cases, this would be the worst type of drunk. Jamrock is not most cases. The worst type is when the kids come in with their parent’s IDs as if it’s going to fool anyone. They’re the worst type because Caroline remembers being them. They’re the worst type because Caroline sells to them, knowing that sending the booze home will prevent withdrawal-beatings, and knowing that those kids are going to hate her when they realize what she’s done to them. Caroline still remembers the face of the Fritte clerk who sold to her when she was eight. She didn’t understand his expression on his face at the time. Now she knows it’s horror, and apology, and deep, ugly regret.
“Do you have any flowers?” asks the cop-drunk one night, shuffling around the store. His voice is shot. Caroline is checking to make sure her gun still has bullets; one of her Creep Drunks is due for a visit anytime now.
“Hm?”
“Flowers?”
“Oh,” she says, blinking. She already has the cop-drunk’s beers all lined up for him. “I mean— yeah, sure. Don’t you want to come back in the morning for that?”
He shakes his head. His shoulders are slumped. When he turns to face her, Caroline can see that his eyes are shiny with a drunken glaze, red from— smoking? Crying? Crying. It’s all downers tonight. Caroline has the sudden urge to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him to go down the street, to the hole in the wall that sells speed for cheap. She doesn’t know why that is her first instinct for comfort. She won’t interrogate it. “It has to be tonight,” the cop-drunk says.
“Okay,” says Caroline, because this is usually the part where she just starts agreeing with drunk guys, to get them out of the store quicker.
Maybe it’s just the booze, but the cop-drunk continues: “I’m visiting my daughter’s grave. It’s the anniversary. I need— I need flowers.” Caroline blinks. He suddenly seems to realize that this is an incredibly inappropriate personal detail to share with a drugstore clerk. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Caroline likes to bring flowers when she visits her dad’s grave. She should say that. “I bring flowers when I visit my dad’s grave.” Wow, that was fucking stupid. There is something wrong with her brain. They’re even now.
The cop-drunk seems to sense what she means, and smiles. It’s a smile so sad Caroline thinks she prefers when he looks distraught. “I’m Harry,” he says.
“Caroline.”
She doesn’t tell any of the other drunks her name. Then again, none of the other drunks remind her of her dad, and none of the other drunks buy flowers for their dead children’s death anniversaries. At least, they don’t buy flowers from her.
“You know,” he says, “she’d probably look just like you if she’d gotten to be your age. Back when you were blonde—” He’s quiet for a long moment. “Revachol has so many ghosts. Ghosts at the Fritte. Ghosts everywhere.”
“I loved ghost stories when I was little,” Caroline says. “My dad used to tell me them all the time.” If she lets her eyes unfocus she can see him in the cop-d— in Harry. They have the same thick hair and big nose. They have the same pockmarked skin. He was a drinker too. That was what killed him. That’s what’s going to kill Harry. Caroline can already tell.
Harry nods. “Revachol is made of ghosts,” he says. He’s drunk and insane and it’s comforting. “We… we take care of the ones who haunt us.” He blinks. “Flowers. I need—”
“Here.” Caroline comes out from behind the counter without her gun and gathers a bouquet. “What was her name?”
“Amelie.” It comes out of him in a rush, on an exhale. “Her sister was Brigitte. I named them. Their mother—”
He doesn’t continue.
A pang in Caroline’s chest. She hands him the flowers. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“Don’t—” He turns his unfocused eyes on her. “Don’t call me ‘sir.’ I don’t deserve that. Just Harry.”
“Okay.” Caroline steps back behind the counter and shivers. Without Harry’s feverish warmth the entire store feels freezing cold. “Good night, Harry.”
“I have to pay you.”
“No, you don’t. It’s not my money. It’s not my shit. I don’t fucking care.”
“No— no.” He scrounges around in his pocket and pulls out a few crumpled reàl. Caroline’s heart speeds up. Those are real bills and they’re at least fives. “Keep it. It’s a tip. For— for helping me find the flowers. It’s—” He reeks so heavily of liquor Caroline is surprised he’s on his feet. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your father. About all of it. We’re so close to the end of all this. We shouldn’t be miserable when we’re alive. We shouldn’t…”
He trails off and puts the money on the counter. Caroline tries not to look at it. It’s at least fifteen reàl. God, she needs this. “Thank you, Caroline.”
Caroline’s father’s name was Vance. It was short for Revenance, one of those stupid revolutionary names that was stuffed chock full of hope only for it to fall short, leaking failure like a punctured gut. He was an alcoholic because he lived in Jamrock and he was a father because Caroline’s mother killed herself a few months after Caroline learned how to walk. Out of all of the drunks in Caroline’s life, this is number one. He will always be number one.
Caroline loved him fiercely. He taught her how to shoot and how to break a boy’s nose. He taught her how to read and how to draw. He loved drawing. He used to want to teach art before he started working some useless factory job and then he didn’t have the time to do anything except go to his useless factory job and drink. But he had just enough teacher left in him to make sure Caroline knew how to sketch. They drew flowers together. He was a master at still life. Once, a butterfly landed on a flower for a mere minute, and by the time it departed Vance had added a perfect rendition of its rest to his pad of paper. Caroline was never as good as he was. It never mattered.
Vance is the reason Caroline doesn’t drink. He’s also the reason she knows the feeling of a Commodore Red label upside down, backwards, tied up and within an inch of her life. There was always something grating about the cheap paper the label was printed on that was unmistakable for anything else. If anyone ever came for Vance, Caroline would hit them in the softest places of their body until they screamed for her to let them go. Caroline has never killed. She never had to. She buried her father alone and figured out a way to pay the rent.
Caroline never should’ve gotten herself a favorite drunk. She never should’ve thought he was funny and she never should’ve tried to use his misery to pass the time. She shouldn’t have cared about him.
Harry is wasted. Caroline has made the mistake of saying she won’t sell to him.
“Fuck you,” she says. “Fuck you. You’re just like the rest of them. Fuck you, you piece of shit! You’re just another stupid drunk and I’m going to get you banned from this fucking Fritte. You can’t puke your guts out on a corner and make me sell shit to you. You fucking piece of shit.” She’s talking to her dad. She’s talking to Vance, when he yelled in that scratchy vomit-scraggly voice to go to the Fritte down the road when he was still in the bathroom, his vocal chords still hoarse from bile.
“Please,” Harry says, swaying on his feet. Revulsion rises in Caroline’s throat. He’d beg her for this right now. He is doing his best to obliterate— something— from his living consciousness, and maybe he’ll take down himself with it. “Please. I have to. It’s all too much.”
“You don’t get to kill yourself,” Caroline snaps. It’s like Harry doesn’t exist. Vance, you don’t get to die this time. I won’t make the same mistakes. I won’t buy from the Fritte clerk. I won’t take the Commodore Red home. This time you’ll live. You’ll see. “Fuck you. You don’t get to kill yourself. You don’t get to poison yourself in front of me.” Her voice catches. She’s a kid. She’s trying to save up for her lavender shirt even though she knows that it’s not going to happen. She’s going to cry in front of the cop. She’s going to cry in front of Vance. She’s done that a million times before.
“Caroline,” Harry says, the same way he breathed his dead daughter’s name. He tries to blink himself into lucidity and fails miserably. “No, I… don’t want to die.”
At that she laughs. First it’s a giggle, then louder, and then she’s in pained hysterics, clutching the counter. Her stomach hurts. Tears are rolling down her cheeks. Caroline can’t stop laughing. “You want to die more than anyone I’ve ever met,” Caroline says. “You want to die so much it’s eating you alive. You’re a Jamrock drunk. You want to die.” She can’t stop laughing. She can’t stop fucking laughing.
Vance would do this sometimes. He would lie to her face to make her feel better. Is that you, Dad? Caroline thinks bitterly. Is this my ghost? My Revacholian ghost? “Revachol is full of ghosts,” Caroline says. “You don’t get to be another fucking ghost. I’ll kill you before you kill yourself.”
Harry laughs, too. Short and bitter. Caroline is full of Jamrock. She’s all spears and no warmth. She’s not laughing anymore, at least, not in that slightly insane frantic way she was before. “I’ll walk you home,” Caroline says. She’s stupid. She is Jamrock through and through. She takes the gun with her and makes sure she still remembers how to turn the safety off in half a second.
Jamrock loves. It still loves, despite everything.
You held a young woman by the arm and kept her in your apartment for 20 minutes against her will.
By ‘51, Harry will not remember Caroline. He will not remember anything. He will not remember the way she pulled a gun on him and threatened to make her good on her promise not an hour after throwing it out into the world. He will remember the way she turned to leave and he grabbed her forearm, his hand huge against hers. He will not remember breaking down and begging her to stay. He will not remember calling her Amelie. He will not remember calling her a ghost. He will not remember the way she screamed at him, because she was a scared child looking at her own corpses, or the way he let those words sink into his skin, invisible tattoos.
Harry will know somewhere deep in the pit of his stomach that after he grabbed her, Caroline had looked— for the first time— afraid of him. It was a deep terror. She had a look on her face that wondered if anyone would find her body in the morning. With her arm in his grasp she couldn’t take the gun out of her back pocket. Harry will know the facts. He will not remember the eye contact they had held, a dawning realization, the clearest thought Harry has had all night— She thinks I am going to rape her. She thinks I closed the door so I can—
By ‘51, Harry will not remember being a threat. He will not remember letting go. He won’t remember his frantic, desperate apologies. He won’t remember the next twenty minutes. He won’t remember Caroline leaving with a gun still pointed in his direction. He will never know that he will remain her second favorite drunk, even though four months later, she transfers to a different store.
By ‘51, Harry will not remember being threatened. The fear on Caroline’s face was a mirror of a much younger boy, not yet swollen with alcohol but already having consumed too much. Harry will not remember either of them. Harry will not remember anything except—
You know how it is, Klaasje will say. At his most prone to snapping, Harry will understand that he does. He will not remember anything else. He will not remember anything.
It is mercy. It’s hell. The score isn’t kept in Harry’s mind.
After those horrific twenty minutes Caroline does not see Harry for a month and a half. She wonders if he’s dead. She hopes not. Sorry I never got you those uppers, she thinks. She still thinks about Vance when she sees him. Vance has been dead for three years now. His memory starts to blend with the memory of Harry. Some nights, when Caroline dreams of a father’s embrace, of anyone there to support her, they might as well be the same man.
She gives up on the shirt with the lace. It’s long since sold out. When she goes back to the boutique the attendant tells her it’s been out of stock for weeks. Caroline cries anyway. She keeps the lights on in her shitty little apartment in shitty fucking Jamrock.
“Give me whatever the fuck you’ve got.”
Caroline is working a morning shift when the cop comes in. She barely works morning shifts. For a moment, her tired, stupid, high school brain thinks, There’s two cop-drunks that come to this Fritte in uniform for their supply? No fucking way. Then she realizes that cop-drunk-two is probably enabling cop-drunk-one. She misses Harry. He was good conversation on his more sober nights.
“I’m sorry, sir, each of our products run at a different price, so you’ll have to be more specific.” She wants to smash a container of pale aged vodka at his feet and demand thirty reàl and say Fuck you! Fuck you, you piece of shit! You’re not better because you’re not a drinker. Some of the best people I’ve ever known were drinkers.
Cop-two sighs. “What’s the cheapest shit with the highest alcohol content?”
“The highest alcohol content would be the pale aged vodka. Our cheapest is a pilsner. Somewhere in between would be a classic Commodore Red.” Caroline doesn’t know why she says “classic.” It’s only a classic for Jamrock drunks. Maybe that’s the joke. She snickers to herself.
“Something funny?”
“No, sir.” It’s hilarious. There’s a smile on her face as she rings up a price for cop-two that means Caroline can keep two reàl for herself.
“Excellent,” he grumbles, muttering something to herself. Caroline thinks she catches the word bitch in there.
She can’t help herself: “Enjoy yourself, sir.”
“It’s not for me.” Cop-two turns back around with a vengeance. “It’s for my Shitkid partner.”
“Okay,” Caroline says, like she didn’t expect a non-drinker to go all morally-righteous when someone implied they would be day-drinking.
Cop-two deflates. His facial hair is patchy. People will say anything to a drugstore clerk. “I’m getting it out of the way,” he says. “So he won’t come here and do it himself. You wouldn’t understand.”
You have no idea, Caroline thinks. She nods. “Good luck, sir.”
Caroline won’t know that, at this point, Harry has been sober for a month and a half before the relapse that led to his partner arriving at his typical Fritte. Caroline didn’t know about the relapse because she didn’t work that shift. Caroline didn’t know about the sobriety because people don’t get sober in Jamrock, they just die. If she had she would have been proud of him. She will never know. She will transfer stores in a couple weeks and she’ll never speak to Harry again.
Caroline also won’t know that Harry will pour the bottle of Commodore Red that Jean brings him down his tub drain. Caroline won’t know anything about the fight they’ll have. Caroline won’t know that Harry got sober in the first place because he, even in a state of complete consciousness annihilation, was struck with the electric realization that he never wanted to cause that sort of fear in anyone again. Caroline won’t know that Harry will start drinking again. She won’t know about Martinaise. She’ll miss him for the rest of her life and his.
Caroline keeps the windows open in the springtime. The polluted air may not be very invigorating, but at least she’s able to hear the chatter of birds and MCs roaring their way through the streets. It’s worth something. It’s spring ‘49. She is not happy. She never found anything else to save up for that she wanted as much as that shirt. Caroline is seventeen. She’s not going to high school anymore.
“Jean,” Harry croaks. They are sitting in the pitch dark. Harry has spent the last hour being violently ill.
Jean sighs. “What?”
“Do you think—” He pauses. Darkness swallows them in full. “Do you think some people just— deserve to get raped?”
“What?”
Harry’s head thuds against the wall of Jean’s bathroom. Maybe if he squints he can see the window in the living room, and through that, he can see the moon— no, he can’t. “Do you think some people deserve it?”
A rustle of fabric. Jean is pushing himself into a more direct sitting position, the exhaustion of dealing with a sick and drugged up Harry suddenly evaporating. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks, his voice coated with disgust. “What kind of fucking question is that, Shitkid?”
Harry closes his eyes. “Okay,” he says, like Caroline used to.
“Fucking God,” Jean says. “You’re sick. You’re sick and you’re drunk. I can’t—” He pinches his nose. “We’re not going to talk about this ever again. You don’t mention that ever again. I put up with a lot of shit, Du Bois, but not this. I’m going to pretend I never heard that and you’re never going to bring it up. Am I understood?”
Slow, miserable tears catch in Harry’s beard.
“Am I fucking understood, Du Bois?”