Best Friends Forever
Margaret LaFleur
Sarah and Jenny meet at the bar in the strip mall where Becky had her twenty-first birthday. It has been years since either of them have seen her. They don’t know about the party, though each remembers her birthday (October 23rd, the cusp between Libra and Scorpio) and when they walk in from the cold and shrug out of their coats they don’t think of her. They don’t think of her when they order beers and french fries from thick plastic menus and they don’t think of her as they talk and spin coasters between their fingers.
Sarah thinks of her when she stands and the room spins just ever so slightly. As she makes her way to the bathroom, Sarah thinks of the three of them sitting on a beanbag chair in someone’s garage, sharing a screwdriver that Becky’s boyfriend kept refilling, and how they kept insisting they didn’t feel a thing and asking if he was really adding vodka, until they stood and—woosh—the alcohol slid down over their heads in a wave.
Sarah almost asks Jenny if she remembers that night, is considering it as she washes her hands and tosses a paper towel on the mound growing from the trash can, but when she steps back into the bar she immediately forgets.
Because there, across the dimly lit room, in front of the window crowded with neon signs, is a man wearing a plastic horse head.
Jenny catches Sarah’s eye. They exchange a quizzical look. Jenny is suddenly grateful to see Sarah crossing the bar towards her. They are old friends, emailing sometimes, and calling more rarely. They ended up in different cities for college, and as Sarah passes the man in the horse head Jenny thinks about how most days she doesn’t recognize anyone in Boston at all, even though she has been there three years. But here. Here is Sarah. There was Becky, once, too, and just for a second Jenny sees the three of them laying in the grass, each of their heads on another’s stomach, a triangle of giggles.
Now they have both thought of her, the one who still lives right down the road in their suburban hometown, the one who stayed and somehow disappeared.
The man in the horse head sits at the bar. He orders a drink. Both Sarah and Jenny are laughing, and this attracts his attention. He stands from his bar stool and walks over.
“Hi,” he says. “Home for Christmas?”
His voice is muffled, but they can understand him. He holds a tall rum and coke in his hand, but he can’t drink it. Not while wearing the head. The girls nod, unsure which of them he is hitting on.
Or maybe they know him? Wouldn’t it be nice to see another familiar face?
Margaret LaFleur lives, teaches, and writes in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Find more of her at margaretlafleur.com.
