Shane affects a haughty voice, holds his nose in the air along with an index finger thrust skyward. “I consider the lack of a sweater-vest to be a glaring oversight. A vicious error that will surely have Monsieur Coyne dancing the Batusi in his grave. Beware his fashionable zombie vengeance!”

They both get a laugh out of that, a laugh that’s like a small light in a dark tunnel. But as the saying goes, sometimes the light at the end is really just a train, and that’s true here: because opening the door to that moment of mirth—of feeling anything at all—also lets in a charging locomotive of grief.

“He looked plastic,” she says, mouth dry. He did, too. Like a wax representation of him. Good enough for fake. But bad because it was real. “At least they didn’t make his little brothers and sister see him like that.”

She blinks away tears. It doesn’t work. Shane sniffs, too. Blows his nose. Turns away as if embarrassed.

More vodka for her. And Shane takes another stab at the bottle, this time keeping it down.

A few quiet moments linger between them, stretching like taffy, collapsing like a Slinky left on its own.

“They murdered him,” Shane says, suddenly. A bomb dropped on the conversation, a bunker buster punching a hole in the surface of the conversation, blowing it to hell.

Bad thoughts threaten to break down the doors inside Atlanta’s head. All she thinks is: Someone murdered Chris, but I’m the one who killed him.

More vodka. Everything feels slow, sluggish, hot. The drunk is coming on now.

“Cops called it a suicide,” she says, her mouth a grim line dragging. Those slurred words taste bitter like the beer. Sharp, but not sharp like the vodka. Sharp like a rusted nail poking up through a flip-flop.

“You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t know.” But she does know.

“You said it yourself. Orly Erickson’s got a cop buddy in his pocket.” The dark-eyed man from the gun club. Unibrow.

“What about the suicide note?” she asks.

“It was a message.”

“But not from Chris.”

“No. Not from Chris.”

She wants to cry but suddenly finds that the tears aren’t there. Her eyes hurt. Her brain wobbles inside her head. On one side of her the sun is melting into the horizon like a glob of orange sherbet oozing on a hot sidewalk. On the other, the ghost of the moon is already showing its face. Full, round, pregnant with all the nightmares that sleep will bring. Atlanta reminds herself to go to Guy. Buy more Adderall. With what money, she doesn’t know, but he’ll comp her. He always comps her. Guy’s good like that.

“They killed him, Atlanta. They killed our friend.”

There it is. The twist of the knife.

She gives the knife a twist of her own.

“I killed him,” Atlanta says, finally.