In my dim peripheral vision, I can see people stopping what they are doing, watching as whatever is unfolding here unfolds a little more. My hands plant on my hips. My head cocks to the side. My voice rises ever so slightly. Because I have something to prove. And now I have an audience. And I want a glass of wine, dammit.

“Tell ya what, Becky. I’ll go home, curl up on my couch in a pink Snuggie, and sip some nice club soda like a good little shut-in, but only after I get hammered here tonight. So how about you gimme my wine? Preferably before I’m dead.”

For a minute, she just stands there, eyelids fluttering a mile a minute at me through her glasses. Allie laughs so hard that the risk of pissing in her pants is becoming more real by the second. Allie is a notorious pants-pisser when she laughs. Which is why I’d never lend her my jeans. Char, on the other hand, was not allowed to borrow my jeans because she would draw penises on them, cut holes in the crotch, and sometimes light the pockets on fire. While she was wearing them.

“Well you just got told right the fuck off there, dinja, Chick­­enshit!” Char’s face suddenly pokes in between Allie and me, her blonde dreads flipping and flopping as she gives an exaggerated side-to-side gawk around. Now things just got really awkward. And not just because Char happens to have both tits hanging out, with her baby snuggled in a sling and suckling on one of them.

Allie and Char have not seen each other since 1998. And I believe the last words between them were, “Fuck you, you psycho cunt face. I hope you rot in hell.” At least, that’s what the guy who lived in the apartment above us told me he heard somebody scream that night, before the door slammed and everything went quiet. I don’t know exactly what happened, or why. All I know is that I came home from the bar to an empty apartment. The next day, Char told me she was bailing on the lease and booking ’er to Germany to join the circus. A week later, Allie got kicked out of residence and moved in with me for a while, until her mother took a bad turn and had to be moved up to Halifax to be closer to a specialist. Allie said she and Char had a fight. That it had been coming for a long time. That Char was a crazy, backstabbing bitch, end of story. And all I ever got out of Char was a garbled complaint about Allie Walker and “all her melon-dramatic shit.” I don’t know what happened, but I knew enough to stay out of it. Never imagined I’d find myself standing next to the two of them again.

“Don’t waste your money at Becky’s little lemonade stand, girls. C’mon out to the car. I got a surprise for ya,” Char says, kissing her teeth at Becky.