“How about a vodka on the rocks.”

Sam nodded, but kept his eyes on me a second too long. “How’re you doing?” he asked as he spun a glass upright on the bar, scooped ice inside.

“Been better,” I said. I didn’t want to talk. I wanted to drink. And forget everything for a little while. I needed relief, and I’d take it from the bottom of a bottle if that’s where I could find it.

“Jimmy Ray’s not here,” Sam said as he slid my drink across the bar. “He’s kept himself scarce lately. Rumor has it, you about busted his nose clean off his face.”

I drained half the vodka in one go, choking a little as I set the glass back down. My eyes burned, and heat spread inside my chest like tentacles. “Yep, that was me.”

Sam laughed. “I would’ve loved to witness it.” He leaned closer, lowered his voice. “But you didn’t hear that from me.”

I gave him what passed for a smile, finished my drink, and motioned for another. I could tell Sam wanted to say something about my newfound taste for alcohol. But this wasn’t the kind of place, and we weren’t the kind of people, for a go slow, take it easy speech. You walked in these doors to get wrecked, not to have an umbrella-adorned cocktail with your friends. I went a little slower with the second drink, but not by much. Turned around in my chair to stop Sam from trying to keep a conversation going. Of course, then I was forced to stare at the lone stripper, a woman about my own age with a greasy tangle of bottle-red hair and wide, stretch-marked hips. The tassels on her pasties swung in half-hearted arcs as she gyrated.

It wasn’t until the song ended and she was climbing down off the stage that I recognized her. She’d been a brunette when I’d known her, living with her older sister a mile or two down the road. We hadn’t been friends, exactly, but we’d stuck together in junior high. Not because we particularly liked each other, but because we were painfully aware that we came from the same place and there was safety in numbers. As far as I remembered, she hadn’t continued on into high school.

“Hey, Crystal,” I said when she got within spitting distance. There was a faint slur to my words, my voice a little higher than normal. The vodka was sitting in my gut like a sparking fire. She looked at me blankly, and I wondered if I’d gotten her name wrong. Maybe it wasn’t Crystal after all, although that was a favorite in my mama’s part of the world. It could have been Diamond. That one got a lot of play, too. As if the shimmer and shine of the names themselves could make up for the sad stripper lives they were destined to precede. I guess I should’ve counted myself lucky that my mama had picked up some Bible learning along the way and had written Eve on my birth certificate instead of Sapphire or Destiny.