Old Friend
by Gauraa Shekhar
Bat comes to visit, a bottle of Bacardi Superior clutched tightly under her wing. I turn Bat away like I always do. Bat, I say, I have kids now; an early morning, a desk at which I’m expected to be upright and sober. Bat doesn’t seem to understand that my husband would lose his shit if he saw her standing in the driveway at three in the morning. Bat shoves the bottle in my face and gestures at her feet. She’s wearing her good-grip shoes tonight. Fine, I say. But hurry. I unchain the lock on the door. One drink, I say. I am firm. Resolute.
Bat wafts to the kitchen before I can lock the door behind her. She claps the overhead lights off and pulls out two shot glasses from the back of the cabinet. A heavy pour. Bat yanks from her purse a rhinestone-studded Hello Kitty t-shirt I bought off eBay, one drunk night in college. Where did you find this? I ask Bat. She evades my question, dipping her lower jaw into the glass. Go ahead, she gestures with her digits. Put it on. In the dark, I can see fragments of insect pieces aglow inside her mouth.
I study my reflection in the bathroom mirror. The polyester-blend clings to the rolls of my belly. I suck my stomach in and push my breasts up until they plunge deep against the neckline, trying desperately to remember. I strut outside, ready to pose before Bat. Bat? I whisper. I feel a small chill come through. The window to the back patio is slid open. Bat is nowhere to be found.
I fall asleep in the Hello Kitty shirt and wake up the next morning with rhinestone-shaped bitemarks across my belly. I wait for my husband to notice, to make a remark of some sort, but soon he is out the door, lunch in a reusable silicone sandwich bag, kids in the backseat. Gone.
At work, I file the mail like always. I update the records in the company database. I watch my coworkers closely, and as soon as the cubicle is clear, I open a private browser, type my first, middle, and last name into the search bar. The results yielded are disappointing, no different each time the page is refreshed: a LinkedIn profile props up a former job with worn enthusiasm; a college paper boasts bad writing from sophomore year, and finally, a link to Bat’s Instagram page.
I click on Bat’s profile, and attempt to distill the catalogue of her life. Here’s Bat, posing with a stemless glass of Merlot, linking you to her grandmother’s Bolognese recipe. Here’s Bat’s reflection in a metal accented mirror, promoting a botanical matte lipstick for an independent beauty house. Here’s Bat, out at the bars in her gold sequin dress, posing next to her shiny influencer friends, and here she is again, next to her home-grown lemon tree, discussing some-or-another environmental plan of action.
I’m about to take thirty for lunch when my supervisor Eric calls me in. Did he catch me lurking on Bat’s profile? Did someone else? Didn’t these computers have privacy filters? My hands grow clammy as I walk to the corner office. I just thought you should know, Eric pauses to check his phone, that you have lipstick on your cheek. He doesn’t look up from his screen.
I think of Bat as I wipe my cheek with the corner of my sleeve. I think of Bat on the drive home. I think of Bat while I dice potatoes for stew, as I scrub the dishes, as I tuck the kids in for the night. Why did we stop talking? When did we grow apart?
In bed, I am unable to sleep. I walk down the stairs to the kitchen, put on a pot of tea. I catch Bat in the reflection of a clear glass mug. She is wearing one of her gold sequin dresses tonight. I hear the fabric rustle as she approaches me. She drapes her purse across the chair, and pulls out an old notebook I had journaled in for a few weeks when we lived together, before I got bored and let the habit abandon me. She reads from it, aloud, correcting the grammar as she goes along. A handful of lines about a man I once knew and thought I loved, whose name now slips from my memory. I try to pull the book from her grasp. Give it! I demand. Bat refuses, splitting her mouth into a teasing smile, as if to say, Is that green tea? I am tempted to remind Bat about her homegrown lemon tree, her bougie metal accented mirror, to shove her condescension up her free-tailed ass, but when I look up Bat is no longer there.
I wait for Bat to return the next night, and the night after that, and the night after that. I think of Bat as I file the mail, update the catalogue, pack lunches, take the kids to practice. When my husband makes a joke at the dinner table, I don’t notice. His words fall on empty plates and wither away in silence, hollow. I am on a different planet. The planet is a rare bookstore I visit with negative numerals in my bank account.
I am taking the trash to the curbside on Sunday night when I hear the click clack of designer stilettos approaching me. Bat is shitfaced; wine stains blossoming down her diaphanous tights. She grabs my right hand and places in it a commemorative coin: George W. Bush 2001-2009. I look up at Bat, but she is already strutting away. Wait! I plead. What is this supposed to mean?
A year glides by; we watch our youngest graduate elementary school. My husband gets a promotion, and not long after, we move into a townhouse in a neighboring county, with a better school system. Evan, our oldest, is referred to a gifted science program. I search for Bat everywhere: darker corners, outer walls, the dimly lit ceilings of recital halls, winter skies on the drives back home. Some nights, I escape into the kitchen and secret a nightcap, a gulp of Bacardi Superior. I try to muster the courage to DM her, but never do.
Eventually, I relinquish my search for Bat. I buy cocktail dresses and join my co-workers for Happy Hour on Thursdays. Every third Thursday, I assume the role of designated driver. One of these Thursday nights, after I drop Estelle from Licensing home, I turn on the radio. An old song comes on. I know most of the words, but can’t remember the title. I turn the dial up.
I’m pulling up in our driveway when I see Bat again. She is wearing her famous gold sequin dress, but seems different, somehow. Older, perhaps. Wrinkled. Spent. Bat watches as I approach her, but doesn’t acknowledge me. I invite her in, locking the door behind us. I pull out two shot glasses and place them on the marble countertop. We toast. Bat knocks the glass back, slides an envelope across the counter. Inside, I find a key. Bat turns to me, a sparkle in her eye, a drool of meshed baritone slurs, and slides out the back door. A gold sequin falls loose from her dress and sinks into the gap between the floorboards, where it stays compacted, gathering varnish each year.
Gauraa Shekhar is a writer based in Manhattan. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod Journal, Contrary, Sonora Review, The Toast, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She is the Interviews Editor at Maudlin House, and is currently pursuing an MFA candidacy in Fiction at Columbia University.
