Chapter One

The night of the red strings.

“Yo, Chase!” Rep was already waiting for me at the counter, a drink in each hand, as I came in for my shift. “What you doing after work?”

I stabbed a straw in through the lid and gulped half of the coffee down before answering. “Got a shift at the Rock.”

“How much time you got in between?” His eyes glinted mischievously. I started waving my free hand, trying to swallow faster so I could answer.

“Oh no. No you don’t. I’m not working the Rockefeller morning rush on vodka and five hour energy shots. You know damn well what happened last time.”

He cackled, like a possessed child. “But did you die? S**t, girl, I got put on that shift too. They can’t keep anyone there for more than five minutes. They need us. Drunk or sober we’re the best they’ve got. Come on, it’ll be like old times. We’ll hit the White Rabbit, leave around 5, grab some food at Joey’s, and crush those suits.”

I shot him a suspicious look. Rep was always down for a good time, but he had his own crew he went out with for parties. I was usually just invited along for the ride. The only time he wanted to hang out solo was when they were having beef, or didn’t have time.

I opened my mouth to argue, when it flashed before me. The White Rabbit. Rep breaking down and sobbing in the street outside the bar. F**k. Whatever was going on, I wasn’t going to find out unless I went with him.

I groaned and hit my head against the counter. “Fine. Okay, fine. But if I end up vomiting in front of the district manager, it’s going to be your head.”

“Girl, you could vomit on his shoes and nothing would happen.They don’t care what you do at work, as long as you show up.”

I rolled my eyes and headed to the locker room with him. He grabbed my shoulders and gave them an enthusiastic squeeze.

“It’s gonna be lit, Chase! You the bomb!”

I punched his shoulder and flipped him off, letting out an exasperated laugh.

This conversation wasn’t over, but that’s what Rep and I excelled at. It didn’t matter what argument or discussion we were in the middle of before work. We clocked in, did our job, clocked out, and picked up right where we left off.

Sure enough, nine hours later we were out the door, and I had barely lit my cigarette when he started up on me again.

“For real though, Chase. How come you trying so hard? You know this ain’t it.”

“Oh excuse me for trying to be good at what I do.”

“Still believe in the American dream, huh? Listen, Chase. Real talk. I once worked a week straight in the same exact shirt some a*****e spilled Henny on the night before, and no one said s**t. You wanna know why? Because there’s only two things these a******s care about. Number one, they want you to take each and every s**t the customers dump on you and say ‘thank you can I have another.’ And number two, they want you to show up. You don’t call in sick, and if you get hit by a psycho cab and die, you better phone on in from the beyond and let them know who’s covering your shift.”

I laughed in spite of myself and took another deep drag of my cigarette.

“Listen, man. All I know is, I don’t want to be serving coffee for the rest of my life. I want to get somewhere. I can’t afford to pay for the book smarts, so working my a*s off to the top is all I get.”

“Yea, yea, I get it. Work hard, be loyal, show up, and someday when you’re fifty, no life, no partner, no kids, no hobbies, not even a dog or a cat because that just keeps you from being flexible, you get to come on down and give speeches, telling other suckers just like you how hard work pays off cause your bank account has more zeroes in it.”

I laughed wryly and flicked my cigarette butt into the trash can, opening my pack to start another. He gave me a disapproving glance. “I mean, assuming you reach fifty, with all them cancer sticks you keep inhaling.”

“Listen, bro,” I answered, waving the cigarette demonstratively in front of his face. “You want to talk about the rules of the minimum wage slums? Rule number three. Don’t f*****g kill anyone but yourself. These right here? These are the only thing standing in the way of me losing my s**t and beating some a*****e to a pulp with a pitcher.”

“Yea yea, you’re a straight up psycho Chase, you know that? F**k nicotine, you need medication.”

“I tried that. Can’t afford it. Nicotine is the medication of the broke and degenerate. Nicotine and booze.”

“Yea well booze is all I need to stay in my lane. Now would you hurry up and finish? That last dude just about used up the last of my ‘let’s not kill people’ battery. Time to recharge.” He held open the door to the club, tapping his foot impatiently. I waved him in.

“Go on. You know what to order. I’ll be a sec”

“Jerry!” he hollered, marching through the door. “We’ve got five hours. We need the short shift switch special, like yesterday!”

I snickered in spite of myself. Rep was a good kid, and as much as I ragged on him for being a bad influence, he was good for me. He helped balance me. I liked to live in the future, thinking about the potential consequences at every turn. Rep just lived in the moment. He partied too hard, drank too much, jumped from one girl to the next, and danced his problems away on the dance floor.

If he could be accused of having any aspirations at all, it was to be a professional dancer. But he didn’t think in aspirations, goals, or the future. For all he knew, the last 22 years of his life had been one very long day and he didn’t know when the sun would set, nor did he care. All he knew was that it hadn’t set yet, and he would cross that bridge when he got there.

Me? I spent my whole life wondering about that bridge, holding my breath at every bend, wondering if it was approaching. I was barely 21 then, but had a mid-life crisis every five years, scared shitless that sunset was gonna come and I’d cross that bridge having never found my purpose. That I’d fade away and it would have all been for nothing.

Looking back, those drunken nights with Rep, cracking jokes with the bartender, getting into fist fights and barely avoiding arrest, dancing until it was time for work, getting s****y deli coffee and a bagel to go, and watching the sun come up over the skyline, those nights were a simpler time. Those days I lived in fear I’d never find my purpose. Now that I have, I’d give it all back for just one more great, crazy, night at the White Rabbit.

But not this one. This night was the beginning of the end for me. As I flicked out my cigarette and followed him inside, I felt the increasingly familiar churn in my stomach. That evil twinge of foreboding, that tonight was not going to be one of the good ones.

Two hours, three drinks, and five shots later, Rep finally loosened up enough to start talking about the real reason he didn’t want to go home tonight. He followed me outside for my smoke, and grinned at me with those ridiculously white teeth.

“Chase, ya know. You’re good people. You smoke too much, talk too loud, and you can’t dance for s**t. But you’re good people. Do you want to know why you’re good people? Because you’re a sucker.”

“I’ve got to tell you Rep, I’ve not gotten that many compliments in my life, but I’m not sure this is how they work.”

“Would you shut up and let me talk? Because you’re a sucker, Chase. Yea you’re a workaholic, you’re chasing your dreams and you like to act like getting paid is the only real goal in life. But you’re a sucker. When people call, you come. People need money, you hand it over. You’d hand out your last quarter to someone who asked you for it, and act like you had plenty to spare, like it was nothing.

“You’re the one people call when they don’t know who else to call, and you don’t give a damn about who was their first choice, or even their second. You’re just happy they called. You act like your life don’t have any real deep meaning, but you’ll be damned if you let anyone else live in that hellhole you call a mind.

“You’re good people, Chase. And that’s why I knew I could count on you tonight. I’ve got people for when I need to forget what’s going on. But you, you’re the one, when you can’t forget it anymore.”

I exhaled forcefully, not sure how to respond. I lit another cigarette.

“All right. I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear you call me a sucker like five times, and, I think, a deranged loser. What’s going on?”

His grin faded. He laughed nervously, and rubbed his neck, staring at his shoes. For a moment, I thought he was going to look up at me, laugh and tell me nevermind, it was just crazy talk. But then he looked up, his eyes wide with fear.

“They shot my brother, Chase. They shot him, and now he’s in the hospital, and I know they want me to go after them and I can’t do it. I just can’t do it. But he’s my brother, man. He’s my brother.”

His voice cracked on the last words as he put his hand over his face and began to sob. A million questions ran through my mind. What the f**k do you say when someone tells you something like that? How’s your brother? Is he going to pull through? Who did this? Who wants you to go after them?

I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn’t come out. I just reached forward and hugged him as he cried. And there we stood, under the flickering lights outside the bar, and as he sobbed, I tried to push back my own tears. No sense in the both of us crying. I had to at least pretend I had my s**t together.

After a while, his breathing slowed, and his body stopped shaking. He stepped back and aggressively wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands, almost as if he was angry at himself for losing it in the middle of the street.

I blinked back the tears that had pooled in my eyes, and that’s when I first saw them. Hundreds of tiny red strings, extending as far as the eye could see. A few of them were frayed and torn, and one, leading straight out from his heart, was just barely hanging on-it was as if a gust of wind could have snapped it apart.

I felt a sudden sharp pain in my forehead and closed my eyes as I winced. I saw Rep, with a gun in his hand. I saw the red string snap. Then, I saw him at the hospital bed. I saw him crying, saying he couldn’t go down that road. I saw his brother reach out and grasp his hand; heard him telling him it wasn’t his battle to fight, and to let it go. The red string was still frayed, but it thickened. I saw it grow stronger.

In an instant, it was over, and when I opened my eyes again, the red strings were gone, and I just saw Rep, awkwardly shuffling his feet, waiting for me to say something, hoping I wouldn’t.

“You have to go see your brother, Rep.” I finally whispered. He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head.

“No, no Chase, I can’t do that. How can I go there, look him in the eye, and tell him I’m not going to do s**t about what happened?”

“You and I both know anything else is just going to get you killed or thrown in prison. And so does your brother. So does your family. Just, go see him. Promise me, you’ll go see him, before you do anything else. Before you go off and do something stupid.”

He sniffled, and nodded his head. “Okay, okay I’ll go see him.”

I sighed with relief. “Okay. Good. Now, come on. We’ve got time for one more round before we hit Joey’s.”

He nodded his head and sniffed one last time, before he cocked his head back up and that familiar grin was back on his face.

It would be a while before I saw the red strings again. By then, I had already chalked this night off as a truly bizarre, emotional, drunken night. But eventually, it all came back, and when it did, it hit me like a brick wall.