His shirt was thick with rain, barstool warm as he’d left it. Labels danced out of focus, bottle names tattooed on his memory where others had drowned.

“Martin?” She was pretty and safe, like a spring breeze, but her name blurred. “You okay?”

“Fine, darling. Pint of Newscastle Brown.”

Memories floated by, pale bodies in an obsidian stream, lifeless. He blinked. She shot him a worried glance. “Sure you don’t want a coffee?”

“Nah.” She went to the taps. The empty glasses sparkled like stars in the dank. A thought ran upstream. “The last. And the first.”

“Sorry?”

“Those are the ones you remember.” The thought steadied. “Lemon gin, that was first. Hanging with Oscar, baseball cards in the spokes, sounded like a machine gun. Thirteen years old and immortal. Got sicker than a dog with worms.

“And the last … the last stains your mind forever.” Memories floated through his murky eyes, towing yesterday with it. He sighed. It hurt. “Life ain’t like that. You can’t remember jack when you’re born, and when you’re gone you’re past caring.” Some fog lifted. He blinked, but the labels still blurred.

“Martin?” Her eyes drooped under heavy dollops of eye shadow hiding her years.

“Yeah?” he said, glaring at the empty glasses.

“Are you sure you want a drink?”

“Didn’t I ask for one?” he asked, surprised.

“You did. But what you said. About the first and the last? You said the same thing last night.”

“Oh?”

“I wanted you to know that. You said it right before last call. Then you finished your pint and said goodbye.”

“So?”

Worn, red nails picked at her elbow. “You weren’t coming back. You’d had your last. Remember?” He caressed thick whiskers on his cheek as she pulled a napkin out of her pocket. “You wrote this down and gave it to me before I got you home.” All he saw was blurred chicken scratch. “It says ‘I have had THE LAST.’”

The tide slowed in his head, and his breath tasted fallow. “Don’t remember…”

“That’s why you wrote it.” She tapped the napkin. “Damn it, Martin, what can you remember?”

His rheumy eyes meet her weathered face. “Darling, I couldn’t tell you your name if you paid me.”

She starred daggers at him before the dam broke. She stormed off to the taps, came back, and snapped a coaster down. She planted the sweating glass on top, and then stalked away like he had TB.

He lifted the chilly glass. “Will I remember you?” He saw her floating in brown suds.

The glass slipped through his fingers and shattered like thunder. A memory slowed. “I know you,” he whispered.

“Don’t do this,” she said. “I can’t, not again.”

A bleak tide pulled him against cold, wet air as the world turned sore and grey. But he pulled back, resisted, and hunted in the dark until it cleared. Dead memories rushed down a brown, fetid river, formless masses on the way to oblivion, then an empty patch. Down the red banks were two china-white bodies coming fast.

Through his own mire, he reached out and nabbed the large one. Beautiful, immaculate, cold. Warmth hushed through his raw hand, reaching his mind.

Her eyes opened.

Lilacs burned his nose. Deep, rich summer tastes of flowers and apples prickled him. He held her as shadow memories unfolded of her slender hands, deep kisses and breath on his neck.

Violent current tore her from his slick grasp, far down the river, vanishing beneath the surface. The other body sailed by. A child, eyes wide, arms flailing, silent against the rush of water. “I’m coming!” He dived. Cold bit him to the bone with every stroke. “Goddamn it,” he yelled at the river, “she’s just a kid!” The river ignored him. He swam, mouth full of silver phlegm and dark water.

“Martin?”

Her feet bobbed up and down on the churning surface. Fervently, his hand clawed through the air to reach her only to grasp brackish wash. His insides bristled as he sank in darkness. Colder than hell’s heart, he froze.

Warmth pricked his face. The impossible smell of lilacs. His eyes cracked open. A white angel in the dark kissed him and the chills burned out enough for movement. Bursting from the dark waters, he gasped.

The small child shot downstream and he followed. Swallowing brown water, he followed. Every nerve turned to ice, he followed. He could taste her name in the water and drove on through the hellish cold. The current shifted and pulled him. Ahead lay the rushing sound of water over the falls.

Harder, harder, he swam and stretched out his bone-white hand—clutching an ankle. He pulled her close, head above water. Chalk white and still, she breathed as he gripped a handful of the bank.

“Grace,” he whispered, then opened his eyes against the bar light’s twinkle. On the floor, he shivered in cold sweat and beer. The barmaid held him, name-tag spelling out the name he’d tasted. “Grace.”

“Yes.” Forked rivers dipped mascara off her cheeks.

“You were playing by the river, didn’t see where you’d gone. It was so quiet.”

“Yes, Martin.”

“She … saw you first. She dove in and … it was too strong. She fought the current, said I had to grab you. Colder than … but I did, you were breathing.” The rest flooded his system, a fugue of memories, bitter, painful, aching his bones. “But,” his vision blurred as he gripped her apron. “I couldn’t, I couldn’t get her out!”

Brown water leaked from his eyes, nose and mouth. She held him tight against the current until he ran dry at last.

END