Page 39 of The Cocktail Bar

***

“There’s more,” Alice started and then paused, deep in thought, when he returned to see her seated, suddenly looking more awake, more radiant than ever. He noticed she’d opened the bottle of red that she’d brought as a sorry-for-hoarding-your-music present, and now she was gesturing to his glass, clearly unsure as to whether she should carry on with her next revelation.

“Fill me up then, why not?” he said. He wouldn’t normally dream of being so uncouth as to mix cocktails with wine, especially considering the headiness of an oaky red after the citrusy punch of their recent tipple, but he knew now wasn’t the time for being uppity. “I thought you implied earlier that he hadn’t touched you physically?”

“No, he didn’t,” she said, passing him his glass which he shunned momentarily to the mahogany chest. “He would have taken his chances one of these days I’m sure, but thankfully I wizened up to it. Anyway, that’s not what I’m talking about.” She tore her eyes from him, took a gulp of her drink and then returned her attention to him again. “What I mean is I’ll give you the backstory later, but it’s water under the bridge now anyway, I escaped. This is a totally different subject.”

River sat on the futon, his second cigarette in one hand, shaking slightly, and Heather’s favourite artisanal lavender-stuffed beaded cushion in the other, if only that might shield him from what was to come.

“God, I don’t even know how to break this to you and the chances are it’s complete and utter nonsense but he claims to be,” she took a deep breath and moved next to him, placing an arm around his neck as if that might offer some comfort, “he says he’s your father.”

River felt his body numb then from head to toe, a trickle at first and then an overall state of momentary paralysis. Finally he broke away from Alice, stood very slowly, both hands covering his face at the very suggestion, hair flopping forward, desperately in need of a cut.

“I know, I know,” she said. “How could that possibly be? I’m just telling you because I think you have a right to know the kind of poison that’s inside his head.”

“Shit,” said River finally, flicking the wavy strands out of his eyes. “Shit… that explains everything. How could I have been so blind to it; the constant referral to me as ‘son’? And the other night when he was chatting with Mum through the… and she slammed it down… and then, oh, hell no…”

Lennie, in three very different ways, had tricked them all like the sweet vermouth in a well-made Cheshire Cat. But in actual fact, he was a Gypsy’s Warning. Why, oh why, had it taken River this long to suss him out, and more to the point, why had Heather kept this dark secret hidden from him his entire life?