Drinks in the Shade

We meet her in a bar. She was drinking in a darkened corner. Tom pointed her out to me and told me her name -- a weird name -- so I, being the most normal in our group, went over to talk to her.

"Hello," I said. She looked like she was in her early forties, frizzing red hair, a dour expression on her face.

"I'm good," she said. "I don't need anything else."

"Oh, I'm not a waitress," I said. "I'm here to talk to you, Queequeg."

She looked up at me with anger in her eyes. "That's not my name," she said. "Not anymore. I don't know if your some proxy-"

"I'm not," I said. "I'm a runner, like you."

"I'm not a runner," she said. "I was never a runner."

"So what were you?" I asked.

She got quiet then and whispered, "He said we were hunters. He said we were hunting the White Whale."

"Who did?"

"Ahab," she said. "I guess I should call him Arnold now. I thought...I thought it was a delusion, but he showed me it was real. And then he disappeared. He went off to fight some battle and never came back. He's dead and I never said goodbye."

I didn't know what to say, so I walked over to the bar and ordered a round of beer. I placed one beer in front of her and one in front of me. "So what's your real name?" I asked.

"Christine," she said. "You?"

"Peri," I said. "I'm unimaginative. Are you drinking to forget or to remember?"

"What?"

"Well," I said, "usually you drink either to forget about something or to remember something. Forget your worries, remember the good times. Forget the bad, remember the good. So do you want to forget him or remember him?"

"Both," she said. "I don't know. When I was around him, it felt like I was just following him. Like he was larger than life and I was just his shadow."

When she said that, I glanced back at the bar and looked at Tom. I don't know how the fuck he does it, but somehow he does.

"Do you want to be alone?" I asked. "Because we're looking for another member in our little running group and we'd think you'd fit in."

She shrugged. "I've nowhere else to go. I left everything behind to help him and I failed. So I guess I am a runner. I'm just running from my own past."

"We're all running from our past," I said.