Death in the Afternoon

You’re not really dead. You just can’t feel your body. Sunlight forces its way through the shutter slats and makes white stripes on the wall. A ceiling fan twirls lazily above your head as you lie motionless and half-dreaming on a green velvet couch. An empty champagne bottle rolls around on the floor. A sugar cube slowly dissolves in what’s left of the absinthe.

Only the best parties last until noon.

Champagne flutes and cigarette butts with waxy lipstick prints are scattered all over the fancy oak table and the floor underneath it. More empty champagne bottles crowd the kitchen sink.

The piano lid is propped open, revealing several broken strings. Some of the ivory has chipped off of the keys. No one noticed when the music died; all anybody cared about was the naked girl with the starburst of emeralds spirit-gummed to her body. She stole all the light in the room and kissed everyone.

She had hot, dry lips. They reminded you of your old beau.

The sun stripes on the wall shift higher as the sun sinks toward the horizon. It’s close to dinner time, but if you try to eat anything, it will bubble right back up again, your mouth flooding with hot, bitter mash.

Before the party, your old beau finally told you the truth about himself. After he was done telling his secret, he still had the nerve to put his arm around your waist. You told him to get lost and went to your friend Annie’s party where you drank nearly all of the rum punch.

It had been Annie’s idea to make those horrid champagne-and-absinthe drinks. You don’t remember how many you drank.

Annie spent the evening on the green velvet couch, her rump pressing down on a jazzman’s lap. Annie always went after the jazzmen.

Gas flames tangoed behind hobnail sconces. One of the jazzmen banged on the piano like there was a devil inside it. You twirled and floated; you imagined you were five years old, riding an ebony horse on a carousel at a traveling fair.

The phone rings with a sound that assaults your skull like a midnight church bell. Annie answers, speaking too softly for you to understand.

You held the absinthe bottle up to the light so you could admire its green glow. The woman on the label smiled back at you. You admired her perfect hair, eyes and teeth. Ideal beauty and she never had to move a muscle. How easy her life must be, you mused.

A man pried the bottle out of your hands and he kissed you with his hot, dry lips. The jazzmen chased him away.

You try to sit up, clenching your jaw as your stomach sloshes. Annie pads across the floor in her bare feet, her white toes seeming strangely large in the changing light.

“That was Sam,” she says. “He and Max want to take us to dinner.”

“Now?” You ask. You look up at Annie’s face. Her cheeks are pale and the skin around her eyes is dark like she’d looked through a kaleidoscope covered in shoe polish. “Can you even think about food?”

Annie claps her hand over her mouth and shuffles out of the room. You lie down and shut your eyes.

You dream that you’re at your funeral and all the champagne bottles and crushed cigarettes on the floor are your mourners. The casket is lined with green velvet. There are emeralds on your eyes in place of pennies. You try to open your eyes but the gems are just too heavy, so you stop trying.

This is what it must feel like, you think, to die in the afternoon.