“You’re drunk,” my friend sighed.
“How very astute,” I slurred, saluting him with my whiskey bottle.
I tried to sit up from the slouching position I had adopted, but found the wooden floor a little too smooth to stay erect. Sliding back down, I decided not to fight gravity and shortly found myself lying on my back and staring up at the ceiling.
I could hear him moving around, the sound of his keys jangling as he hooked them by the door, the rustle of his coat as he hung it up in the closet, his feet coming toward me.
The bottle left my hand.
“Hey,” I mumbled.
No response. The footsteps were moving away.
“Hey!” I rolled over.
“What!” he snapped.
“He was there.”
Consternation overwhelmed my friend’s face a moment.
“He was at the show,” I said.
He nodded.
“Probably,” he agreed. “But there were thousands there.”
“No!” I moaned. “He was part of the show. Backstage.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. What good’s it do ya?”
“No, he was. He, he overheard it, that argument.”
He stared at me, his head tilting to the side slightly, a question forming on his lips.
“She wanted kids,” I said, looking away from him. “She brought it up again at the show. I…I joked…I mocked her. I said, I’ll buy you a baby doll.”
His jaw dropped slightly, and his annoyed gaze lifted from me a moment as he considered this.
“Those were your words?” he asked.
“I hadn’t thought about it,” I said. “I just, I just, I joked. I always joke. That’s all I know to do.”
“He overheard you, you mean?”
“He had to have been backstage. He had to have been backstage that day.”
My friend grew quiet, his eyes staring off into the distance.
Tale Told 