“Let’s see what Ford has to say tomorrow,” Karen said.
“Oh, for sure.” Mercury said. “You brought wine, didn’t you?” she asked Stella.
Stella snorted. “Fuckin’ A right I did.” She went to the backpack she’d put on the floor beside the cot adjacent to the one Mercury had placed her backpack on, unzipped it, and brought out a bottle of Domaine Serene Monogram Pinot Noir 2012 from the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Stella sighed happily as she reached back into the pack for a corkscrew. Then she turned the label toward Mercury and Karen, who was sitting on her cot watching them. “I checked the wine list before we left Timberline. This lovely bottle of pinot noir sells for just over one hundred dollars. It has a nose of bright red cherries with a lavender finish.”
“Brava!” Mercury clapped her hands. “Open it!”
“I shall, though I must apologize that my presentation does not include stemware—or any kind of ware. We’ll have to be barbarians and drink out of the bottle.”
“Totally cool with me. I don’t mind cooties from y’all,” said Mercury.
“Are you two really going to get drunk?” Karen asked.
Mercury sighed. “Karen, there are four glasses in a bottle of wine. It is literally impossible for Stella or me to get drunk on two glasses of wine. Not to mention we were intending to share with you.”
“No thank you. I’m exhausted. I shall just bid you goodnight.” Karen pulled the curtain across her section of the room and disappeared behind it.
Mercury kicked off her shoes and joined Stella on her cot. They passed the bottle back and forth silently for several minutes as they savored the excellent pinot noir. Soon Karen’s soft snores echoed through the flimsy privacy curtain.
Eventually Mercury whispered, “What the fuck’s wrong with Karen? I was just starting to like her, but she’s reverted to the stick-up-the-butt Mrs. Gay we all knew and did not love.”
Stella drank contemplatively before passing her the bottle and answering in an equally low voice. “Karen wants to return to what’s familiar to her.”
Mercury swallowed. “Being a judgmental bitch?”
Stella shrugged and whispered. “Yeah, pretty much, but that’s a simplification. It feels normal to Karen to trust people who appear to be like her, who believe like her, who dislike the same people she does, and exalt the same things she does. It means home and safety, and she wants that desperately.”
“So do we!” Mercury struggled to keep her voice low. “I’m sorry, I hear what you’re saying, but I just don’t get it. Karen has witnessed, more than once, that your intuition is right. You made it clear before we stepped foot inside this town that things might not be on the up-and-up here. And yet from the second we got to town, she has a big ol’ hard-on for Amber and all things Madras.”
“We may lose Karen here. I can’t tell for sure yet, probably because she’s not certain about what she’s going to do.” Stella took another long drink of pinot noir. “But, Acorn, the truth is this place may be a great fit for her. Her blood isn’t special, so she’s in no danger of being discovered and used or whatever they want to do with those of us who did change. It seems like conservative Christians are firmly in charge. We know what that’s like. We’re from the damn Bible Belt. But what’s uncomfortable and narrow-minded to us is homey to her. Here she could fall back into old, familiar habits. It might be an easier place for her to live out the rest of her life.”
“Easier?”
“Acorn, you know our path is absolutely not going to be easy, right?”
Mercury exhaled a long breath and held her hand out for the bottle. “Yeah. I know.”
“And if you could find a spot in this new, terrifying world where you felt safe, wouldn’t you take it?” Stella whispered the question to her.
“Depends,” said Mercury.
“On?”
“On what kind of person that makes me. Stella, Amber is lying. I don’t need your intuition to tell me that.”
Stella nodded. “Yeah, I think she is too.”
Mercury bumped her shoulder. “Do you know what all she’s lying about?”
“Not for sure. It feels like everything she said had truth and lies woven together into one cloth,” said Stella.
“That’s poetic.”
“Thanks, but to complete the metaphor—the cloth would be a shroud for us,” she added.
“Absolutely right.” They drank in silence for a while before Mercury continued. “Amber was all flirty and eye-batty at Ford.”
“Can’t blame her. There aren’t many men left, and he’s not just handsome—he’s a good guy.” Stella turned her head to meet her best friend’s gaze. “You and he make a cute couple.”
“Oh please, woman. An apocalypse is a stupid time to take a lover.”
Stella snorted softly. “Acorn, listen to me carefully ’cause I should only have to say this to you once. An apocalypse is a perfect time to take a lover.”
“Huh. We’ll see.”
Stella smiled knowingly. “Yeah, we sure will.”