“My younger sister was autistic.”

Neon flashed through the window. One of the letters was broken, the ‘A’ in ‘Gentleman’s’ flicking on and off between pulses. It glanced off the side of her face, leaving it green and alien-looking.

“That so?”

“Yeah. You should have seen the fits she threw.” She pulled her stockings slowly up over her legs, slipping her underwear beneath her rumpled skirt. “The slightest change would drive her to screeching melt-downs. Usually in public, with my parents wringing their hands.”

He lit a cigarette and watched her, fingers thumping over the comforter. “Sounds rough.”

“Not for the reasons you’d think. I mean, it was embarrassing, sure, but I was a kid too at the time. Nobody blamed me for it.”

“Naturally not.”

“They planned everything around her,” she continued softly. Her nimble fingers began lacing up her high-heeled boots. “Whether or not we could do something depended on Abby. Could Abby handle the noise of it? The lights? The sounds?”

“Mmmm.” He flicked some of the ashes into the tray near the bed, looking up at the ceiling and blowing out smoke.

“It was like I was competing with her, after a while. Trying to tear their rigid attention away from her just for a moment. I was all over sports. Academics. You name it. I did everything to try and win a little.”

“Like you won my heart?” His voice had a slight slur to it. A half empty bottle of vodka sloshed as he bumped the nightstand.

“I think on some level she knew it. What I was trying to do. I swear she’d get this gleam in her eye and start her screeching if they so much as patted me on the head. If she made it a day without freaking out they’d take her for fucking ice cream or buy her some new toy.” She laughed dryly, bunching her hair up on her head. “Every time they said ‘good job Jess’ to me, it was an afterthought.”

“S’rough,” he muttered. The bottle gleamed in the faint light as he picked it up, choking down a few swigs. “S’real rough.”

She stood and moved to her purse, putting the cash inside. “She threw a tantrum at my graduation. I got magna cum laude if you can believe it. A whopping four-point-oh.”

“H’I didn’ know you spoke Latin,” he babbled. “S’sexy.”

“Right when they called my name, right then, she started screaming. She filled the whole auditorium with it. People turned and stared. Every eye in the room was on her as I walked up on that stage to shake hands. My parents didn’t even see me do it. They were on their way out the door when they handed me that diploma.”

“Ooouuuuuch. Y’want me t’kiss it better?”

Jess slung the purse over her shoulder and closed the curtains. “I hate her,” she whispered. “I’ll always hate her.”

“Awwwww,” he said. “I love’ya baby.”

She crossed the room to the door and pulled it open. “Nah,” she replied. “Bet you’ll forget me. Might remember the story though.”

There was no reply. She glanced back at the bed to see him passed out, his gut exposed pale and milky in the sparse light.

“Goodnight Casanova.”

She stepped into the night unheard.