Drift

They called her Vivian, when they called her anything at all. She would seldom give out her name when she sat in at bars, content to sit and respond to calls of "Hey, Lady," with a middle finger or a sardonic smile. Maybe both.

She'd sit on a stool as close to the middle as she could get, and wait, eyes raking the crowd like she was looking for someone that didn't seem to exist. She'd stay for about an hour and then leave, driving all night to some other town and sitting in some other bar.

She was tired. She'd worked her entire adult life, garnering more and more attention until she finally gave up, weighed down by stacks and stacks of dollar bills that just kept getting heavier, even now that she wasn't working. Some asshole told her to invest and like a fool, she did, and her money was still growing day by day, a large, smoldering parasite that was putting a hunch in her back and blisters on the soles of her feet.

She could afford anything. Could buy herself a house on some exotic beachfront, buy herself a model for a husband, could probably buy two-point-five kids. She could buy herself a perfect lawn and trees and flowers, buy herself the finest meals this world has ever seen.

Instead, she went to bars, paying for gas as needed along the way, and sat with her hand over the top of her single drink and watched the crowd grow and ebb around her.

The only significant purchase she'd ever made was plastic surgery, her face now unrecognizable from the one that used to be plastered on the cover of magazines with headlines like "The Woman Who Beat Elon Musk: Five Tips She Has for Young Woman" (an article in a magazine that she'd never actually granted an interview to yet one that sold nearly a billion copies worldwide).

The bar she sat in now was particularly run down, the owners a tired couple with divorce lawyers bookmarked in their contacts and tenants that resembled fat city rats more than they resembled people. These places were Vivian's favorite, the scent of cheap booze and despair hanging over her like a blanket. They were nostalgic, almost; reminders of the nights that her father actually remembered to come home and would read, in his slurred yet kind voice, bedtime stories. Stories of dragons and scientists and inventors, big girl stories that little Vivian never quite understood but enjoyed anyway.

She let her eyes travel, blank and listless, over the crowd, still searching for someone that she was beginning to think she'd never find. A face the same age as her own, just beginning to show the telltale decay of age.

A face that represented her biggest regret, and a face who's absence represented her biggest fear.

Her hour was up, and she uncovered the top of her drink, leaving it to sit and wait, full, until someone cleaned it away.

She showed no reaction as some guy behind her asked if it hurt when she fell from heaven. Her face a wall. Behind it, all her fear and regret were boiling, invisible to everyone except her.

Her regret had a name. Bianca. Short, a little overweight but not unhealthy, only a single pimple to mar her pallid face. Beautiful in her normalcy. She was average.

Vivian realized, years too late, that every cruel word she'd said was out of jealousy. Bianca had the luxury of being normal, of not worrying about what others thought until Vivian forced her to worry. A luxury that Vivian did not have. Every grade was bullied to perfection, every feature was crushed down until it became something resembling beautiful, her mother living vicariously through every good-looking boy she brought home and threatening to disown her on the one genuine occasion that she brought home someone she loved on the basis of his appearance. He "wasn't pretty enough" to get her anywhere.

Maybe that was why Vivian had remained single. More than anything else, it was her mother's voice, telling her she needed to find a real man if she wanted to get anywhere in life.

Bianca had been hospitalized in her freshman year of high school and never returned, and on the night of Vivian's graduation she almost refused to walk the stage as the realization of what she'd done hit her like a truck. She didn't deserve to graduate. She'd nearly killed someone.

But in the end, her mother won, and she walked. Graduated salutatorian, an honor that disgraced her mother for years.

She was leaving a large tip as the door swung open. Not Bianca, this was a balding man with an indecipherable sports jersey.

She sighed at her own naivete and left, door slamming behind her. Retreated to her car, which, like her, was beginning to show its years. She didn't have the heart to replace it, even after she'd racked up nearly a hundred thousand miles. She intended to drive it until it broke down or until she finished her redemption mission, whichever came first.

She'd spent years wondering how much money she'd have to give. A million per every year of life? A billion?

At some point she realized that money was worthless. You could not reimburse an intrusive thought, could not bribe it into submission when you were the one who planted it there.

Even so, she kept searching, hoping to find a successful and happy woman rather than a headstone. She still hadn't found either one, and she'd googled Bianca's name at least two dozen times a month.

She'd scripted out her conversation. No flowery begging for apologies. Merely a statement, that she knew what she'd done and regretted it, that she hoped she'd found a way to move past it, or at least a way to cope.

No expectation for forgiveness, but a hope.

Vivian's next stop was in Cincinnati. They had some nicer bars, ones that glistened in the night, false veneers of happiness covering up a cesspool of tragedy that hung heavy inside them.

The saddest people tended to drink at the nicest bars with smiles on their faces.

It was nearing six in the morning, the threshold between night and day, between the early birds and the night owls, both suffering from the same affliction manifested in different ways.

She'd been to three bars tonight, unable to sleep, driven by some manic obsession.

This would be her fourth.

The bartender was a smiling blonde woman with short curly hair, heavy black eyeliner, and a wedding ring around a chain on her neck. She greeted Vivian with enthusiasm and Vivian decided that she liked her. That kind of radiance at six in the morning was rare to find. Either she was content and confident or she was on heavy drugs. Normally Vivian would lean to the latter, but with this particular individual, she was inclined to believe the former.

She actually took a sip of the drink before she covered it with her hand, motivated by some alien compulsion.

"How're you tonight, Hon," asked the bartender, her voice so soothing it was almost familiar.

Vivian just smiled and shrugged.

"Been a rough night?"

"I suppose. I'm looking for someone."

"Ah, ain't we all, girl."

Vivian allowed herself to laugh a little.

"I'm looking for someone I hurt. A girl I knew once."

"We've all hurt someone, Hon."

"Yeah, I suppose."

"Here's the thing. Whoever it was you hurt, she's probably moved on. Grown up, cried about it, and then moved on. Maybe she realized that you suffered just like her, in your own way. Maybe she taught herself to laugh at your insecurities, to pity the person you were. She doesn't need you to find her. Maybe she even found herself because of you."

Vivian looked up, startled by the poignancy of this stranger's words.

"I guess you have a point."

"I've seen all kinds of people here, Hon. Abusers, abused. And I'm telling you, a lotta times the abusers suffer for it even more than the abused do. Not always. There's always sickos, always exceptions. But more than once I've had a guy come in here three steps away from suicide because he hit his girlfriend once in high school. Everyone's got their issues. Their trauma. Tricky part is learning from it, excising your evil. Cause we all got evil, Hon."

Vivian's hour was up but she lingered for a moment more before getting up and smiling at the bartender.

"Thank you," she said.

"Anytime, Hon."

As Vivian left, her hand on the door, she took one look back. the bartender had moved on to the next person, smiling at some new stranger, putting them at ease with the sheer force of her kindness.

The name tag pinned neatly to her shirt read Bianca.