Erased From Memory by Diana O'Hehir Page A

a kiss, both cheeks for me, one cheek for Scott, while he mutters, “Oh, shit.”
    “We have got to sit together,” Rita says. “Your dad is so excited.” My father is waving now. “We’ll bring all our junk over. Oh, this is going to be great. It’ll be such fun.”
    “Hey, Reet,” Scott says, “you look nice.” Which surprises me. Scott hasn’t been heavily into complimenting Rita, who does look nice. She sparkles, Rita-style, with a sequin bird, wings outspread, across the front of her white dress. Like my outfit, this is too formal for our setting, but it looks great on her, with her tan arms swinging free and wild black hair standing up above.
    Rita and I will go to the ladies’ room. “Hey, a lady-act, right?” She puts a matey arm around my shoulder. “I read somewhere that’s what ladies do when they want to talk about the men.
    “I can talk about your dad just fine,” she expands, pushing me ahead of her into the corridor. “He is my best guy and I don’t care if he remembers anything or not. And I’m sorry I was mean to him. That was the nuttiness speaking. Scott, now . . .”
    Rita is behind me, with a finger in my back. Now she drops farther back, which means she has to yell, since the band is hotting up again, preparing to assault another Golden Oldie. They signal this with a couple of percussion booms and some saxophone squeals. The lights begin fading.
    “This is crazy, but confession’s good for the soul, right?” Rita shouts into my shoulder blades. “I mean, I’m here because I got suspicious of that Scott. Maybe about his intentions with you, babe. And then when your dad wanted to come along . . . Well, that was sweet, right? So here we both are. And oh, hey, Carla, guess what . . .”
    I think it is after “guess what” that it happens. But maybe not. Maybe she says another couple more words and I just don’t remember. It’s possible that what happened then is partly wiped out by what comes now.
    A noise. Not terribly loud. From someplace behind us. Pretty much covered up by the band’s boops and squawks, but not entirely, if you have good hearing, which I do.
    Why I think that noise is meant for us, I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just editing backward. Maybe all I remember is Rita smiling back at me while I looked at her over my shoulder, seeing her, and part of the room beyond, and Scott waiting for us, and Rita saying, “Carla, guess what,” and then this noise, which is a sharp one—no, two sharp noises—from someplace behind. And Rita looking kind of surprised. Or apologetic. I think she moves her hand around toward her breast, but maybe not.
    I recognize the noise before I understand anything else. That noise is the smothered pop that a gun with a silencer makes, being fired. I heard gunfire, every kind, plenty in Egypt and later in other places. The sounds here are louder than they would normally be—that’s the enclosed space; there are some echoes; they’re followed by the beginnings of a burned smell and maybe by a savor of smoke. One gunshot, then perhaps another gunshot.
    Rita turns, arms out, and looks at me pleasantly, her remark stuck somewhere behind her teeth. She makes an embarrassed gesture as if to say, “Hey, it’s not my fault.” She opens her mouth; a waterfall of blood jumps out and cascades down her sequined front. She pitches forward. She’s plump, and she makes a noise as she falls.
    I make a noise, too. I’m screaming. I think I’m screaming incoherently, but Scott later tells me that I was yelling for him. What did I say? Something like “Scott, come, Scott, come,” he thinks.
    Whatever I said, it brings people, a lot of them. I’m aware of them as shapes jostling and crowding in; by that time, I’m kneeling beside Rita. “You were trying to give her mouth-to-mouth,” Scott says.
    I don’t remember that, but I must have been doing mouth-to-mouth because later I have to wash the blood off my face as well as off my hands and my