The Empty Room by Lauren B. Davis Page A

lady, you’ll have to clean it up”), or that Amy’s mother had judged her unfit to sit at their Christmas table, or that somewhere George was telling everyone what a bitch she was and clearing out the bank account. It just didn’t matter. She felt … well, companioned was the only word she could think of.She felt known by something greater than herself, some entity who knew her, all of her, and still loved her, not in spite of what they knew, but because of it. She felt clean, and utterly calm.

FLAILING, WINDMILL STYLE
    C olleen sat on the couch and gazed out the window. She tried to hold onto that peaceful feeling. It hadn’t lasted when she was a girl in Nova Scotia and it wasn’t lasting now. Such things don’t. Then, as now, she was alone: The Uninvited. Even though it didn’t last, she had never forgotten the sensation of being exactly and perfectly all right, of not needing a single thing or a single person. It was the same sort of connectedness she’d felt the first time she got drunk, at Danny Gibson’s house—at least before she’d gone too far and blacked out and all the rest. It was like being given a glimpse into a secret garden, and then being shut out. Ever since, she had wanted so badly to get back there.
    She hadn’t drunk alcohol, or not much of it, when she lived in Nova Scotia. She couldn’t afford it. But she’d come back to Toronto after a year. She got the job at the university, had her own place and a decent paycheque, and she was young. Everybody drank and went to the clubs and danced and danced. Besides, she discovered when she did start drinking again that she could drink with the best of them, drink with the boys, drink like a sailor. It was a useful skill. She soon discovered the golden warmth of the fairies-in-a-bottle.That’s what she called them, those spirits who could live in just about any bottle, clever things—wine (the French fairy) or whisky (the Irish fairy) or vodka (the Russian fairy dressed in white furs) or gin (although the gin fairy was Cockney and a bit aggressive), scotch (the thistle-fairy) and certainly Grand Marnier (the fairy with pretty orange wings).
    They were always there, the fairies, whenever she needed them. Whenever the day called for a celebration (and what day didn’t?), whenever she needed a pick-me-up, whenever the world turned nasty and cold and cruel, as it did so often—more often for her than for other people for some odd reason. Oh, the nobility of her soul, the depth of her suffering, she would think with a snort of derision at her own self-aggrandizement. The fairies waited for her, whisking her away to a far better world. Come away , O human child! To the waters and the wild .
    It’s like she always said: they don’t call it “spirits” for nothing.
    And there was the vodka fairy now, all dolled up in her ermine and pearls, so soothing, so infinitely kind. She whispered in Colleen’s ear, telling her everything would be just fine, it would all work out as it was intended to, the world misjudged her, but the fairy understood, understood, understood. Sip, sip, sip.
    The only difference between the fairies-in-a-bottle and whatever visited her that long-ago Christmas day was that the fairies exacted a price for their presence, didn’t they. But wasn’t that only fair, since they gave so much of themselves? And if they loosened her up, as they were doing now, urging her to reach out to her fellowhuman beings, to draw comfort from her friends, wasn’t that only right and good?
    The sense of peace began to fray at the edges. Doubt slipped in and nibbled with sharp little mice teeth. Colleen’s hand gripped the almost-empty glass. The skin on the back of her hand was crepey and the sinews stood out in ridges. She used to have beautiful hands, long-fingered, thin and graceful. Look at them now. Look at her now. This was not the life she had planned.
    She should call Lori. Lori, her oldest friend and confidante, would come over and make