Anne-Marie Kinney - Radio Iris

Iris approaches the back railing of the brewery’s patio. Though the lowering sun still hovers, and the air is mild, the restaurant has set its outdoor heat lamps to inferno. Mallory, leaning against the railing, sees her and waves her over. “Look at you,” she mouths across the patio.

“I feel underdressed now,” she says as Iris meets her. She is wearing a standard little black dress and suede boots that fold languorously around her ankles.

“It’s dumb, right? This is a dumb dress.”

“Shut up, it’s your birthday. Nothing’s dumb. Come with me.” She takes Iris by the elbow and leads her through the front doors and into the restaurant. The music is loud, but impossible to hear.

Mallory yells, “Do you remember Nathan?”

“The one with the long hair? And the beard?”

“He shaved and cut his hair. He’s actually cute now. We’ve been hanging out. Anyway, he and his friend Marcus are waiting for us at the table.”

“Oh god. I didn’t approve this.” Iris’s shoulders drop.

“And you never would have, which is why I am forced to lie to you all the time and never feel guilty about it.”

They arrive at the table, where two clean-cut young men smile up at them expectantly. They wear the young guy kind-of-nice-but-not- nice -nice going out uniform of jeans and button down shirts. Iris wishes she had worn something different. There is too much air all over her.

In short order, they are sipping tall beers and Mallory is engaged in intimate conversation with Nathan. She cannot hear what they are saying over the music, so she stops trying to listen.

“So,” Marcus asks, “how old are you, anyway?”

“Isn’t that one of those questions you’re not supposed to ask, like how much money do you make?” She says this facing the tabletop, digging her nail into the grooves of KISS Army, which someone has carved in ballpoint pen, lord knows when.

“I don’t know,” he laughs, “I was just curious. Isn’t aging the point of birthdays?”

“Twenty-five,” she answers, looking up, a little bit charmed.

“I love your hair,” he says.

“Oh, um, thanks.”

Then he reaches a hand out to touch it and she flinches, but not enough to actually move her body.

“It’s so soft I could run barefoot through it,” he continues, working his fingers through. He hits a snag.

“Let me get that,” he laughs, tugging at her hair.

“Ow!”

“Wait, wait, almost got it— there!” He frees his fingers and gives her hair one last stroke. Iris stares at the grain of the wooden table.

“You okay?” he asks. “Was that too forward? I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.” He laughs nervously, but she doesn’t look up.

“No— it’s okay.” She looks across the table at Mallory, whose eyes are closed, Nathan whispering something in her ear.

“Excuse me,” Iris says, standing up, and Marcus squints his eyes shut and massages the bridge of his nose.

She makes her way through the brewery to the narrow hallway that houses the restrooms, tugging at her dress the whole way. The overhead lights, the walls, and the carpet are all different shades of red. She feels squeezed, lit, heated. She presses herself into a corner and dials her brother.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

A long pause follows, and Iris thinks she hears traffic.

“It’s your birthday,” Neil blurts out, breaking the silence.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t forget.”

“It’s okay. You’re allowed.”

“I can hardly hear you. Where are you?”

“Out. Being the birthday girl.”

“Good. That’s what you should be doing. Right?”

“I know… I just can’t relax.”

“Sure you can.”

“Do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I know you have to be all bright and chatty for your job and all, but, do you feel that way for real? Do you usually… feel like you know exactly what’s going on? Like that’s really how you feel?”

“What?”

Iris pauses and tries to figure out how to re-arrange her thoughts so they make sense. “I just wish I knew how you do it.”

“I don’t know what you’re asking me.”

Iris peeks out at the bar and sees Mallory greeting more people she vaguely recognizes.

“But, you do,” she says quietly.

“What?”

“But you do know,” she says, a little louder now.

Neil doesn’t respond.

“Hello?” she says. “Hello, are you there?”

Suddenly Neil is back on the line, with the fuzzy sound of the road amplified.

“Hello?” he says. “Helllloooooooo?”

“I can hear you,” she says, “I’m right here.”

“Hello? Hello? Goddamnit,” he says, and hangs up.

“Okay, um, I’ll try back later,” she mutters, and hangs up too.

She slips the phone back into her purse, but stays pressed to the wall.

Around her, the hallway still pulses red. She steps back out into the bar, where all she hears is bass. Whatever song is playing is lost in the belly-deep thump at the bottom of everything. The room is so dark, she can barely make out her table in the distance, where Mallory is now whispering in Nathan’s ear, and Marcus is wiping up a spill with a wad of paper napkins, the new arrivals waiting at the bar for drinks. She looks up at the clusters of colored lights hooked to the ceiling’s wooden beams. Up there they glow, white, orange, and blue. But the lights don’t make it down to the floor. Nothing makes it all the way down to where she can reach it. She strains to make out any one sound amid the swirl of voices, the bass, and the clanking of glasses. It all blends together into a grinding whir, and she stands there, alone, camouflaged by the crowd, and remembers her seventh birthday, the one she spent locked in a shed in the backyard, listening to an old radio she’d found there, because she was too shy to be out among the other kids. She’d only meant to escape for a few minutes, to be alone with the music and the radio waves that she imagined she could see bouncing incessantly across the atmosphere, snaking around her in streams of electric blue, but then she heard the loud crack from the yard, and the waves stopped moving. The air stopped short, and hung in place.

She shakes it off, and re-focuses on the room she’s in right now, the thump of the music, and how early it still is. She slides back into her seat at the table and takes note of the firmness of the wood beneath her, of the chill in this pocket of the room. She takes the last sip of her beer and rolls it around in her mouth, a little warm now, yeasty, and with a hint of orange. She squeezes the empty glass in her hand.

“I came back,” she says into Marcus’s ear, smelling his hair gel, and he gives her a half-smile.

Mallory pushes a shot across the table.

“Drink this.”

“What is it?”

“No questions.”

Iris eyes the brownish liquid in the glass, sniffs it, and pours it down her throat, bracing herself for the whiskey burn.

The boys at the table cheer and Iris feels nauseous. She asks Mallory for a cigarette and excuses herself to the patio. Mallory gives Marcus a little kick under the table, and he gets up and squeezes his way up to the bar.

Iris finds an empty nook against the patio railing and finds a candle to light her cigarette. Several feet from her, a couple is fighting, and Iris listens without looking up at them.

“No, you listen,” the woman says, “I didn’t come here to be humiliated.”

“I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to please you when I don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about,” the man pleads.

“Shut up,” she hisses, and he does. Iris listens for a break in their silence, and glances casually in their direction, but they’re lost in the crowd now. They could be anyone she sees, talking about anything.