~
She loved champagne.
Well. Not champagne itself, the sparkling wine from a specific region of France, but sparkling wine. If given her choice she really preferred one of the Spanish ones. I’m not sure why that was the case, she explained it to me once, something about how differences in soil and air and all that made a difference in taste and feel but that had been a lifetime ago. I never really was much for wine.
But staring at the liquers on the shelf at the town bar had brought Isa back to the front of my mind. Before the flight to England we’d had some time to kill so we had decided to toast our departure at the airport’s bar. I’d gotten my usual vodka and cranberry juice and she’d decided to switch things up from a champagne cocktail to a Chambord and champagne. Staring at the bottle of Chambord on the bar’s shelf, it perfectly at my eye level, I couldn’t help but think of her. And thus Isa’s tattered ghost had returned to me, this time sitting at the bar, head hung low and gazing emptily at a Chambord and champagne.
Any fear I once felt about the ghastly spirit of my dead friend was now gone. Now I just missed the comradery we’d shared in life.
I went around the bar, pulling out a glass and pouring in a bit of vodka and a bit of cranberry juice before returning to the other side of the bar, sitting on the stool next to Isa.
“I feel like this is some otherworldly hole in the wall. The bar at the end of the universe as it were.” I said. They weren’t the words which needed to be said. I knew what those were now but I didn’t quite want to let go of the last shred of my best friend I had left. “When I get on the other side of this all, not that I know what that will be, what the marker is, I want to toast to it. I can’t do it now. This isn’t a time of ‘cheers’ but I’m glad you haven’t completely abandoned me.
