“And he’s not my problem either,” she says.

The man grumbles something in a foreign language and for the first time actually sits up in his chair, waving the bartenders arm away.

Annette takes a step backward while I stare at him in surprise.

“I’m calling the cops if you don’t get your ass out of here!” the bartender rallies at him, sounding tough though her voice is shaking.

The guy can barely open his eyes, but he seems to understand. He slurs more foreign words, most of which I think are swears, and tries to get to his feet.

Then he sways unsteadily and without thinking I rush over to him, my hands going to his chest to push him back and keep him upright. It’s like trying to keep a redwood tree from falling over and yet somehow it works and he slumps back onto the chair. If he truly was deadweight, I would have been crushed.

“We’ll take him,” I say, my heart racing at my proximity to him, the crazy strength I just pulled out of me.

I’m surprised I said it.

So is Annette.

She reaches out and grabs my arm, pulling me away from him. “What the hell is wrong with you? We’ll take him? He’s not a dog you adopt from a shelter, Maggie.”

“Good luck,” the bartender mutters, walking back down the bar with such flourish like a teacher passing off an unruly kid to its parents.

Now I’m committed.

To what, I don’t know.

I wave my arm at him. His eyes are still closed, chin keeps dipping down into his chest. His chest. Hard as cement. I can’t believe I was just pressing my hands into it moments ago. He didn’t even smell like alcohol, just something musky and woodsy, cozy and comforting.

“We can’t leave him here,” I tell her.

“Yes we can,” Annette says, looking around the bar for someone else to save us from this situation but we’re the last ones in here. “It’s not your problem. It’s definitely not my problem. Let the girl call the cops, they can deal with him.”

It’s definitely the easier, saner option. I can’t say why I feel like I have to be this stranger’s knight in shining armor tonight, but I do. “Either you help me get him to the hotel or I do it alone.”

Annette stares at me.

I stare right back at her.

I’ve made up my mind.

Finally, she sighs, rolls her eyes, and taps her pink nails along her arms. “Fine. But I’m trying to think like your mother. She would not approve of this.”

“My mother would be proud that I’m going out of my way to help a stranger, that’s exactly the kind of thing she would do.” Her comment has me on edge, defensive. My mother was always the one to come to someone’s aid.

“Well now I’m worried you’re dazzled by his cock and not thinking right,” she says.

“Shhhh,” I tell her sharply, looking over at the guy to see if he heard. I can’t tell. It does look like he’s about to slide off the bar stool at any moment.

She sighs again. “Okay, let’s go. You take one side, I take the other.”

We flank him on both sides, I lift his arm up over my shoulder, pressing my fingers into his chest again and give Annette a nod. With a groan, we both pull the guy up to his feet. It’s not easy given that he’s over a foot taller than I am but he’s somewhat supported.

Luckily I’m parked by the entrance and working together in unison we manage to walk the guy outside, even though he almost takes a tumble once or twice, nearly bringing us down with him.

We get him into the backseat of the van where he immediately collapses and then I drive us off toward the hotel.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Annette says in a low voice, shaking her head as she watches the streetlights pass by. “You haven’t even thought this through. How are you going to get him to his room? You going to go through his pockets for a room key?”

“I’ll use my housekeeper card.”

“What if someone from your work sees you?”

Hmmmm.

Maybe I haven’t thought this through.

“I’ll be sneaky.”

“No, we will try and be sneaky and try is the operative word because it’s not going to work because clearly you’ve never lugged around Andre the Giant before. You’re going to get caught. Then what?”

I give a half-hearted shrug. “Tell them the truth?”

“Won’t it look like you’re sleeping with the guests or something? Don’t you have a no fraternizing rule?”

“Not on paper,” I say slowly though now I am remembering when I was in high school, one of the housekeepers got caught having sex with someone in the hotel room and she was fired. I think she tried to pass him off as a boyfriend but it was clear that he was just a guest and they didn’t really know each other.

Shit.

Getting fired is the last thing I need, let alone having rumors fly about me sleeping with the guests.

“I say we just pull up to the hotel, slide open the door and kick him out,” she says. “He’ll roll down the hill toward the hotel. Piece of cake.”

“Like we’re dumping a dead body?” I cry out softly, mouth agape.

She throws her hands up. “Well, honey, I don’t know.”

I sigh and quickly pull a U-turn in the middle of the road. Luckily it’s late and pretty much deserted.

“Where are you going?” Annette asks, looking around wildly.

“Taking him to your house.”

“My house?” she shrieks which makes the stranger in the backseat stir and yell something that I’m still certain isn’t English before he passes out again.

I eye him in the rearview mirror, wondering if I’ve made a colossal mistake, I mean what if he realizes where he is and starts freaking out while I’m driving? I don’t know this guy, I don’t know how he reacts. Suddenly I imagine us re-enacting that scene from Tommy Boy when the deer wakes up in the back of the car.

All the better to drop him off at Annette’s.

“Yes, your house,” I repeat.

“No way. No. Nope. Maggie, I have spies.”

“Spies?”

“Hank still comes by unannounced. We’re still in divorce proceedings. The neighbors are on his side. What will it look like if I bring some guy home?”

“You’re not doing anything wrong…”

She just stares at me with devil eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not taking any chances, especially not for someone I don’t know.”

I sigh, my hands squeezing the steering wheel. She’s right. I don’t want to get her in trouble and I don’t want this to hurt her divorce in anyway. People can be vicious here.

At the same time, I can’t take him to the hotel. It will look wrong and I’ll get in shit, I just know it.

And I don’t feel right about getting him put in a drunk tank either.

I exhale again noisily, knowing what I’m about to do.

“What?” Annette says, frowning at me.

“I’m taking him home.”

“Maggie.”

“I’ll put him in mom and dad’s room,” I tell her. “He can sober up.”

“Maggie,” she says again, voice sharper now. “No. You don’t know this guy. You can’t bring him in your house. Not with your brothers and sisters there.”

I know she has a point. “They’re all asleep right now. I’ll tell Pike about it, Pike is big enough to handle him.”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“Annette. It’s happening. Now do you want me to drop you off first?”

“Oh, like I’m letting you do this on your own.”

“Look, we’ll get out his wallet and you can keep it as collateral or something. Just in case something goes wrong.”

She stares at me and I know she’s wondering what the hell is going on in my head. I don’t know. Lately I feel like I’m knowing who I am less and less, so maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that I’m acting out of character. Or maybe this is my character now. Maybe I’m so starved for something different and new that I’m willing to haul a drunk guy to my house and use my parent’s old bedroom as a drunk tank.

“I should stay the night,” she says.

“It won’t be a problem,” I tell her.

“Famous last words.”

Five minutes later I’m pulling the van outside of the house. I peer up at it through the windshield. The lights are all off except for the lamp in the foyer and Pike’s room. We run a really tight ship when it comes to the electric bill, so lights out really means it’s lights out.

“This is ridiculous, you know that,” Annette says as she gets out.

“I know.”

Being as quiet as possible we slide open the van door and manage to get him out and into the house.

We whisper to each other as we attempt to get him up the stairs, trying to keep our voices down even though at one point the dude tilts to the left and nearly flattens me against the wall. It would almost be comical if it wasn’t such hard work. It would be even sexy under any other circumstance.

Finally, we get to the second floor and stagger down the hallway and around the corner to my parent’s old bedroom. I open the door and quickly flick on the light.

I don’t come in here very often. It’s like a tomb in some ways, the curtains are usually closed and everything is as it was before they died. None of us have the heart or the nerve to move things around much. I know the bed linens have been changed because we’ve had guests over and I’ve occasionally come in here to dust, but I don’t spend much time. The memories hurt.

Even now it feels like their ghosts are in the walls, shadows in the dark. Loving ghosts, but ghosts all the same. Reminders of lives that once were, a love I’d do anything to have back.

I swallow hard and bring my focus back to the guy as we get him backward onto the bed where he falls like a sawn tree, making the bed shake from the impact of his large frame.