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“God, she was sucha bitch,” Kipps slurred, slamming back the latest shot.
“Rest in piss,” Kat said, and she saluted merrily with her empty shot glass.
Bobby was curled up under the table, and Kipps was pretty sure he was still breathing. He hadn’t even made it to ten before he had to bow out, the lucky number thirteen bands on his arm lying flatly black against his pale skin.
“How many was that?” Kipps was hot, so hot in this dingy fucking bar. Why did the Day of Remembrance have to be in the dead of the goddamn summer? He didn’t take his jacket off. He couldn’t.
“Fifteen,” Kat replied. She reached for the bottle they’d been pouring from, and she missed her first try. She refocused and grasped it firmly. “My last one. How many d’you have?”
Kipps tipped his head back, breathing in humid beer stink and the sharp scent of their vodka. He said, “More.”
Kat eyed him suspiciously, blurry where she sat across the booth, and he put his head against the edge of the table. He watched Bobby breathe; the boy might actually be asleep. He was on his side though, so he wouldn’t choke himself. Kipps raised a hand and did a circling motion, and he heard another round splash into their glasses.
“Would you drink som’in nicer for me?” Kipps asked haltingly. “‘F I was on your arm.”
He unstuck his skin from the jut of the table to squint at his long time friend. She had eleven black strands tied up her left arm and another five light blue along her right. Some people preferred to organize them as deaths on one arm, ghost locks on the other. Kipps preferred chronologically.
Kat put the bottle down with a heavy thump. It tilted dangerously, and they both watched it until it chose not to fall.
“I would get top shelf f’you,” she confirmed. “Drink the whole thing. Join you.”
“Fuck off.” Kipps snatched his shot, spilling some over his fingers. “You don’ like me that much.”
“I don’t.”
They tapped against the table and went bottoms up, continuing their current streak. They’d taken a break to let the haziness settle but were back in full force for Kat’s home stretch. It didn’t burn anymore. It mostly tasted like water after the fifth one. The world was bendy like palm trees on a beach, and Kipps didn’t remember the last time he’d gone to the beach.
“M’done,” Kat said, shaking her head.
“Puke.”
“Not gunna puke.”
“You’re green,” Kipps taunted.
“Bobby’s green. A’int you, Bobs?” Kat kicked under the table, and they both heard the unmistakable sound of Bobby throwing up. Kipps swayed to the side, checking to see if his boots were vomit free. They were, to his delight.
“How do you guys fucking do this every year?” Bobby griped. He wriggled his way out from under the table, and Kipps made a face at the stench of bile and alcohol.
“You gotta remember the dead, Bobs,” Kipps said. He went to pat Bobby on the shoulder then thought better of it.
“How many do you have left, Quill?” Bobby asked, and the bags under his eyes didn’t used to be so heavy. Kipps remembered when Bobby looked like a babe fresh from their birth spanking.
“I miss when you called me Mr. Kipps. You ‘member that, Kat?” Kipps pointed at Kat and snatched the bottle while Bobby wasn’t glaring at him. The tip of the bottle was heavier than Kipps expected, and he knocked the shot glass over with the force of the pour. There was already enough liquor soaked into the rough wood to be a fire hazard, so Kipps didn’t pay the spill any mind as he set up another shot.
“I only did that for like three days! C’mon, Quill, you’ve had enough. I don’t fancy wheeling you down to hospital for alcohol poisoning,” Bobby said. He grabbed for the shot, but it was too late. Kipps tipped it back, sending it to churn in his stomach.
For Donovan, who shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
“Would be the least tha’ I deserve,” Kipps mumbled. The noise of the bar faded in and out like someone messing with a radio.
“Seventeen,” Kat said, and Kipps sighed, rolling his head back.
“You always keep me on track,” Kipps slurred.
“You two are fucking hopeless.” Bobby’s shoes thudded away, and Kipps could feel it against his teeth. He put a hand to his chest and then decided that maybe, actually that was his heartbeat pumping diligently through his veins. A sturdy little ticker, it was, and Kipps wondered how many tocks he had left till the bird popped out to declare his time.
“I was scared f’clocks when I wassa kid,” Kipps said. “Y’know the ones that go fuck you.”
“Cuck-coo,” Kat corrected, and Kipps swallowed thickly. She said again, “Cugcoo. Coo-coo.”
“Eggs-actly,” he enunciated.
“I was scared of ghosts, you bloody freak,” Kat said, and then she cackled at the insinuation of a joke.
“Thought the bird was gunna eat me,” Kipps said. He still didn’t like birds, he supposed.
He stumbled through one thought after the other. He didn’t like birds. Even though he could definitely skewer them with his rapier. They could still end up eating him though. In the end. If nobody found his body but the scavengers. Scratches started to crawl over his skin, and pecks like bird pecks peppered over his face. He reached up a hand to scrub the feeling away, the bands around his arms constricting underneath his jacket.
He picked up the vodka even though his fingers had gone numb. Kat was cheek-down on the table, digging her thumbnail into the soft old wood in the shape of maybe a smiley face. Maybe a bird. Kipps couldn’t tell from where his eyes were sitting upside down in his skull.
“I am seventeen,” he told the shot glass as it filled. “Goin’ on eighteen.”
He thought it would be neat if the bar had those little umbrellas for the cocktails except littler for his tiny glass. Maybe that would be a choking hazard. Maybe he’d pay extra for it. Kinky.
Kat’s warbling was quiet and breathy, “I’ll take care of you.”
Kipps hadn’t sung that part deliberately. Eighteen was hard enough to begin with. Pricilla had been good. A Touch to rival the best, in a haunted house and between the sheets. They’d been sleeping together for four months when a relic man used her as a meat shield against a Cold Maiden. The next day, Kipps had been given a formal commendation for his work taking down a relic syndicate operating out of a string of funeral homes.
Kipps sipped his shot like a dainty julep, and it barely tingled on his tongue.
“Eighteen,” Kat said, rolling her head to look at him. “Congrats! You can drink!”
Kipps huffed, sending the dregs of his shot flying into his face. Kat’s laughter was a contagion, crawling down his throat and making him wheeze. The glass fell from his slack fingers, toppling sideways and rolling about the tabletop. Even in the dry, cracked recesses of their laughter, neither of them conjured any tears. The humor faded as quickly as it came.
“What ‘safter eighteen?” Kipps asked. He didn’t think he could grab the bottle again, so he folded his hands into his lap. At least, he was pretty sure he did. He still couldn’t feel them.
“Twenny?” Kat said.
“Not twenty,” Kipps said, shaking his head. “Fairly certain. ‘S eighteen.”
“Eighteen can’ be after eighteen.” Kat snatched the bottle and poured another shot in her glass. She pushed it to the middle of the table, and she put herself eye level with it. She garbled, “Wha’ are you then?”
After Pricilla was Mary. Kipps’ second Mary in fact, so he remembered her as Ghost Locked Mary in contrast to Dead Mary. She’d only been thirteen, assigned to his team temporarily to take on a job down south in her hometown. He should have left someone with her. She wasn’t experienced enough to go it alone, no matter how many chains they piled around her.
Bobby’s voice stabbed through the atmosphere, static cracking in the din.
“—They’ve been at it for hours, and I think they need help. That’s why I called you,” Bobby was saying, and Kipps swiveled his heavy head.
“Bobs, what’s after eighteen?”
Kipps’ throat seized. He wasn’t planning on throwing up, but with who just walked in the door, Kipps thought his plans might go a bit pear-shaped.
Lockwood & Co. looked like shit. Kipps was certain he looked worse, but Lockwood was paler than usual, his skin drawn tight over his bones. A living ghoul, much more terrifying than the dead variety for how his tired eyes filled with confusion. His arms were covered by his usual shirt and suit, but Kipps could see a bundle of black ribbon that had fallen down his bony wrist. Lucy was wearing her darkest blues, and she had her dead and ghost locked displayed over her bare arms. So many for such a sweet girl. Her face twisted into something close enough to pity that it burned in Kipps’ mouth like the vodka didn’t. George had on a rumpled version of a suit, his sleeves rolled up to show his modest collection of tragedy. He looked unsurprised.
They’d clearly been at the cemetery. George didn’t wear black like that.
Kipps reached out, before any of them could say anything, and he gulped down his post-eighteenth shot.
“Hols!” Kat gasped, her voice gone wobbly.
Holly was also there, looking splendid in a stately black dress. Her chosen arm bands were beaded because of course they were. Kat lurched out of the booth, and she face-planted into Holly’s stomach, her knees hitting the floor.
“Hey, babe. We’re going to go home, okay?” Holly said softly, trying to get a grip under Kat’s arms. Kat was slippery though, completely boneless where she slumped into Holly—her girlfriend, apparently? When had that happened?
“Sixteen,” Kat mumbled, muffled by Holly’s dress.
“Can you stand up for me?” Holly pleaded. Kat’s legs bent out, crab-like underneath her, and with a swift catch from Bobby, she managed to drape herself over Holly’s shoulders.
“Sixteen is too many, Hols,” Kat said. When Holly maneuvered them around, Kipps saw the wet tracks on his friend’s cheeks.
“Yeah, it is, baby. Too many,” Holly replied quietly.
Too many.
Kipps felt every band around his arms as if they were around his lungs. As Bobby helped Holly with Kat’s dead weight, Kipps rolled the shot glass in his fingers. He thought about lobbing it at Bobby’s head, but then he’d probably hit someone else instead.
“What are you doin’ here?” Kipps asked, flicking Kat’s shot glass across the table. It careened over the side and settled on the opposite bench with a satisfying clank.
His three lovers—could he call them lovers?—seemed to unstick from their shock. They floated forward as a unit. One exhausted, bereaved unit.
They didn’t love him, so he shouldn’t call them lovers. He didn’t love them either, not in the way anyone was supposed to. The end-all-be-all, soul knitting, mana in the wilderness kind of love. He fucked them. He stayed at their house. He liked them, really, and they liked him just fine. It was all just fine.
“Was that your nineteenth shot?” Lucy asked carefully.
Nineteen, that was the one. Then twenty. Kat was close.
“I said wha’ the fuck are you doing here?” Kipps snarled, the anger coming out of nowhere. A clock hitting the hour. It pulled back immediately, and Kipps pushed his fingers against his forehead as if there was a door there he could lock up tight.
“We came because Bobby called us,” Lockwood said coldly. “We came for you, you prick.”
“Fuck,” Kipps said with feeling. “He wasn’ supposed to do that.”
“And you’re not supposed to be sweating vodka,” George said.
“Come back to Portland Row with us,” Lucy pleaded. She took a step and knelt next to Kipps’ seat. He glanced at her with one eye, seeing the blue thread thick around her forearm.
“No,” Kipps said. Lockwood’s fingers went to fists.
“Why the bloody hell not—”
“You’ve got real remembering,” Kipps said, and he reached out to thumb over one of Lucy’s black bands.
“What?” Lockwood squawked. He crossed his arms, tucking his banded wrist close to his chest.
“In memoriam, in reliquum,” Kipps recited. Even his fumbling tongue worked itself around those words he’d said a hundred times.
“In memory, for the future,” George provided. “Fittes funeral rites.”
“Fittes funeral rites,” Kipps repeated, and he was suddenly fourteen, watching them put Conner in the ground.
I want to burn like the heathens did, Conner had said, and Kipps watched them drop him in the cold, wet earth. Snuffed out.
“What about funeral rites?” Lucy asked. She flipped her arm and tried to take his hand, but he pulled back from her.
“You care,” Kipps said, trying to make them understand. “Me? Once a year. This ‘s it, and I’ll sleep like shi’ tomorrow, but I’ll sleep.”
“You care too, Quill,” Lucy said.
“You’ve enough.” Kipps gestured wildly at his arms, almost elbowing Lucy in the face.
“You think—” Lockwood’s lips curled in on themselves, but he managed to pull the words out like teeth, “You think because it’s my family on my arm that I can’t take care of this family here? Now?”
“I think,” Kipps slurred. He grabbed Lucy’s bicep and yanked, bringing her off her knees. His usually restrained strength was flooding his muscles, metal on his tongue.
“Ow!” Lucy huffed, and Kipps shoved her into Lockwood.
“You shoul’ do that,” Kipps finished, and he gave a bendy little wave. “Take care.”
“How many do you have left?” George asked, ignoring Lockwood’s furious glare.
“Why don’t you do some research about it?” Kipps said, and he patted down the table to find his shot glass.
It had rolled nearly off the side, but he picked it up, slippery with alcohol. He shoved it into his pocket. Kipps grabbed the bottle by the neck and melted out of his seat. The last time he’d been standing was to take a piss ten shots ago. His legs were a considerably higher percentage of jelly this time around. One ankle bent out but righted itself. George’s hands shot up, ready to catch, but Kipps didn’t need it. He didn’t need them.
“If’n you’ll excuse me,” Kipps said, waving the bottle like he was Moses fleeing Egypt.
“Oh, so you’re just going to leave?” Lucy demanded. She brushed off Lockwood’s lingering touches and was in Kipps’ space. The last time her face was that close, he was kissing her. Kipps was almost certain that wasn’t what she wanted right now, and he was definitely certain he suddenly wanted it more than he wanted his next breath.
“Too crowded here,” Kipps replied. He tore himself from the craving for her lips and pushed through them.
“That’s not how this ends.” Lockwood’s firm tone stuck like a brick in Kipps’ throat, and when he tried to swallow, he choked. Lockwood had grabbed the back of his jacket, arresting any further movement. Kipps tried to jerk forward, but Lockwood held fast. Kipps’ shoulder slid out of the jacket, and it felt like the malaise of his first case, the jolt of the adrenaline shot after being ghost touched. He tried to flail around, pulling Lockwood off his balance but not off his jacket.
“You’re going to smash that. Give me—” Lucy lunged, and she wrestled the bottle from Kipps fingers.
It was a tangle of limbs and anger, but when Kipps twisted his way out of Lockwood’s restraint, he found himself without a jacket. More than an armor falling away, this was like his skin had been peeled back, exposing his ugly, bleeding innards.
Lucy’s gasp was a knife. The widening of Lockwood’s eyes, the twist. The pursing of George’s lips, taking it back again. Kipps cast his gaze wildly around the bar that had gone suspiciously quiet at their commotion. The patrons all had their own mournful threads—of course they did, it was Remembrance Day. Nevertheless, he felt their eyes as if they were sliding, wet and viscous, against his skin.
A dozen bands looped over one arm, black and blue playing in their own code. Another dozen were tied tight up the other. Each one their own failure.
When Kipps staggered for the door, there was no hand to stop him.
Sunlight greeted him mockingly as if he were the ghost of Icarus, cursed to wander the earth in search of another way to fly. It beat against his brow, and the thud-thudding of his pulse came forefront to his fingertips. All he could smell was wood lacquer and vodka. He made no decisions; stumbling to the left happened without conscious thought. He lurched like he’d injured his leg, spilling against the brick buildings every few steps to right himself.
Two Bunchurch kids were chatting on the walkway, a single black ribbon about both of their wrists. Kipps swerved to avoid them, finding an alleyway where his face would have expected a wall.
He was misshapen; he was grotesque. Someone should cast him in stone and set him atop the Fittes building to divert rain water. To ward off evil spirits. The alleyway was an eternity in front of him, an infinity getting smaller with each panicked breath. He felt like maybe he was inside his own lungs. He sucked in air, and the edges of the world darkened, curled, came for him.
A hand found his shoulder, and he reacted.
Kipps had her against the wall. His elbow bumped and scraped above her head, and his other arm crushed her to his chest.
“They kept sending them to me,” Kipps whispered frantically. “They kept—I think they did it on purpose.”
Lucy’s arms wound around his waist, and he understood Kat now. At the touch, his tears flowed freely.
He wasn’t supposed to have this. Lost in the mire of his own grief, how could he light the way for anyone else? Giving and taking, but he had nothing to give except the darkness that seeped through the bars of its cage. Just this once, every year.
“You shouldn’ be here,” Kipps said into her hair, and she rubbed comforting circles on his back.
“I want to be here,” she replied simply.
“I have five left,” he slurred, feeling the bands tight on his forearm. “I have to. I have to.”
“Let us help you,” Lucy said.
No sat heavy in his throat.
“Kipps,” Lockwood’s anguished voice floated over his shoulder, and Kipps glanced up to see his cracked-open face. Lockwood offered the jacket, an olive branch among the flood, and Kipps reached for it. He snatched it after his second try.
George was there to help him untangle it, to slide it back over his arms like a shroud to cover his shame.
“Fittes really does a number,” George muttered. Kipps spotted the nearly empty bottle of vodka in Lockwood’s other hand.
“Was fine last year,” Kipps said. He stumbled to one side, and Lucy appeared like a crutch. “Kat was’gone. Visiting family. Was fine by myself.”
He’d puked and passed out before taking the final two. Then when he woke up on his bathroom floor in the dark, he managed to get the last couple down before vomiting again.
“Why don’t I believe that?” George said, coming up on Kipps’ other side.
“Cause you’re too smart,” Kipps sighed.
“I’ll remind you that you said that.” George’s grin was audible, but Kipps wanted to see it. He turned his head, and the sun made a halo of George’s curls.
“Too pretty,” Kipps mumbled.
Kipps wasn’t sure how often his feet touched the pavement on their way back to the street. Lockwood disappeared like smoke to call a cab. A regular one for the middle of the afternoon.
“He mad a’ me?” Kipps asked morosely. Kipps set his chin on Lucy’s head as they swayed on the curb. “I don’ care.”
“You do care,” Lucy challenged, wiggling her fingers against his side.
“Nope. Don’t care,” Kipps said. She was digging in right at his most vulnerable places—unbeknownst to many, Quill Kipps was fucking ticklish. The laughter was hauled up his throat like a bucket from a well. It spewed from between his teeth in girlish giggles, and Lucy gasped.
“You’re—” Her mouth fished open.
“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” Kipps warned, and her fingers squirmed under his ribs.
“You’re ticklish!” She crowed, and George laughed in disbelief.
“Cut it out, Luce, or he might hurl,” George said, although he took a cheap poke to Kipps’ stomach.
“Yeah, cu’ it out, Luce,” Kipps said. George had a good point. There was a storm brewing in the swamp of his stomach, and she was acting like warm front.
Lucy hummed under her breath. “That sounds nice, but I do like it when you call me sweetheart.”
“Sweetheart,” he whispered into her hair. “I will fuckin’ puke on you.”
“Silver tongue,” Lucy accused with a chuckle.
Lockwood was back by the time the cab rolled up to the curb. It took all three of them to wrestle Kipps into the backseat. He saw no need to help them, as they shouldn’t have been doing this in the first place. The shoulder that his cheek rested on certainly smelled like Lockwood’s, but that couldn’t be right because Lockwood was mad at him. Something was wiggling against his side, and it belatedly activated a defensive response, Kipps’ body flinching into George on his other side.
“Let me hold your hand, dickhead,” Lockwood huffed, and his hand found where Kipps’ was squished between them.
Kipps stared at it, finding the reality difficult to reconcile.
“Tony, all touchy-feely,” Kipps taunted. It just felt like Lockwood should be mad at him, was all.
“Prick,” Lockwood said, but he squeezed Kipps’ hand tighter.
The back of a cab was not a great place to be after nearly twenty shots, even mildly spread out as they were. Kipps would not say he was feeling good in the bar, but it was a manageable state. Now, the nausea was like a saw blade, consistent and sharp-toothed, tearing him in half with slow, measured strokes. Time didn’t so much pass as it crawled bleakly forward, bleeding from the belly.
“We’re here,” Lucy called over the seat after Kipps had died eight or so times.
They most definitely had not taken Kipps back to his flat, but among the tangled yarn of his thoughts, that should have been expected. The quiet grandeur of 35 Portland Row loomed over him, and he wondered if their roof needed any gargoyles.
“Luce, the door?” George asked as he and Lockwood maneuvered Kipps up the steps.
“S’posed to open the doors for the ladies,” Kipps mumbled.
“Chivalry is gender neutral,” Lucy said, and Kipps sucked in a breath.
“You coul’ be Knight Carlyle!” His arms flung out wildly as they passed the threshold. “Someone gimme a sword.”
He hadn’t set out with his rapier that morning, historically finding that a blade and an entire bottle of vodka didn’t mix, but he needed it now. It was essential to the ceremony.
“Easy, Kipps,” Lockwood said. “Let’s get him to the kitchen.”
“Did you know that about Kat an’ Holly?” Kipps asked. He was always out of the loop on that kind of stuff. He’d once had a supervisor get married and have a baby, and he just thought she got fired.
“That was a surprise to us as well,” George said, and it made Kipps feel better.
They were in the kitchen, distant memories buzzing around Kipps like nectar-drunk bees. They were staring at him, and then the bottle of vodka was set decidedly on the table.
“You have five left,” Lucy said, as Kipps eyed them warily. “Who is number twenty?”
Kipps’ thumb came up to rub over where a band was hidden high on his right forearm. “Gunna let me finish?”
Lockwood produced a novelty shot glass with a picture of a double decker on it. He carefully poured a shot just shy of full.
“We’re going to share them. You don’t have to do this all on your own,” Lockwood said. Lucy looked at him with a face that was soft not only for how Kipps’ vision blurred in and out. George slipped his hand into Lockwood’s grip as if nobody would notice.
“That’s no’ how this works,” Kipps said, and he reached forward.
George knocked his hand out of the air, sweeping up the glass and tossing it back. When his head tilted down again, he did so with a grimace.
“Now then,” George croaked, clearing his throat forcefully. “Who was that for?”
Kipps sighed and put a hand over his eyes, shrinking in on himself.
“He was a bastard,” Kipps said. “His name was James, and he never fuckin’ did what he was told. Go’ himself killed for it.”
For once, that one hadn’t been his fault.
“What about this one?” Lucy waved another full shot at him, and Kipps rubbed over his arms. He suddenly, viciously didn’t want his jacket covering them anymore. He hated having his grief exposed in public; people stared. But these three had already borne witness. The damage was already done.
Kipps shrugged out of his jacket, getting tangled on his elbows until George reached around to yank it off fully. Kipps did a little wave as thanks, and he felt their gazes like warm weights on his skin between the bands.
“Kelsey. We called her Kels,” Kipps rasped. Lucy didn’t ask anything further. She tipped back the shot, swallowing it in two gulps.
“You picked the shittiest vodka,” Lucy sighed, and Kipps barked a laugh.
“Don’ taste like much when you’ve had wha’ I’ve had,” Kipps replied. The sentence didn’t quite make sense as it tumbled over his tongue, but he figured it didn’t really need to.
Lockwood took Nikhil. A Listener gone mad. Kipps tried not to say that out loud, tried to catch the words with his teeth, but they spilled through, darkening Lucy’s face like a black cloud.
George drank to Ben, a regular wrong place wrong time. Didn’t have the backup, didn’t have the research.
Lockwood tried to take the last one from Lucy, but she scoffed and reminded him what a lightweight he was. Kipps was probably not going to remember this in the morning, a fact which he briefly mourned if only because tormenting Lockwood about not holding his liquor could occupy months of Kipps’ allotted teasing. When she asked this time, the name was stuck on his throat.
“It’s alright, Quill,” she said softly. “Last one. Tell us about them.”
“You already know,” Kipps choked out, burying his knuckles against his forehead.
“Oh.”
Ned Shaw, reduced to a thin black band on his arm.
“To Ned,” Lockwood said, Lucy and George echoing it. Kipps put his forehead on the table again, letting the tears flow into his lap.
There was no weight lifted, no breath of fresh air. There were the bands around his arms, the stench of soured vodka, and the crushing certainty that he may be done for this Remembrance Day, but there would always be more next year. He didn’t know how long they let him wallow, just that his forehead hurt and then a hand appeared, soothing down his back.
“Let’s see if we can get you sobered up a bit before we get you to bed,” Lucy said.
“I’ll make some coffee,” George offered.
“We were going to spend the evening watching some old movies,” Lucy said, as the noise of George in the kitchen went on softly behind her. “Lockwood, why don’t you take him to the couch, and I’ll see what we have left over for dinner.”
Kipps didn’t have a choice in any of this, of course. When Lockwood’s larger hand, longer fingers, curled around Kipps’ shoulder, he heaved a sigh. He peeled his face off the Thinking Cloth and accepted Lockwood’s help standing up. Kipps fared marginally better than earlier, but Lockwood was much more handsy. His arm crossed low over Kipps’ back, and he set another hand on the jut of Kipps’ hip.
“One shot is all it takes?” Kipps slurred. “You’re no’ mad at me anymore?”
They didn’t so much sit down as crumpled onto the couch, Kipps landing heavily in the corner and Lockwood bouncing on the cushion until he was draped over him. Lockwood’s face was close like Lucy’s was, although Kipps was pretty sure kissing was up for discussion this time.
“You know we’re not going to let you do this anymore, right?” Lockwood’s voice was casual, but his eyes were sharp. Kipps chewed on the inside of his lip like it was an answer.
“You’ll just have to be aroun’ next year to stop me.” Kipps looked at the mournful few ribbons low on Lockwood’s wrist. He hoped to God he wouldn’t be one of them.
“We will,” Lockwood promised, brushing his hands down Kipps’ banded arms. “We will.”
When George came in with the coffee, there was an old black and white on their small television set. Kipps was staring right through it. One of his hands was tangled on the seat with Lockwood’s, and the other was propping up his head which had gained some gravity since being in the kitchen. George set the coffee down and went to fetch a small waste basket from the bathroom just in case Kipps needed it. Lucy brought up some leftovers for her boys and some bland crackers for Kipps.
He drank the water they gave him, had a couple sips of the coffee, and ate exactly one cracker before his day caught up to him. At least this year, as he hurled up each of his innards in turn, he had someone to rub his back and crack jokes about him being a lightweight.