Algoma by Dani Couture

love her more, she was sure of it, and would give her a leg up on Bay.
    Algoma accidentally spilled some of the gin on her jacket. She’d only eaten a piece of toast earlier that day. Too tired to cook, she’d eaten whatever was easiest. Her brain felt gin-soaked—top-heavy—like she would tip over any minute. She leaned over and looked at her heavy winter boots and whispered, “Thank you.” If drinking worked for Gaetan, maybe it would work for her, too. He seemed numb all the time and that was beginning to appeal to Algoma.
    Even though she was the only one outside amidst the cigarette butts, she tried to look sober, focused. Through the thin walls, she could hear music, an occasional laugh, a shriek.
    Times when she found the empty house unbearable—Ferd staying with one of her sisters or a friend and Gaetan working—she went to the Club. She rarely spoke to Gaetan while he was working, but she enjoyed his presence. The mutual silence. She liked the bar, which was little more than a tool shed with a pool table and a battered dart board. Seated at the bar, she drank free glasses of ginger ale and ice; outside, she spiked her stomach with shots of alcohol that warmed her entire body.
    “Where’s Ferd?” Gaetan asked. He poured a beer for a large man with a red beard and a matching red Mohawk, a skidder operator who found his way to the bar six days out of seven. While the skidder tipped poorly, he tipped on every drink, which was more than most did.
    Algoma stirred her ginger ale with a yellow plastic sword. She pushed the ice cubes beneath the surface and then released them so they floated back up.
    “He’s at Cen’s.”
    Gaetan nodded. Algoma pushed her glass forward for a refill. She liked the hiss of the soda gun, how the ice cubes popped and fractured when he dropped them in the ginger ale.
    Before the accident, Algoma sometimes asked one of her sisters to babysit the kids while she went to visit Gaetan at the Club. She’d enjoyed the women who leaned over the bar trying to seduce her husband, their heavy breasts sopping up old beer spill. She liked Gaetan’s deep laugh. How he would flirt for tips, with which he would buy her new old things. She liked how it felt like it was just the two of them, if only for a few hours.
    The house was silent. Algoma shuffled across the floor in her socks, knocking into things as she passed. When she accidentally knocked over the spider plant that sat beside the phone, she knew she’d drunk more from Barry than she’d realized. The trouble with a flask was that it was impossible to tell how much you’d had to drink until it was empty. She stumbled into her bedroom and peeled off her shirt and tossed it on the floor.
    Half-dressed, she turned out the lights, lay down on her bed, and closed her eyes. A moment later, she woke with a start. She hadn’t set her alarm for work. In the darkness, she reached over to turn on the alarm, instead upsetting the homemade humidifier—a soup bowl of water—that sat on her bedside table.
    Algoma groaned and got out of bed to clean up the mess. She switched on the bedside lamp and grabbed the shirt she’d discarded earlier to sop up the water. When she moved the table to clean up what had spilled down the sides, she found another note. Two hundred and fifteen, she tallied in her head. She’d set bowls of water around the house to combat the dry winter air and to prevent the bloody noses she was prone to. Because of Ferd, the bowls had a new use. They were like small mailboxes stationed around the house and Algoma was the collector.
    She tucked the note into the pocket of her robe that hung on the door and went back to bed. She’d read it in the morning. Ferd’s narrative was slowly growing inside her like a vine, almost convincing her at times that Leo was alive. Almost asleep, Algoma heard someone turn on the television in the living room. She tried to listen in, but couldn’t make out the voices or which show it was. Gaetan