Carrie had been waking up earlier and earlier. Ever since she was fired from her job at the call center, it seemed like she couldn't ever make it through the night. Dr. Bates told her it was called "waking insomnia" and prescribed a load of sleeping pills that didn't work, she was afraid if she took any more than she already was, she'd probably OD. For weeks she sat up on the computer, bleaching herself with the dull, stupid white glow of the screen. Sites like Wikipedia could drain a person if you let them, tabs opened up, links spawning from each other like delicate, electric labyrinths. So far, the only feasible solution she'd found was to walk across town to the Laughingstock Inn every night she could afford it and put away enough alcohol to plunge her in the black, make her feel like it was worth it.

She was there the first weekend the summer heat hit, crowded up against the bar with her fingers wrapped light around a sweaty pint glass, the small barroom's air filled with the bodies of the freshly twenty-ones and the kids home from college for the season. The noise was one of the reasons she came, a roar just a little too high for polite conversation, the kind of background static a person could disappear in. That was one of the reasons she hugged the edge of the bar so closely. The other was Fred Cramer, her high school history teacher. He had written one of the letters of recommendation that got her into Ship, and he was in the back, near the stage, getting ready to play a set with his band. The last place she wanted him to see her was sleep-deprived and unemployed in a dive. She brushed her hair back and leaned forward under the pink-purple light spilling out from overhead, tapping on the bar to get Jason's attention. It was nice having Jason behind the bar. They dated in high school, a few months at least, broke up, and hated one another for a while. They'd been on better terms ever since she moved back from school. She was in the Laughingstock often enough.

Jason took her glass and started pouring her another draft of Miller when the Devil walked in. He was on the fall side with those high David Bowie cheekbones, a clean-shaven face with a sharp chin. His hair was slicked back and it took on the pink-purple of the bar, Carrie figured outside it would be so peroxide white it would probably glow. He straightened the lapels of his blazer and pushed through the crowd delicately, it took no effort, they parted almost unconscious of their movement as he walked in and took the seat to Carrie's right, settled into it the way a cat might, were it so inclined.

She eyed him as Jason came back, setting her drink in front of her.

"What can I get you?" Jason asked the Devil.

"A Landshark," the Devil said. "And please don't open it."

"We've got it on tap, if you'd like."

The Devil shook his head. "We prefer a bottle, a lime, and a napkin, thank you."

Jason nodded and walked back to the cooler.

He placed the beer on the bar, the lime on a napkin. The Devil popped the cap off with a canine and pushed the lime hard into the mouth of the bottle with his thumb, taking a sip before all the vapor had left the neck. Carrie nursed her draft.

She shifted in her seat. "So 'we," she began. "Is that like a ‘Legion for we are many’ kind of deal?"

The Devil's eyes flicked towards her for a moment. "No."

She nodded and turned back towards the bar, trying to get interested in the hockey game playing but failing. The silence crawled on her, it almost itched. She could feel it as she rolled her shoulder blades, the physical weight of the not-speaking between she and the Devil sitting on the nape of her neck.

She looked to the bottle in his hand, the yellow label between his manicured fingernails. "You like sharks?" she asked.

“We suppose everything must be liked by someone." The Devil, his elbow on the table, rested his forehead in his palm as he turned to her.

She wet her lips. “You know there have been seven shark attacks reported already this year? Two of them were fatal. The summer hasn’t even started yet. That’s just the ones reported, anyway. I mean, how many people do you think just disappeared? Just swam out and got swallowed up by all that blue?”

The Devil sipped his beer. He looked up to the ceiling for a moment.

“This year?” the Devil asked. “Five members of a fishing boat crew that sank in a hurricane, a couple vacationing in the Philippines who got left behind during a diving session, a twelve year-old boy that got dragged out in the rip current and was assumed drowned, and a drunk woman who toppled over the railing on a Carnival cruise to Jamaica. Nine so far. That is, if you mean just the ones who were eaten, right? Because if you want everyone who disappeared, drowned, whatever. Well, that's just ridiculous."

Carrie’s fingers tightened around her beer, she looked back at the amber in the glass. "Oh."

She thought of Mike, her old manager. Thought of his smug face, the one he wore when he told her that he was sorry, she just wasn't working out at the center. See, the customers weren't responding to her voice and he thinks that they'd have better luck with another research associate. Research associate, that was the word he used, not telemarketing drone. And surely, oh surely, it had nothing to do with that night they were both working late, that night that he put his hand on her shoulder and she shrugged it off. That night where, for a second, that smug mask slipped and she saw the flicker of annoyance, a proprietary annoyance, of being denied something he deserved. Well of course that had nothing to do with them letting her go.

She took a sip of beer and waved Jason over for a shot. He poured her one from the well, whiskey. Her head jerked back as she drank it. She tried not to pull a face, failed and chased it with her beer.

“That looked unpleasant,” the Devil said.

“Yeah.” Carrie wiped her lips with the side of her hand, then swept back with her thumb, “Well.”

“Let us buy you something a little better next time,” the Devil said.

She smiled a little despite herself, “I’ll think about it.”

The Devil finished his beer and waved Johnny for another as she heard Mr. Cramer’s band starting their sound check. She curled in on herself a little more, turning her head from them and towards the Devil, giving them her back. The notes, disjointed now as the levels were adjusted, fell from the speakers.

“Sorry,” the Devil said, running his hand through his waxed-sharp hair. Carrie jumped a little as she looked back up to him.

The Devil continued, “We’re not exactly used to the whole…small talk…thing.” The Devil’s mouth formed the words as though they were uncomfortable, he worked his tongue around the inside of his lips as though to rid himself of the taste.

“It’s alright,” Carrie said.

“So,” the Devil started again. “What, precisely do you do?”

Not sleep, she thought.

“I used to work in a call center,” she said.

"Oh?"

"Cold-calling," she continued.

The Devil tilted his head to the side.

“Like surveys and stuff. We’d call people up and ask them about their central air or their electric company and poll them, that was the first half of the shift. Then we did political stuff on the second half, though that was usually for cities out in, like, California. Because of the time difference, you call somebody in the morning, they tell you to piss off, call them at night and get the same, but in the middle of the day someone might actually talk to you.”

Work until eleven, go home, sleep, wake up. It was a stupid, mindless cycle and it was even stupider that she kind-of missed it. She’d gladly trade her current waking for an eternity of that hourly monotony of two-minute calls and hang-ups.

"That doesn't sound very... fulfilling," the Devil said.

"Nope." Carrie drained her beer.

"Then why do it?"

Carrie wished she still dreamed. Wished she could dream Mike's face, frightened, floating in the blue of the ocean, treading water until something monstrous bumped against his dangling foot. She wanted to dream his face as row upon row of razor white diamonds ripped into his meaty thigh.

She shrugged, "You wouldn't know from in here, but this town is fucking dying. It's the only place I could get work." She laughed. "Actually this place is a death trap. Get out while you still can, save yourself, savor your freedom."

The Devil looked to his beer and nodded. Carrie called Jason over to fill hers up. The Devil opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted before he could.

"Carrie?" the voice came from behind Carrie. She felt her stomach drop to somewhere in her toes, wanting to shrink, to close up, to melt into the bar and disappear.

"Carrie Foxe, is that you?"

The voice wasn't going away.

Carrie stitched a smile across her face as best she could as she turned. "Hey, Mr. Cramer," she said.

He looked the same as she remembered him, maybe a little more tired, a little more gray in the dull brown of his hair, more lines around his mouth, near his eyes. He walked over and set his arm down between Carrie and the Devil, waving Jason over to fill his glass.

"What are you doing in here all alone on a Friday night?" he asked as Jason filled his beer.

"She's not, in so many words, alone," the Devil said

"Oh," Mr. Cramer stepped back, "Is this your boyfriend or something?"

"No," Carrie and the Devil said as one.

"Ah," Mr. Cramer said, smiling, "Alright then, anyway. Did you come to see us play or something?"

"No," Carrie said, looking down to her beer, "Tell you the truth, Mr. Cramer, I forgot you guys even played here, I guess I was just around."

"You can call me Fred, Carrie, you're not my student anymore." He smiled knowingly, "Anyway, I figured I'd see you around. You can always tell. Who's going to leave the nest and who's going to settle back home."

"I guess," Carrie said. She sipped her beer, put it back down. Her free fingers wrapped around her wrist, rubbing up and down.

"How's the wife?" the Devil asked Mr. Cramer. "Oh, no, my mistake," he corrected himself, "She left you, right?"

Mr. Cramer backed up a bit, but laughed, "Tell your friend to stop playing at the Sherlock shit, Carrie." He held his left hand up. "What'd you see my tan-line or something?" He wiggled his fingers, a white band around the ring finger's flesh.

The Devil sighed and looked up to the ceiling, "No."

Mr. Cramer looked back to Carrie, "So what have you been doing with yourself? Graduated from Ship, right?"

The Devil sighed as he eyed Mr. Cramer like a cat would a mouse, "She's not going home with you, you know." He leaned back, rested his elbows on the bar, asp green eyes looking Mr. Cramer eyes to toes. "Cramer, you are absolutely the worst kind of evil. You're boring."

Mr. Cramer glared at the Devil. He slammed his money down on the table and took his beer. "Anyway, 'll see you around, Carrie."

Carrie rolled her eyes and looked over to the Devil, "That was a pretty unnecessary display of bravado."

The Devil shrugged as he turned back to the bar, "If you're going to be over the top, be gloriously so. Besides, you didn't want to answer the question." He waved two fingers to Jason. "Two shots of Patron, if you would."

"High roller." Carrie sipped her beer as Jason poured the shots.

She and the Devil threw them back at the same time.

"So if this place is dying, why are you still here? Why not go somewhere alive?”

Carrie shrugged. "I've never been anywhere else. Everyone I know is here, you know.”

The Devil shook his head, "Untrue. If a place isn't working, you leave. You want to talk about freedom, that's real freedom."

Carrie looked down into her beer.

"A shark can't stand still," the Devil said. "If it stops swimming it will suffocate."

Carrie drained her beer, "Would you mind walking me home?" she asked. She waved Jason over to settle up her tab.

The Devil pushed his drink back. "I would be honored." He walked her to the door after she finished with the check and collected her credit card.

Carrie pushed out into the warm night haze, "So why'd you come to the Laughingstock anyway?"

The Devil shook his head, "We weren't coming just here. An inn's never a proper destination, is it? Not really. Just a place to stop along the way."