There were four of us, and then there were three, and now there are only two. Bryan, the oldest, has worked his way back to four: he’s married with toddler twins. That makes me one: drinking alone in a Midtown bar after our brother Nick’s funeral, while my empty train seat creeps under the Hudson River, toward the life I’m not yet ready to return to.
Nick liked Scotch, so I order Scotch. I hate Scotch, so I order water to help it go down. I add a vodka tonic, my usual, to chase the water. Three glasses, three sips in a row. Nick would approve of the ritual. Ironically, it was when Nick the troublemaker started following rules—his own inexplicable rules—that we knew dark times were ahead. For example, let the phone ring three times to ensure the caller offers good news. Clap three times on the curb to cross the street safely. When I was a little girl, I thought it was a game. Maybe it was a game, then, and it only became a compulsion later. A warning signal. Before the manic speech, the outbursts, there was Nick at the crosswalk, clap, clap, clap.
Last week, Nick called me at 7:14 am on the last day of my law school semester to confess he glimpsed our third brother, Liam, who has been dead for 17 years. “He’s following me,” Nick said, his words speeding nearly into gibberish. “He’s outside.”
I—dutiful daughter and baby sister—followed the family’s rules. I asked Nick for his location (a hotel on 39th Street); I told him to wait for me; I called my parents, who called Nick’s doctor. Protocol complete, I went to class. Then Bryan called: Nick was missing. Then Bryan called again: Nick was hit by a car, Nick was dead.
Another family rule: Say no more than necessary. We’ve gone through the whole week, the whole funeral, the whole damn thing without anyone saying aloud: Did Nick run in front of that car on purpose?
At the Midtown bar, I take a sip of Scotch, a sip of water, a sip of vodka.
In college, I learned not everyone’s parents drink, and not everyone drinks with their parents. Not everyone is taught how to make a Manhattan, or use a church key. But not everyone recognizes that drinking is an education. I know how to drink without getting drunk; how to drink to the right amount of drunkenness, so no one knows I’m drunk. Those are rules, too, along with drinking only on weekends, holidays, at parties, and when other people are drinking. I was always better at following rules than Nick, which is why I’m in law school and he’s dead.
Is he dead? The casket was closed, of course. I’m used to not seeing him for weeks, months at a time, so in a way, he isn’t dead. He’s Schrödinger’s brother, in the limbo Liam once inhabited, when I was too young to comprehend death. I understood it, intellectually: Liam had been ill, Liam’s body lay in that casket, then under the beautiful green grass. But I didn’t believe it. Months later, I crept from my bedroom to investigate the screaming and banging—or, rather, to see how it would end. It was obviously Nick and my parents; it was always Nick and my parents. I clutched the railing like two bars of a jail cell, and Nick screamed, “Liam’s dead! Liam’s dead! Liam’s dead!” His voice sounded like glass breaking and muscle tearing at once. I vomited onto the steps below. I went back to bed and nobody noticed the mess until the next morning. They had to pull up the carpet.
That’s when I understood Liam was dead and gone forever. Nick made it real. Nick had some nerve, then, to declare Liam was back, as if he had just been on vacation, as if he had just been on the other side of some door, or in some back room, in some lobby on some street in this bleak tangle of a city.
Nick’s last words to me, maybe to anyone: “I’m going to meet him.”
I take a sip of Scotch.
I take a sip of water.
I lift the vodka, for my third sip, when a chill settles on my neck.
I turn around.
A man sits in an empty booth, watching me.
I turn back and drink the vodka. It burns. It should burn less—less than the Scotch, less by this point of the night, less by this point of my life. There’s something strange about me. Things get better, things get worse, but usually I feel exactly the same. It’s like how Nick is gone, but Nick was already gone, but Nick’s also not gone yet. The same.
“I’d ask to buy you a drink,” the man says—suddenly, he’s on the barstool beside me. “But three is a lucky number, and I don’t mess with luck.”
“You think four is unlucky?”
“Compared to three, I guess.”
“What about two?”
“I guess the same.”
“You read my mind,” I say. “But don’t get your hopes up. I buried my second oldest brother today.”
“That’s funny,” he says. “I’m having a drink for my brother, too. Gone but not forgotten.”
“You’re right, that’s hilarious.”
“It gets funnier the more drunk you get.”
“I’m not drunk,” I claim, though I must be, a little. His face keeps going out of focus, except for his eyes, the same green as Nick’s. Should I warn him? He might have a little Nick in him. It’s a good thing—Nick was witty, Nick was fun, Nick was honest—until it’s not.
“Listen,” he says, “do you ever feel like you’re being watched?”
Nick said things like that to me many times, always when he was teetering on the widest rim of the spiral. “No,” I answer, which is true, because he asked in the habitual tense, and I don’t usually feel people watching me. Though, of course, I just felt him watching me.
It’s this kind of attention to linguistic precision that makes me well-suited to law school. Bryan thought it was a great choice—he’s in broadcasting, he makes a ton of money, but he lives in fear the network (every network) will collapse. Nick said, “Law school’s just the kind of thing you would do,” both approving and disapproving, and then, “Lucky for me. I’ll need a good defense attorney one day.” Nick never got in trouble with the law, though; there was something so harmless and pitiful about him, some air of our parents’ money. Really, I should have gone to medical school.
“What did you say your name was?” I ask.
“I didn’t,” the green-eyed man answers, and then says his name at the exact same time a door slams, a car horn blares, and an argument breaks out in the corner. “I’m supposed to be meeting someone here,” he continues. “My brother’s best friend.”
“That makes three. Lucky.”
“There’s just two. My brother’s dead, remember?”
“Oh, that’s right. Dead,” I say, and then think, dead, to complete the three. Is it a tribute, or is it a shade of Nick’s compulsions? I’m the one with a little Nick in me—genetics, upbringing, a third thing, probably; there’s always a third thing.
“Maybe I got the wrong bar,” the green-eyed man says. “What’s this place called?”
“Penny’s.”
“Shit. I was supposed to meet him at Peggy’s.”
“Call him.”
“I lost my phone. It’s been a hell of a day.”
I take out my phone to find the other bar that sounds like this one. There’s a message from Bryan: Saw the train delay. Are you ok in the station?
“Hell of a week,” the man rambles, “hell of a month…”
How’d you see that?
“Hell, it’s been a hell of a year…”
I checked the app when you didn’t text.
“Hell, heaven, purgatory, Gehenna, the Bardo…”
I tap out: since when am I supposed to bardo
“Give me a minute,” I request, and the man goes quiet while I answer Bryan—since when am I supposed to check in with you? ran into a college friend, we’re waiting together—and search for Peggy’s.
“It’s three blocks from here,” I say.
“Come with me,” the green-eyed man says. “We need you. Three’s a lucky number.”
I can’t argue with that.
It must have rained. The streets are a glassy black, headlights run like spilled paint, mist spiderwebs between the buildings. The traffic sounds like sighing voices, and our footsteps sound like nothing.
The green-eyed man reaches the curb first, and I shout, “Wait! You have to clap three times and say a charm.” I demonstrate, clapping with each word. “Let. Me. Pass.”
The street is empty. We cross easily.
I clap the conclusion: “I. Have. Arrived.”
He does the same. In the streetlights, his eyes have darkened to hazel, like mine. Liam’s were hazel, too. My memories of him are memories of photographs and videos; memories of stories Nick told me.
“What was that about?” the hazel-eyed man asks.
“For safe crossing. It doesn’t matter what you say as long as you’re pure of heart.”
At 37th Street, we chant: Here we go—Drinks at Peggy’s. And at 38th: Margarita, Manhattan, Martini—Don’t Stop Now.
“It’s addictive,” he says. “Let’s keep going.”
I point to the sign. “But we’re here.”
Inside, Peggy’s looks like Penny’s: dark furniture, laminated menus, scratched mirrors. The only difference is the red lighting. We claim bar stools and I order a gin and tonic. “Make it three,” the hazel-eyed stranger says, except in the red light, his eyes are black.
The drinks appear quickly, chunky glasses with too many ice cubes and thin slices of lime, like dead bugs uncurled, rusty in the light. I finish my drink, and stare at the one sitting in the middle, while the black-eyed man describes his friend to the bartender. Not too tall, not too short; fair hair, or dark, depends on the season; looks kind of like the weather guy from that channel.
My tongue feels like someone squeezed it dry. I imagine a hand reaching inside my mouth, wringing it out. A hand reaching up my throat. A little bit of Nick. Genetics, upbringing, and that third thing I can’t name.
“That description could be anybody,” I interrupt.
The black-eyed man considers. “He has a scar from here to here.” He draws his condensation-damp finger from the corner of my right eye to my jaw, so quickly I don’t even flinch. I just let him do it. I just silently register the cold line, glistening like blood in the mirror. “He was hit by a car.”
I draw a wet fingertip down the left side of my face, eye to jaw, for balance. To keep my face from cracking into two pieces. Nick’s casket was closed. Schrödinger’s brother.
“Sorry,” the bartender says. “Maybe you’re looking for Penny’s? People get them confused.”
“We were just there.”
“The Penny’s on 36th, or the Penny’s on 42nd?”
“Two Penny’s, and we’re right in between.” The black-eyed man shakes his head in awe. “I’m always right in between.”
I draw a third line, from the center of my hairline, down my nose, over my lips, to my chin. That’s what Nick would do.
“Let’s go to the next Penny’s,” I say. “Except there’s that third drink. Neither of us touched it. That means there might as well only be two drinks.”
“And that’s bad luck.” He gestures—all mine. I swallow it one, two, three.
After the funeral, back in my parents’ uptown duplex, Bryan said, Are you sure that’s a good idea before you get on the train? He meant the empty glass in my hand. I don’t know how many drinks I’ve had today. I’ve lost count of drinks, of streets, of time. Of brothers.
The black-eyed man catches me as I slide off the stool, leads me into a clammy breeze, and suddenly we’re on the corner of 39th Street.
He claps once. “Genetics….”
39th Street.
Twice. “Upbringing…”
39th Street.
“Stop!” I cry.
Nick died on this street, a couple blocks west, beyond the festering white mist. I can never step onto this blacktop. I can never go uptown, never to my parents’ apartment, never to my old school, never to the playground where I used to play, or Nick did, or Liam.
“But you already stepped off the curb,” the black-eyed man explains patiently, as if he heard my thoughts. It’s true. I’m standing on the asphalt. It sparkles like outer space.
His hand locks around my wrist. He tugs me forward, into the fog. My mind screams, but my body follows. It’s too skilled at going through the motions; it motions right to the middle of the street, and then I throw up. They’re going to have to rip up the whole street and throw it away and no one will talk about it again.
To the west, the mist ignites into a white glare. The detonation of Nick’s death lingers, is ongoing, will never stop. A trumpet blares, and two blinding lights speed toward me. My brothers, two terrible angels. Liam came for Nick, and now they’re both coming for me.
But then my shoulder wrenches, my shoes skid, and I tumble onto the sidewalk. Blood glitters on my shins, matching the receding red taillights of the car that nearly hit me.
The black-eyed man is hunched over, panting. “You stopped. Did you want it to hit you?”
We don’t ask that question. It’s against the rules. Instead, I start crying. The whole week, the whole funeral, the whole damn thing, and this is the first time I’ve cried.
He loops my arm around his neck, wedges his shoulder under my arm, and lifts me to my feet. I limp-float up the block, hanging on the man like a half-shed coat, his question hanging on me. The traffic is gone, as if New York is sorry for what it’s done to us.
At the next intersection, the man says, “I’ll play for both of us now.”
At 40th Street: Do You See—Green, Hazel, Black.
At 41st: Nick, Liam, You—Genetics, Upbringing—
“I think it was Nick in that cab,” I interrupt. I don’t want to hear the rest.
The man slides out from under me. My weight pools into my legs until I’m standing upright. “You didn’t let me finish the charm,” he says. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“It was Nick,” I insist. I don’t want to think about what he’s thinking about. “Taking his last ride, all the way to heaven.”
“If he can make it out of here,” the black-eyed man says, “then he’ll be lucky.”
“It’s too late for luck,” I declare, my voice hoarse. “The game’s over.”
He smiles. “Liar.”
“Look.” Above us, the street sign announces 42nd Street, and a few cement squares to the right, Penny’s waits, a red awning, reddish-tinted window.
But the man steps off the curb, heading north, where Central Park wavers purple-black. The shadowed trees like beckoning fingers.
“Where are you going?” I call.
He turns around, his heels on the yellow lines. “I lost my phone in the park, remember? Everything’s in my phone.” His face is in shadow, as if the black is leaking from his eyes. “My whole life. I can’t remember a thing without it. Not my friend’s number… Not his name. Not my name. What did I say my name was again?”
“It’s not funny.”
“See! You don’t remember, either.”
“I never heard it in the first place,” I argue, but it’s an excuse. I can barely remember what he looks like, as he takes a step backwards, the shadows of his face meeting the shadows reaching from the park. He’s not too tall, and he’s not too short; he might be fair-haired, in the light, but we’ve traveled in the dark. He doesn’t have a scar on his face. He wasn’t hit by a car.
But something—something happened to him.
“Aren’t you coming with me?” he asks.
At that moment, my phone rings. I stare at Bryan’s name on the screen until it goes silent, and a message pops up: App says the train finally left. Texting to confirm.
I look up again. The man has backed across the yellow line. He’s getting closer to the void, but not farther from me: the toes of my shoes float, the curb slicing an equator through the soles of my feet. I stepped forward without thinking.
“Come with you, where exactly?” I ask.
He angles the dark shape of his head toward the greater darkness rising behind him. He grins. Despite the shadows, I can see his grin. “You know,” he says. “You know where, you know why.” He’s talking to the little bit of Nick in me: genetics, upbringing, and that third thing. He’s talking to the third, black-eyed thing. Liam bequeathed it to Nick, and Nick bequeathed it to me: a dangerous intimacy with death.
My phone rings again and I answer, my eyes still locked on the man’s invisible eyes. “Why do you keep calling me?” I ask, half-annoyed, half-grateful, all of me afraid of what I might do next.
“I’m looking out for you,” Bryan says. “There’s only two of us now.”
Down the block, two white headlights appear.
I inch backwards, both feet firmly on the sidewalk.
The off-duty cab glides closer, and the man walks backwards, quickly, toward the park.
“If you change your mind,” he says as the car sails between us, and then he’s gone, the rest of his invitation unspoken.
But I know what he means.
“Hello?” Bryan chants in my ear. “Hello?”
“Hello,” I answer. That’s three. A bookend to the cold seams I can still feel on my face; a scar for Liam, a scar for Nick, and the one that waits for me. If you change your mind, the man meant to say, I’ll be here, waiting for you.
“Nick walked in front of that car on purpose,” I tell Bryan.
I expect him to argue with me, but instead he sighs. “Yeah.”
“I missed the train. I left the station. Will you stay on the phone with me while I walk back?”
“Of course,” he says, and we talk while I walk eight short blocks down and three long blocks west. I grit my teeth when I cross 39th Street, Nick’s street, but I don’t clap and I don’t chant. Without even thinking, I speed up when the lights bare down. My body knows how to live.
I’ll book a later train. I’ll stop drinking, too. I’m good at things like this: making virtuous decisions and following through. I have tremendous discipline. I’ll build a cage around the third thing I share with Nick. It’ll wait quietly, like a scared little girl behind a railing, an obedient child with unblinking black eyes.
I’ll do all this because I don’t want to die. But the black-eyed man reminded me how easily I might change my mind—tomorrow, or in a decade, or in three—and how easily I might follow my brothers. I can step off the curb, my quiet hands in the air. I can be the third. I can end the game.
“Are you still there?” Bryan asks.
Stephanie Feldman is the author of the novels Saturnalia and The Angel of Losses and the collection The Night Parade and Other Stories (October, 2026). Her work has been named a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, Crawford Fantasy Award Winner, Mythopoeic Fantasy Award finalist, and Locus Award finalist. She lives outside Philadelphia with her family. Her novel In Summer She Turns Cruel is forthcoming in 2028.
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