Julia picked January to die. There was something right about dying in the month named after Janus, god of beginning and ending, the god of going. This was a good time to go. January in Upstate New York was cold and snowing endlessly, the frost like a cold compress on the window glass. She couldn't tell where anything began and ended.
For Julia's father, January is a month of beginning again, a month of making resolutions and amends. January means a toast, a kiss, a promise to be better. He wouldn't see the blank paper of frost on a window. He wouldn't write anything there. Instead, he would rub the edge of his fist against the glass, squeaking a hole into a world of stars.
He rises up from the armchair beside her and pats her arm gently where the IV lines had been. The bruises are still there. It takes nothing to bruise her now. A needle prick. A kiss.
Julia doesn't mind his kiss, or a bruise. A little pain is good. It lets her know that her body is still there, attached to her mind by a thin thread, that there is still some give and take with the world.
"I would like champagne," she says. "I want to feel the bubbles popping in my mouth. I want to get a little drunk."
She senses her father turning away from her, toward the nurse in the straight-back chair, who would have to take her pulse once she goes into a coma. The white sweater on the nurse's shoulders rise up. Wings, she thinks, owl wings. The barn owl in the room.
"Do you think you should?"
She thinks of all the times that she really shouldn't have had a drink, or several drinks. She thinks of all the times she hasn't wanted to feel her body. To not feel what the body wants.
"Yes, I think I should I have a drink," she says. "Bring the bottle here and open it. I want to feel the cold glass. I want to hear the cork pop."
"The alcohol won't interfere with the Seconal, will it? I mean, it won't have some sort of bad side effect?" But they know. Death is life's bad side effect.
January works out well for the nurse. January is a blank slate. More people die in January, of natural causes and by their own hand, than in other months. The waiting suits her. She is not in anyone's past or future, only the now. She nods at Julia's father and goes to get the bottle of champagne from the refrigerator.
Once the nurse is out of the room, he whispers, "You can put it off as long as you want, you know."
Julia lets this hang in the air for a moment. "As long as I want?"
She laughs. His darkening shape shrugs and, after a moment, laughs too.
The nurse hands the cold bottle to Julia. She knows that Julia wants to feel it.
Julia's father watches his daughter lying on the bed she will die in soon, holding the cold champagne bottle to her chest. He lifts it from her.
"What will we drink to, then?"
She remembers hearing that drinking champagne was like drinking stars. She raises a glass of the stars she can't see any longer.
"To the body."