"It's good to see you again, Mahony." Dorothy started, "How you ended up here? If you don't mind me asking." Dorothy pulled her drink closer towards her after Mona had delivered their order.

Mahony sighed. "Murdered." He said the one word like it's the biggest embarrassment of his life.

Dorothy picked up her light-yellow cocktail rimmed with sugar and took a generous sip, all the while not looking at Mahony as she took in the implications to Mahony's demise. "I see." She continued to stare down at her drink. "Even you," she murmured to herself then as if she had decided on something she smirked before looking up at Mahony. She physically shook herself and picked up her drink and drained the rest of it and signaled to Mona for another.

Mahony watched the internal dialogue that played out on the grown-up version of his childhood playmate with fascination. It's not hard to guess not everything was rainbows and sunshine after she had moved away.

"Well," Dorothy said, her bubbly demeanor slid back in place, "one way or another we all end up here. Don't we?"

"I suppose so, don't have much of a choice." Mahony said. "How about you? What was the method of your demise?"

Dorothy smirked again. "Drank myself to death." She wiggled her eyebrows as her drink arrived.

Both surprised and not surprised by Dorothy's answer. Mahony supposed that Dorothy's mother had a lot of influence in shaping Dorothy's life. It's no secret that Dorothy's mother drank. Mahony remembered back then he learnt about Wizard of Oz and what alcohol smelled like on a person from Mrs. Mulholland.

"I see," Mahony said, mirroring Dorothy's response to his own demise. He eyed Dorothy as she drained half of her second glass. "Are you sure you should be drinking so fast?"

"Relax. You can't get drunk here, ever." Dorothy patted Mahony's forearm. "Haven't you noticed that you can eat and eat and never feel full, just satiated?"

"Now that you've mentioned it, yes." Mahony said.

"It's the same as alcohol. You only get a slight buzz no matter how much you drink here," Dorothy said. "It's both good and bad. It meant you can drink and drink and drink without much consequence." Dorothy said with meaning while still all smiles. "I guess you only just got here, not everything has come back to you yet. Give it a few more minutes."

Mahony didn't want to get into how he's been here, there, and back again. "Fill me in, what happened after you moved?"

"Daddy got a new job so we moved out west," Dorothy said as she smoothed down her dress. "Got himself a new girlfriend, divorced my mom and left." Dorothy finished her second drink. "Mom got the house and some money from the divorce and promptly disappeared into the bottle. As for my dad, once the new baby came, he lost interest in me entirely." She signaled for another drink. "I got into college, got pregnant, quit school, miscarried twice; afterwards, crawled into a bottle myself."

"I don't know what to say," Mahony responded after Dorothy's staccato delivery of her life in a nutshell.

"Nothing needs saying," Dorothy said. "I could've chosen different, seeing how my mom ended up but there's just something about mothers and daughters, you either make the same choices or you go the opposite, only to ended up much the same in the end still. I don't know about fathers and sons."

Mahony thought went to his own childhood. His father was barely around when he was young and as he got old enough to wonder, he realized that he had gotten used to his father's miniscule presence in the household that it was inconsequential whether he existed or not.

"No different, I suppose," Mahony said and finally took a sip of his whiskey. He's no connoisseur of spirits but just as with foods and drinks at the diner, it tasted nostalgic. Images of Milo taking him out for a celebratory dinner and drink after Mahony had gotten accepted to the university of his choice. He'd gotten a whiskey then, thinking that it's a grown-up sort of drink. It's that same night that Milo told him of his plans to see the world. It wasn't long before Mahony left for school and Milo left for his world tour. That memory led Mahony to wonder what it'd be like if he'd taken off just as Milo had. Would he end up here—murdered.

"So, who did you piss off to get yourself murdered?" Dorothy asked half in jest as Mona came by to serve Dorothy her third drink and the appetizer platter.

"That's just it. It's the most bizarre and unfathomable set of circumstances that got me here. Even now I don't see how I ended up here," Mahony said dejectedly, seeing how he'd tried again to fix the situation and failed.

"That's what we all say," Dorothy snorted.

"Hear me out." Mahony began recounting the events that led up to his death. One appetizer platter and another drink later Mahony concluded his tale.

"It's no wonder you ended up dead with a kitchen knife sticking out of your chest," Dorothy said after hearing Mahony's tale.

"What? You're siding with Lisa on this?" Mahony was incredulous.

"No, I'm not siding with a murderer. It's a matter of perspective," Dorothy said. "I mean, look at things from her perspective. You've got her by the short and curlies, and if the table was turned, what would she have done?"

"She was in the wrong to begin with, what possible need would I have to see things from a cheater's perspective?" Mahony said with no small amount of frustration.

"That's just it! Don't you see? That self-righteousness, that must grate on people," Dorothy said trying to sound light-hearted.

"But I wasn't being self-righteous. I really didn't care. This may sound callous but Lisa was inconsequential, I don't—" Mahony paused and let out a breath he'd been holding, "I don't care whether she lived or died, to be completely honest. I figured," Mahony sighed again, "Lisa didn't matter, her impact on the world only lasted twenty-five second at a time, at best."

Dorothy arched an eyebrow. "Twenty-five seconds ... I don't suppose it took that long to kill you?"

"It felt like it lasted a lifetime," Mahony said.

"Lisa mattered," Dorothy said. "Just not in the way you'd expected."

"Am I being lectured here?"

"I'm the last person that has the right to lecture anyone. I'm just saying," Dorothy said and signaled for another drink.

"What should I have done?" Mahony asked.

"If I have the answer, I don't think I'd be sitting here talking to you," Dorothy said. Seeing Mahony's dejected form, "Maybe there's nothing to be done but to move on. You're here, choose your next ride. Isn't it what everyone is here to do?"

Mahony blinked at Dorothy, he wanted to shout at the top of his lungs that he's got do overs, that he shouldn't be calling it quits just like that. Sure, things got tough but shouldn't this be the precise time to redouble the efforts to make it work? "Surely, if you're given the chance to fix things, wouldn't you?"

Dorothy cocked her head to one side, "Nah, I don't want to go through all that again."

"I don't believe you. There must be some point in your life that you realized afterwards if you'd another go, your life would turn out different," Mahony said.

"I suppose I do but I don't like to think about it, not anymore," Dorothy said.

Mahony was afraid to ask, "Dorothy, how long have you been here?"

"I don't really know," Dorothy finally said after some contemplation. "The perpetual night here made it difficult to keep track but I think time has no meaning here anyway." She played with her empty glass, after a while she started to speak, "Wizard of Oz, I should've read more into it."

"Wizard of Oz?" Mahony repeated, not sure where Dorothy was going with this. He knew Mrs. Mulholland was a devotee of the children's story, going so far as to name her daughter after the heroine. Mahony remembered visiting the Mulholland home and touches of Wizard of Oz could be seen throughout the house.

"Growing up I never could understand her obsession with the story," Dorothy said. "I remembered one time when I was really young, waking in the middle of the night to find her sitting up at the sofa flipping through the picture book version of the story, drinking, of course," Dorothy paused as she recalled the event. "I asked her what she was doing and in her drunken slur she said 'this is it right here, the challenges of life' as she pointed to the picture of the scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion."

"What does that mean?" Mahony asked.

"I was freaked out every time mom get like this. I always felt helpless and embarrassed. Besides at the time I was too young, all I knew to do was to let her be when she's drunk and not take anything she said or do seriously," Dorothy said.

Dorothy stared at her empty glass and wanted to resist the pull of alcohol but talking about her mother made the urge that much stronger. As Dorothy got older, she worked out that her mother would be called a high functioning alcoholic. Her mother would remain in a state of mild intoxication while going about her day like everyone else, cooking and cleaning even. The only thing Dorothy was grateful of was that the only thing her mother had never done while intoxicated was to get behind the wheel of a car. Dorothy was amazed that throughout all of her mother's years, her mother maintained enough presence of mind to never cross that line.

Dorothy signaled for another drink, giving in to the urge. "I didn't work out what mom meant about the scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion until after I got myself here," Dorothy continued. "I ran into this really smart guy. Smart like wisdom smart, he's got a common man philosophy for everything," Dorothy smiled as she recalled the man. "We got talking and the subject of Wizard of Oz came up when he learnt that my mom was a devotee and told me of his take on the three characters."

Suddenly very much into what this wisdom smart guy had to say, Mahony leaned closer to Dorothy, not wanting to miss a word.

Dorothy giggled at Mahony's eagerness. "It's nothing that serious or revolutionary, really. He went into quite a bit of background into his understanding of the meanings to the three characters. Most of it was beyond me, I couldn't remember much of it but the take away was that throughout life we're constantly faced with greed, emotions, and ignorance. We can't get away from it even if we'd tried. Every choice we made was influenced by them."

"Wait," Mahony put a hold on Dorothy's ramble, "let me work this out, are you saying that the tin man represents desire, the lion represents emotions, and the scarecrow for ignorance?"

"You're quick on the uptake," Dorothy smiled, whether she was happy Mahony caught onto the meanings or the arrival of her drink was beyond anyone to know except for Dorothy as she greedily sucked down her drink.

For Mahony, this revelation hit him harder than he'd ever expected. It sounded like fortune cookie philosophy but it spoke to him more than anything he had encountered in his life. He sat quietly thinking over the implications while Dorothy happily amalgamated with her drink.

Mahony thought about the situation he'd gotten himself into with Lisa and couldn't get passed the fact that he was ignorant of Lisa as a being, that he couldn't know everything there's to Lisa which led to him dealing with Lisa the way he did. Was it his fault that he didn't try to know more about Lisa, probably. But, even if he had taken the time, he wouldn't have known Lisa's motivations. He was sure even Lisa didn't know of her motivations other than the basest need for survival. Mahony also came to the realization that Lisa was operating under the same challenges, she was ignorant of Mahony's motivations; greed and emotions won in the end.

Thequestion now was the two coins Mahony's got left. He wondered if Lisa was worththe coins for him to go back and figure a way out of her wrath. Mahony sat atthe bar completely oblivious of his surroundings including Dorothy as hethought over his options. The harder he thought about the matter the less hefelt like wasting his time and energy on someone like Lisa. He supposed hecould wish Lisa away but he was not naïve enough to think that Lisa Donovan wasa singular phenomenon. There's no guarantee without Lisa Donovan there wouldn'tbe other 'Lisa Donovans' out there to take her place. Perhaps, Dorothy was rightagain, there's nothing worth going back for to fix. Maybe it's more efficientto move on to take next ride.