Authors: Nicole Williams
“They’re different colors,” I said, hating how straight-laced I sounded.
He laughed as if he couldn’t figure me out. Rubbing his chin, he asked, “You know how to pour a shot?”
I hadn’t, but I was beginning to feel like he was teasing now. “I scored a 2200 on my SAT’s,” I said, crossing my arms and taking a step towards him. “I think I can figure it out.”
“And there’s that attitude again,” he said. “The customers are going to love you.”
Realizing too late I’d somehow conceded to his job offer, I tried to brainstorm some way I could back-track my way out of this one.
“When can you start?” he asked, turning to head back down the hall.
I could think of a few hundred jobs I’d rather do than bartend in this place for this guy—scrubbing toilets at a trucker stop was on that list—but knowing I was fighting for my life, as empty as it was, I answered, “Immediately.”
“Great. We open in a half hour. There’s a uniform for you in the ladies room. Marie had a little more junk in her trunk than you,” he said, surveying my backside before roaming up and forward. “Actually, she had a little more junk in the front too, but that’s what toilet paper and a push-up bra are for.”
I stifled my urge to reply with an insult of my own—something having to do with what the wonders a little lemon juice and sugar doused on a cotton-ball could do for his adult jaundice—and headed down the hall, wondering the whole way what I’d gotten myself into.
The woman’s restroom at the Rue St. Jersey was the kind of facility you didn’t want to touch a thing in unless you had a scrap of paper towel protecting your skin. It also smelt like what a bathroom should if it didn’t having working toilets, mixed with the heady scent of sex, accompanied by an undertone of cheap perfume. This was one of those instances where I wished my Immortality hadn’t given me heightened senses.
The uniform, or so it’d been called, looked more the garb of a stripper than a bartender, making me wonder just what kind of a joint I was employed at. Finding a bottle of Windex underneath the sink, I sprayed down the black leather pants—inside and out—having no other means to disinfect them from whatever could be growing within.
They stuck to my body like a plaster of paris mold, my lack of junk in the trunk comment aside. Other than the four-inch high clear mules (that I imagined lit-up when walked on) there was only one other item to complete the “uniform.”
For the life of me, I couldn’t comprehend how the swath of black stretchy material in my hands was meant to be a top. Having nothing to fit around the arms, shoulder, or neck, I suppose tube-top is what it could have been classified as, but its fabric—or lack thereof—made it more lingerie than anything else. Thankful for the white cami I had on under my military jacket, I slid the shred of fabric in place over it. Had it not been for the cami, it would have barely covered the area from the top to the bottom of my chest. Classy.
I tossed the stripper shoes in the garbage on my way out, having left on my scuffed-up black leather motorcycle boots. To heck with Rue St. Jersey and its owner; he could fire me as quickly as he’d hired me if he didn’t like it.
The music blasted into every space from its opening note, the bass vibrating my insides. Rounding the hallway off the women’s wash-slash-sex room, I found the bar—which had been empty less than a half hour ago—bursting with bodies, gyrating to the beat of the music that was a mish-mash of metal and rap.
I shook my head, not able to believe I’d travelled halfway around the world to end up in a place I could have found back home a mile away in any direction. I guess I’d hoped European guys would have enough self-control to restrain themselves from having clothed sex on the dance floor with any bleary-eyed girl willing to oblige. Here’s what I forgot; European or not, they were GUYS.
“Hey, California,” I heard a voice call across the room and, despite the ear-splitting music, I heard it with crystal precision. “Anytime your highness is ready,” he motioned to the herd of customers rammed up against the bar, waving their Euros.
I cut through the crowd, using a little more force than warranted, but made good time. I hoisted myself on the bar and slid over it, caught in the middle of thirsty customers and gallons of alcohol I couldn’t recognize by name or sight.
“It’s Bryn,” I said, eyeing him with warning as he was double fisting a couple of pints beneath the rivers of ale flowing from the kegs.
He smiled, shutting off the kegs with his forehead. “Does California Bryn have a last name?”
I didn’t think before answering. “Hayward.”
He dropped a couple of shots into the beers and tossed one back, handing the other to a customer in exchange for a wad of bills. He looked over at me, pointing with his eyes to the customers that were getting wilder in the eyes by the moment. “You’re lovely to look at, darling, but I’m not paying you to stand there and look pretty.” He grabbed a bottle from a shelf above him and tossed it to me. “I’m paying you to pour.”
He nodded to a couple of guys that looked like frat boys, but they had the largest wad of cash in their palms. “Get started.”
“What will it be?” I asked the frat boy closest to me, aware I’d probably just quoted a line from one of the old westerns my grandpa used to watch.
“A tequila, double,” he ordered, eyeing the top shelf.
I reached for the bottle he’d eyed, assuming he knew what he was ordering, and flipped over a glass that was smaller than a pint and larger than a shot glass, assuming it was a double shot glass. I hoped.
I poured the gold liquid into the glass, feeling like a pro by the time I’d finished. If this was all it took—following the orders of customers and pouring liquid into glasses—this whole job thing might work. Sure, the place defined seedy and the uniform was intended to show off every piece of female anatomy meant to be hidden, but the music was loud, the crowd louder, and the rainbow of hedonism muted my senses and made it temporarily difficult to think about a time when my life had been as perfect as it gets.
I handed the glass off to frat boy, the look in his eyes causing mine to look away.
Not knowing how much anything cost, I looked over at my bar-mate, spinning a couple of shot glasses between his fingers. “That one’s on the house,” he yelled over to me, answering my question.
“I guess it’s on the house,” I told frat boy. He leaned over the bar, motioning me closer. Wanting to be done with him, I leaned in, hoping he’d leave me alone so I could get onto the next customer.
He raised the hand filled with cash, grabbing the top of my cami and slamming me against the edge of the bar. “And this is on me,” he said, shoving the bills down the center of the scrap of fabric.
My training from Patrick had been so all-encompassing that I reacted without thinking. Before he released the money he was attempting to bury deeper, I grabbed his hand. It felt like a house-of-cards in my grip. I slid it up and out of my shirt, squeezing it in the process, hearing the same kinds of sounds my Rice Krispies made. Snap, crackle, pop.
The pain on his face was instant, followed by his mouth falling open, although no sound came out—at first.
“Don’t
touch
me,” I warned him, trying not to think about the last time a man had touched me and how it had been so different—tender . . . timid.
Frat boy’s vocal chords exploded, sending out a sound I imagined a dog would make after being hit by a car. I released his hand and he pulled it towards his chest, cradling it with his other hand.
“Why you holding your hand like it’s a little babydoll, Tony?” Mikey asked, handing off two filled shot glasses to a couple of girls plastered up against the counter, wearing tops similar to the one I was wearing, although their excess spilt out in a way that would have made me blush had I not been quivering from Tony’s hand snaking down my skin.
“My hand!” Tony screamed. “Mikey, she busted my hand up something fierce.”
Mikey laughed and after winking at his customers with the ample assets, he wiped his hands with a dishtowel. “Come on, ya sissy.” He tilted his head my direction. “She’s a girl. Stop acting like she just pounded your hand with a hammer.”
Beads of sweat were bursting from Tony’s skin, a pallid white blanketing his face.
“Oh, boy,” Mikey said, leaping over the counter. “I’ve seen that face before. He’s going down.”
The herd of customers circling Tony scattered just as Mikey got to him, breaking his fall. “Tracy!” Mikey called out to the newcomer who’d just crawled under the bar, wearing the same outfit I was, minus the boots and cami. “You’re late!”
“I’m here, ain’t I?” she called back, tying back her crimson hair into a knot, shouldering past me without making any kind of acknowledgement. “Quit busting my balls.” She grabbed a shot glass at the same time she reached for the bottle closest to her. Liquid overflowed the glass before she tossed it back, slamming down the glass and pouring another one.
“I gotta run Tony to emergency,” Mikey called back to her, not noticing or caring she was pouring her third shot—perhaps one of the employee perks he’d forgotten to mention, not that it was one I’d benefit from. “You got things here?”
The glass at her lips, she waved her hand dismissively at him, shooing him through the crowd. “Yeah, yeah. You can count on me.”
I watched Mikey hoist the comatose Tony over his shoulders and weave through the crowd packed into the hallway, the regret of my action sinking in. A simple hand smack could have sent the same message—leave me alone—why couldn’t I have settled for that? I tried to drown out the answer, not wanting to be reminded that there was destruction flowing in every molecule of my makeup.
“You taking Marie’s spot?” Tracy asked, crossing her arms in a way that led me to the conclusion her and Marie had been friends and she was not happy I’d slid into her spot.
I nodded, ignoring the hands waving around the counter, their voices charging up in volume. I crossed my arms too, trying to look tough, like I belonged in a pair of painted-on leather pants, serving whiskey to tourists, smack dab in heathen-central.
She smiled, shaking her head. “First night, poor thing.” She looked up, her eyes pointing at the first man she saw.
“Whiskey,” he called out, smacking a bill down on the counter. “One for me and one for you,” he smiled at her, leaving nothing to the imagination as to what was going through his.
Tracy flipped a couple of glasses on the counter, tilted a bottle on its side, pocketing the bill at the same time. She handed him his shot, clinking glasses before tipping them back. She slammed the glass down, grasped the man’s face with her hands, and locked her lips over his like he was headed off to sea for a year long deployment. Pushing him away a few seconds later, she turned to me, licking her lips. Pouring another shot, she tilted it my way. “Here’s to popping your cherry at the Rue St. Jersey.”
Had I still been Mortal, I would have been draped over the nearest chair, hoping death would find me before I had to work another night at this place. As it was, my head was throbbing, and not for the same reason the majority of the Rue St. Jersey’s patrons could claim.
The place had vibrated with music and been sucked dry of every drop of alcohol a little before five in the morning. When Tracy had told me we work until the alcohol runs dry, she’d meant it. Had I been asked to guess how long it would take to run out—after viewing the lines of kegs and rows of bottles we’d opened with—I would have said one month, maybe two. But alas, the Rue St. Jersey’s customers were thirsty and their pockets had been full.
“Ninety-one, ninety-two,” Tracy mumbled, sitting with legs spread on the counter with the tip jar’s contents blanketing her lower half.
“Almost one hundred dollars?” I asked. “That’s pretty good.” I finished wiping down the sink and tossed the rag to the side. Fifty dollars a piece, plus whatever hourly rate Mikey was paying me . . . not bad.
Tracy held up a finger while she counted two more bills. “Eight hundred and ninety-four.” She shoveled the money to the side. “Pretty good. I think the customers like the new girl.”
“Wait,” I said, gripping the counter. “Did you just say eight hundred and ninety-four Euros?” I felt my mouth drop open.
She nodded and lit the cigarette dangling between her lips. “That’s four hundred and forty-six, no . . . forty-seven a piece.” A smile curled up one side of her mouth. “And my eighth-grade teacher said I’d never amount to anything if it had anything to do with math.” She began counting out the bills into two separate piles. “Adding cash is completely different than adding beans.”
I still couldn’t believe I’d heard her right. If this was any indicator of the kind of money I’d be making on a nightly basis, I’d only have to subject myself to four or five nights a month in this place. My first stroke of luck in awhile.
“Closed so early?” Mikey erupted from the hall, motioning with both arms to the empty room.
“Sorry, bub,” Tracy replied, not looking up from the stashes of cash. “Looks like you’re going to need to up your booze order with the new girl in town. Didn’t have a moment of peace from the time I got here. Ran out a couple hours earlier than usual.”
“Shouldn’t there be three piles?” Mikey asked, leaning against the bar. “Don’t I get a share of that?”
Tracy humphed. “Do you see an ice skating rink anywhere around here?”
“You expecting an answer?” Mikey asked, righting a barstool with the tip of his shoe.
“Yes,” she snapped.
“No, then.”
“Exactly. Since hell hasn’t frozen over yet . . .”
Mikey snorted. “You’ve always had a way with words, Trace.”
“Bite me.”
“How is he?” I asked, diverting my attention to lifting another overturned stool. The passing of hours and the image of Tony’s face twisted in pain had shifted my anger to remorse.
“I ain’t seen anything like it,” he said, letting out a low whistle. “His hand looked like it was stuffed with pea gravel on the x-ray—every bone busted. They admitted him, not quite sure what to do yet.”
I felt sick. I’d turned the boy’s hand to pea gravel—as Mikey had so graphically described—all because he’d copped a feel.
Was no one safe around me? Would I have to sequester myself to a remote corner on the edge of the Milky Way?
“Don’t worry, you won’t get in any trouble,” Mikey said, mistaking the look on my face. “There’s no way Tony was going to confess to a girl busting him up. He told ‘em he punched a wall . . .”
He was covering for me; I somehow felt worse. “I’d like to cover his medical bills,” I said, knowing it was an inadequate gesture, but not knowing what else I could offer. So what if I had to work a few more nights this month?
Mikey waved his hand dismissively. “Already taken care of. Besides, I would have paid twice as much to see Tony get his butt whooped by a girl.”
“Here’s your share, California,” Tracy said, shoving the roll in my hand. “Go blow it all in one spot.”
“She will.”
“Always do,” Tracy snarled at Mikey, retrieving a trench coat from behind the bar. She slipped on the jacket before sliding off the leather pants and stowing them in a cupboard. She slid back into the four inch clear platforms and cinched the belt of her jacket.
“Time to head to your other night job?” Mikey asked as Tracy passed him, ramming jewel-crusted sunglasses over her eyes.
“You couldn’t afford me.”
“I couldn’t afford the bills from the therapy I’d need after.”
From the jesting in their voices, I would have guessed they were joking, but knowing Tracy had on a scarf of fabric covering her boobs and a pair of underwear—hopefully—under her jacket, I wondered if she really did have another night job. They didn’t call it the red light district for nothing.
“Good job tonight,” Mikey said, tilting his head at me. “I’ll see you tonight. Be here at seven.”
“I’ll be here,” I said, eager to escape from the stagnant air.
“Hayward,” Mikey called out as I was entering the hallway. “Who is he?”
I tensed, calling back, “Who’s who?”
“The boy that broke your heart.”
More tensing. “Excuse me?”
“You got the look of a girl who’s had her heart sliced out of her chest. Is that who you were looking for earlier?”
“No,” I lied. “There’s no one.”
I tip-toed down the hall, knowing Pierre—the fattest, baldest Frenchman in the country—was likely still dozing from the painkillers he liked to double-up on before going to bed . . . but then again, this was me we were talking about and UnLucky should have been my surname. I quickened my pace, checking over my shoulder to make sure the door didn’t open.
I hurried up the staircase, leaping over the fifth and sixth steps which were rotten away—from the looks of it, it had been decades ago—ignoring the wall running along the staircase decorated with packages of prophylactics thumb-tacked, nailed, stapled, and taped to it. My neighbors might have been shady and not passed a background check if one was required to live here, but at least they were generous and condoned safe sex.
I opened my door, never having worried about locking it because—let’s face it—I didn’t have anything worth stealing and I could hold my own if an intruder was crazy enough to enter a place like this looking for something valuable.
The door creaked, groaned, then screamed open. I wanted to curse at it for making such a racket, but I knew it would be the last audible response I’d be given for awhile, at least until my shift started tonight. I could feel the memories avalanching their way back into my mind, the noise, smells, and distractions of the Rue St. Jersey no longer present. I bee-lined for the air-mattress in the corner, hoping I’d be able to find sleep before the memories took me to a point where sleep was not attainable. I closed my eyes and began to hum, hoping it would occupy my mind just enough.
I shrugged out of my jacket, letting it fall to the floor.
“Enjoying the night life Paris has to offer?”
I spun around, striking a defensive stance.
A shadow stepped out of the darkness in the bathroom. “Miss Dawson.” He stepped into the light casting dawn into my room and bowed his head. I recognized him immediately. Hector—a council member serving with Charles, a country back and a lifetime ago. William told me he’d once been a great gladiator back in the Roman times and had he not been in the modern single-button suit, he looked just as I’d imagined a gladiator would. Short, stocky, cleft-chin, and eyes that had partaken in countless deaths.
“How did you find me? Why are you here?” I whispered, my panic making my voice come out in gasps. My thoughts took a dark turn. “Is William alright?”
He crossed his arms, resting his back on the wall behind him. “Charles found you, I simply got on the plane and cab to get here,” he said, eyeing my apartment like he wished he could have been anywhere but “here.” “I’m here to remind you of something,” he continued, counting off my questions on his fingers, before staring through me. “And I believe you lost your privilege of knowing how William is the day you walked away.”
His words penetrated my shell of anesthesia, stabbing my heart with a blunt knife. He was right, though. I’d lost the right to say his name aloud—let alone know how he was doing—the day I’d brought him a within a foot of death.
“Charles knows where I am?” I asked, looking out the window. I should have known he would, with his ability to locate any Immortal in the world, but the hate I’d seen in his eyes in the clearing had said he never cared to see me again, let alone keep tabs on me.
“Of course he does,” Hector answered. “Do you really think a Chancellor would let an Immortal who was capable of what you are—alone in the world—off his radar?”
It didn’t seem like he expected an answer from me, so I asked another question “What are you here to remind me of?”
There could be about a hundred things I suppose, but I wasn’t sure which one was the most offensive in their eyes at this juncture.
“You made quite a scene at that lovely place you are gainfully employed at.” He smiled, although it was not meant to be friendly.
“You heard about that already?” Twelve hours hadn’t passed yet. William had been right when he said Immortals were everywhere.
“Did you really assume we wouldn’t? Or that we’d do nothing?”
To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about it yet.
He continued as my silence dragged on, perhaps not interested in my responses or excuses “May I remind you that being on your own is a luxury we’ve turned a blind eye on? After everything that happened”—his eyes held the reminders of the past—“we felt it would be best for you to be on your own, but after your public display of bone-crushing strength”—he smiled, this one for real—“we felt the need to intervene.”
“It appears the Council’s idea of intervening is breaking into a woman’s apartment and scaring the dickens out of her.”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Consider your message delivered,” I said, trying not to think about the home he’d be returning to. “I know the importance of our anonymity. It won’t happen again.”
He studied me until he looked convinced. “One more thing. You’ll have to complete your strength training, as well as go through talent training.”
“How’s that going to happen when the Alliance I’m a member of is half a world away? Are you expecting me to move back?” I wasn’t trying to be difficult; I just didn’t understand.
“And leave all this?” His voice was sarcastic as his eyes circled my apartment.
I crossed my arms and smirked in response.
“No need to change your present address. Given your strength instructor just so happens to be a Teleporter, Patrick will be able to complete both phases of your training without causing too much inconvenience to either of you.”
Obviously he hadn’t heard about Patrick’s and my last conversation and how he’d said he never wanted to see me again. I don’t think Patrick could have been any more inconvenienced had he been blindfolded and had his arms tied behind his back for the rest of eternity.
“Our Alliance tends to be more laid-back and had you been any other Immortal on your own, we wouldn’t have insisted the training be completed. But given your powerful gift, we feel that training is of the highest priority.”
I cleared my throat, wanting to ask if there’d been any retaliation from John’s Alliance due to a member of ours—namely, ME—killing one of theirs. “When will I be starting back up?” I asked, trying to distract myself.
“Approximately one week,” he answered, looking chagrined. “Since Patrick is still not aware of this recent development, it may take a little coaxing and time before he’s ready to play teacher to you again.”
So Hector was aware of the biting words Patrick and I’d exchanged.
“But a week at the latest.” He pushed off the wall and headed towards the door.
“I’m sorry I’ve caused so much trouble for everyone,” I whispered, not sure why I was apologizing to him—someone I’d never spoken with before—just needing to apologize to someone. “I’m trying to be better—to not make such a mess of things.”
He stopped in the doorway, not turning back to me. “A good friend of mine once told me that trying was the opposite of doing. He told me this when faced with an impossible mission. One that would consume decades of his life, one that would set him against his family and friends, and one that would likely never result in his desired outcome.”
I looked off to the side, letting his words absorb.
“This friend, as if fighting fate itself, somehow managed to achieve his mission.” He turned his head back and I could feel his eyes penetrating into me. “Don’t try to be a better Immortal,
be
a better Immortal.”