Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge (23 page)

Bailey was fairly certain hers was a generation removed from paint huffing (not to mention the term
necking
), but she didn’t dare interrupt.

“Your dad and I have been patient since you’ve been back,” her mom said. “And with all the frustrations you’ve faced, after how hard you’ve worked to avoid them, I can understand wanting to stay down.”

Her resolution to let her mom talk flew straight out the window. “I’m not staying—”

“You are, Bailey. And you’re capable of so much more.”

Bailey was silent. She couldn’t disagree. Not without telling the truth.

“Someone’s trying to give you a chance,” her mom said quietly. “Right now.” She closed the distance between them and laid a gentle arm around Bailey’s shoulders, which were drowned in an oversize Penn T-shirt. “Your dad and I worked hard, too. You did all the heavy lifting, but we still did everything we could to give you stable environment to grow up in. We made sure you never wanted for anything. We tried to keep you happy so you could focus on what mattered. Remember when you brought home that C-plus?”

“Ugh, yes.” A mistake that Bailey never dared repeat. “I spent the entire walk home mentally writing out my last will and testament.”

Her mom smiled. “Do you remember
why
your dad and I were upset, though?”

Bailey sifted through her memories of that evening; it was mostly a blur. Her mom had thrown around the word
unacceptable
at varying decibel levels. Her dad had mostly let his wife take the lead, instead hitting the other parental power button: muted disappointment.

“Because you knew I could do better,” Bailey finally said.

Her mom nodded. “We want you working in a nice, safe office, with people who have things in common with you. We don’t want you coming in drunk at five in the morning, wearing ripped clothes and smelling like garbage. There’s nothing wrong with working in a bar, or a shop, or a store. Those jobs are really important, and people need to do them. But you can do more. And you
want
to do more, remember?”

“I
am
doing more,” Bailey said. She couldn’t help it. “I’m doing a lot more than you know, okay?”

“What you are
doing
,” her mom said, perfectly calm, “is setting up a follow-up interview.”

She held out the phone, but Bailey didn’t take it.

“You’re setting up that interview,” her mom repeated, “or you’re looking for a new place to live.”

Bailey gaped at her. “Are you giving me an ultimatum?”

“I like to think of it as a push in the right direction,” her mom said. “The day you interview could be the day that changes your life. Now call.”

Twenty minutes later Bailey had a problem. Well, she had a few problems, but one of her problems was new, immediate, and more terrifying than a tremens: she had an interview in two hours, she wasn’t prepared, and she was fiercely hung over.

“Dammit.”

Bailey dropped her phone, rolled over in bed, and landed right on
The Devil’s Water Dictionary
stashed under her pillow, college style, for late-night cramming.

If only there was some kind of “ace your interview” cocktail
, she thought miserably.
Or at least “don’t completely fuck your interview up so you’ll still have a place to live.”
She fanned through the pages, half to procrastinate about picking out an outfit and half with a niggling spark of curiosity.

Bailey Chen had never cheated in her life. Not even after that C+, or when her valedictorian competition with Jess heated up to nuclear levels (at least in Bailey’s head), or when she’d arrived at a midterm and realized she’d studied for the wrong class. Cheating wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair.

But nothing about life right now was fair. Maybe cheating would even things out.

As if by magic, her book fell open to a perfect solution.

When the cab arrived, Bailey threw herself into the backseat and choked down a fistful of breath mints to hide the smell of bourbon on her breath. The flavor mixed unpleasantly with the cocktail’s citrusy aftertaste, but it was worth it. Unless Divinyl was even more casual than she thought, management wasn’t about to hire a new admin assistant who reeked of whiskey.

“Washington and Clark, please,” she said to the cabdriver. “Fast as you can.”

As she settled back on the smoke-scented leather, the familiar warmth of a cocktail crept into her system, but nothing else. A flame of worry sparked. Had she mixed it wrong?

Within three minutes she knew the answer.

A gold rush was made from bourbon, honey, and lemon juice; the result was telepathy. She’d know exactly what answers her interviewers were looking for the moment they asked a question. It wasn’t a “nail your interview” cocktail, but it was pretty damn close.

But the telepathy didn’t happen gradually. It was more like a light switch flicking on inside her skull. And it was
on
.

Thoughts hit her in snatches, like a radio tuner roving for a signal. With every passing car, new bursts of information assaulted her, all in different voices. She caught words and phrases, but also images, noises, songs in people’s heads, even phantom smells, some alluring, others decidedly not.

Bailey clamped her hands over her ears, regretting her decision. She’d never heard another voice inside her head, but now her mind was a public venue, and tickets had sold out almost instantly.

The driver noticed her discomfort in the rearview mirror. “You okay, miss?” he said. “I bring you home?” She shook her head. She
had to see this through.

The feeling only intensified farther downtown, where she absorbed the idle thoughts of commuters, tourists, and residents. By the time the cab pulled up to the curb, she felt as if a rowdy mosh pit was balanced atop her scalp.

Jess was waiting for her in the lobby. “Bailey,” she said, practically bouncing over, “so great to see you.” As Jess leaned in for a hug, thoughts wafted off her like perfume: fond memories of the avocado omelet she’d had for breakfast (which Bailey could taste on her own tongue). Flickering images of the other interviewees, though Bailey detected fewer traces of excitement for them. Not quite excitement. Something else, though she couldn’t peg what it was.

Then they hugged, and Bailey saw an instant mental image: she and Jess passionately making out.

“So I’ll just take you back to …” Jess’s voice trailed off as they broke apart. “Um, Bailey? Are you blushing?”

She was. But to be fair, it was a perfectly natural reaction after learning that a former schoolgirl nemesis was harboring a huge crush on her.

“Bailey?”

“I’m fine,” she said shakily, and a bit too quickly. “I just panicked about, um, leaving the stove on.”

Jess stared at her.

Bailey’s face burned like a fictitious stove. “But I didn’t.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Jess said. Feeling more waves of attraction, Bailey seized on the memory of the avocado omelet. Whatever other thoughts Jess had, Bailey stashed them behind the shield of breakfast foods. “So how about we head back to Bowie’s office then?”

As they walked, Bailey battled a war of feelings. On the one hand was guilt. Telepathy was more invasive than she’d ever dreamed. Just being in the same room together opened all of Jess’s deepest secrets, which were none of Bailey’s business. On the other hand, guilt
and flattery weren’t mutually exclusive.

Bailey was so busy combing her own memory for retroactive clues about Jess that it didn’t occur to her until they were almost at their destination to say, “Wait, did you say Bowie? As in Bowen Sorensen?”

“The Third,” Jess said airily. “Yeah, he’s gonna be your interviewer today.”

Bailey bit back a gasp. “Don’t you think you could’ve mentioned that?”

“Oh, don’t be nervous!” Jess squeezed her shoulder. “It’s not that big a deal.”

Bailey begged to differ. Admiring the beeper mogul cum tech billionaire from afar was altogether different from getting grilled by him in person. “Does he normally interview people for entry-level positions or—”

“When he’s in the office, totally,” said Jess. “You’re actually super lucky. He’ll
love
you.”

Bailey nodded. Her eyes were still on the bullpen, where workers sat, lay, biked, and posed in downward dog while hammering out lines of code and content. The clacking keyboards were music to her ears. All that typing for one purpose: to create, well, a digital construct meant to be laid over a preexisting audio file. It wasn’t quite the same as building a mai tai from scratch. And it wasn’t as if she’d ever see a customer’s satisfaction. But she’d also be a lot less likely to die on the job. An app was still
something
, wasn’t it?

Maybe
.

And I’d get to work in private
. It didn’t hit her until just then, how for the past few months she’d been working on display in front of a constant rotation of strangers. Here she’d enjoy relative anonymity. She’d be able to go to bars and not worry about inventory or check times or empty tip jars. She’d just walk in, sit down, order an old fashioned, and enjoy herself.

Bailey noticed they’d reached Sorensen’s office. It looked as if a genuine stone archway had been grafted to the wall. The sides were engraved with Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the door was heavy and wooden and overlaid in gold. Bailey stared.

“This is his office?”

“Yup,” Jess said.

“Is he embalmed?”

Jess laughed, and one of her thoughts darted into Bailey’s mind:
Was she always this fun?

Yes
, Bailey thought with indignation.
I’m tons of fun now. In fact I’m a little bit buzzed as we speak
.

“He’s expecting you,” Jess said. “Come on.”

The door scraped against the carpet, revealing an office lavishly decorated in the style of ancient Egypt. The carpet was burnt orange, plush enough that Bailey’s heels sank into it, and it was adorned with images of hieroglyphs, stylized eyes, and animal-headed people in profile. The desk looked to be carved from white granite. More Egyptian imagery was embossed into the front of it, and a sphinx-shaped paperweight held documents on top.

Bowen Sorensen III sat sandwiched between the desk and a spectacular view of downtown Chicago. He looked healthy and vital, and not in that fake country-club way rich people sometimes looked. His dark hair was like a Korean pop star’s—messy and long but carefully styled—and his groomed goatee made him resemble his own evil twin. He wore a dress shirt that probably had one too many buttons undone, but he was young enough to get away with it. When he looked her up and down, it was intense. Serious. He didn’t proffer a hand to shake.

Normally Bailey would’ve been intimidated, but her telepathy told her Sorensen just liked messing with people who didn’t know him well.

“Hi, Mr. Sor—Bowie,” Bailey said. And because the whiskey
seemed to think it was a good idea, she kept on talking. “So are we going to chat, or are you going to weigh my heart on a scale like Anubis?”

Sorensen’s grave facade cracked into a smile, and he clapped his hands. “Oh, I
like
you!” He nodded over her shoulder to Jess. “We’re good here.”

Bailey felt Jess’s pang of disappointment, and Jess’s thoughts betrayed exactly where her eyes lingered in the seconds before she left. Bailey tried not to blush.

She and Sorensen sat down at the same time and he laughed, deep, from his gut. “Can you
believe
that?” he said, gesturing at the space between them. “That’s crazy.”

She blinked. “What?”

“You know. You sat down, I sat down … at the same time. What’re the odds, right?”

Bailey prodded at his thought stream, thinking this was some kind of strange game he played to keep interviewees off balance. But to her surprise, he appeared to be engaged in no underlying cognitive activity. As far as she could tell, he was really saying whatever popped into his head.

She glanced at a pyramid-shaped clock on his desk. The cab ride had taken nearly twenty minutes, and another seven or so minutes had passed on her trip from the ground-floor lobby to his office. That gave her approximately thirty-three minutes before the gold rush wore off, which meant that she couldn’t go in for too much small talk. “Is that something I need to know to work in admin around here?”