Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge (3 page)

With a bang that rattled the glasses on the shelves, Trina returned from her smoke break (decidedly
not
smelling of cigarettes, Bailey noted), and more people filtered out. By a half hour from closing, only a few customers remained. Zane sent Trina home early, leaving just him and Bailey to close up.

“That was fun,” he said, as if they’d just stepped off the best roller coaster ever.

Bailey looked at him sidelong, estimating whether sufficient distance separated her from his insanity.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “You didn’t have a fun night in the trenches?” He playfully dropped into a boxer’s crouch and swiped at the air.

“They didn’t box in the trenches,” she said. “They used long-range bombardment weapons. Can you mime a howitzer?”

“As soon as I learn what that is,” he said. “You’re telling me you don’t get anything out of the rush times? Not even a trickle of adrenaline?”

“Zane, adrenaline’s something your body makes to stop you from dying horribly.” She plunked down a martini glass, which he snatched right up and dried off. In tandem they worked with assembly-line efficiency. “And no,” she said, “it’s not fun. Jobs aren’t supposed to be. That’s why they’re jobs.”

“They’re not supposed to be, but that doesn’t mean they
can’t
be, right?”

Bailey grunted.

“Well, hey,” he said. “You wanna come out tonight? Me and some of the other bartenders around town like to stop in at Nero’s Griddle—you remember Nero’s, right?”

Bailey barely had time to nod.

“And you’ve gotta meet this buddy of mine who works down in Boystown, and, more important, my girlf—”

At that Bailey snapped to attention, but Zane was frowning at his phone. Whatever he was reading had snuffed out his smile.

“What is it?” she said, more curious about his trailed-off sentence than whatever was on his phone. Only one word started with
girlf
, and it wasn’t one she’d ever heard Zane use about himself.

“I have to go.” Zane crammed his phone back into his pocket. He looked serious, even grim, as if he were barely aware that Bailey was still there, and then reached for supplies: lime juice, triple sec, a bottle of tequila that he produced from under the counter.

“Hey!” Bailey cried. “We just cleaned those—”

“I need you to close up, Bailey.” Zane slapped the lid on his now-full shaker, which he started to shake with a weirdly exact rhythm, rattling the ice cubes against the metal sides in a seven-point beat.
He grabbed a margarita glass, dipped the rim in water, and then jammed it into the salt dish and twisted. He strained the contents of the shaker into the salt-rimmed glass, then dropped in one of the last remaining lime wedges. The lime bobbed a bit against the cubes, and in the low bar light, the glass seemed to be glowing green.

Zane snatched up the drink, took a few deep gulps, and squeezed his eyes against what looked like a brain freeze. “You know the drill,” he said. “Set the dishwasher, clean out the trays, and give the counters a good polish. The rest of it we can handle when we open tomorrow night. Just lock up when you’re done and get home safe, okay?”

Bailey frowned. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll do breakfast another midnight.”

“But—”

Zane was already vaulting over the bar and headed for the door. When he yanked it open, Bailey caught a glimpse of someone standing outside, an angular woman with dreadlocks. The moment the woman saw Zane, she took off running, and the two of them sped off into the night.

The doors swung shut again, leaving Bailey alone in the quiet, empty bar.

Confused, a little pissed off, and realizing it was too late to call Jess to pin down an interview, she slammed the dishwasher shut, rattling every glass and cup inside. She trudged back to the front to polish off the counter, seriously ready to call it a night. Starting at Zane’s end, she moved her rag in small circles, systematically eliminating any hint of grime or spillage. Everywhere her towel went, it stayed until the surface beneath was a varnished brown mirror.

As she made her way to Trina’s end, something caught her eye: a small hole in the space beneath the counter. As she approached, she realized it wasn’t just a hole; it was a gap between panels that looked like it could slide open. She pushed it wide open—it must
have been designed to stay flush with the wall when closed—and found a row of six small bottles: four clearish, two pale browny. All the elementary liquors—vodka, tequila, gin, rum (light and dark), and whiskey—and all with the same label—not Jack Daniel’s or Seagram’s or anything she recognized, but one with no name and a logo of two interlocked
C
s.

She reached for one, popped the cork, and took a sniff: vodka. The good stuff as far as she could tell. Her first instinct was to put it right back; after all, it was Nightshade inventory, and hidden in a secret compartment besides. Instead, she grabbed a spare glass, some ice, and the carton of orange juice in the mini-fridge under the sink. Zane had a strict no-drinking policy while on the job, but this hardly counted. And after tonight she’d fucking earned it.

Not ready yet
, she thought as the ice cracked under her measured shot of vodka. What was to be ready for?
Look at me now, Zane. I’m making a drink, and I’m managing
. Having filled the glass with orange juice, she stuck in a straw, gave it a quick stir, and replaced the bottle, shutting the secret compartment and promising herself she’d ask Zane or Trina tomorrow what the hell that was about. Then she turned and admired the fruit of her labors: a freshly made screwdriver.

The drink gleamed cheerfully on the counter, just as Zane’s margarita had. Bailey squinted upward. Maybe a bulb was out or one of the neon signs was leaking (could they leak?), making the tainted air cast everything in an extra-glittery glow. Whatever. Drinks were for drinking, not for gawking at, and so that’s exactly what Bailey did.

Bailey had had screwdrivers before. Usually they were slapdash concoctions, little more than orange juice and vodka splashed together inside a red Solo cup. But this one was no dorm room special; rather than clash, the vodka and orange juice harmonized. The drink was sweet and tangy and cold, and the liquid burned just the
right amount on the way down. Bailey had intended to take only small sips, but when she pulled the glass away from her lips, she was surprised to see she’d already downed half.

Well
, she thought as the delicious feeling spread from her stomach to her toes,
I’ll have to drink more screwdrivers
.

When she swung out the front door ten minutes later, she felt even warmer inside. Warm, but not tipsy or clumsy. Refreshed.
Curiously
refreshed. Probably the best she’d ever felt postshift. She jammed her key into the door to lock up like the dutiful employee she was. Except somehow she really jammed it because when she turned the key, it stuck. She’d completely bent it.

“Shit.”

Bailey stared at her hand, wondering how she’d manage to warp a solid piece of metal when she had trouble opening twist-off beers. Prepared to struggle, she dug in her heels and yanked, but the key came out so easily she stumbled backward. Stunned and a little woozy, she stared at the crooked key in her palm, then daintily took it in her fingertips and slowly, tentatively, bent it upward. The metal yielded to her hands. The key was utterly straight and good as new.

No harm done
, Bailey told herself. She dropped her keys into a jacket pocket and started to stroll home, wishing she knew how to whistle so she could complete the picture.

Ravenswood had been a rough little neighborhood on the North Side when her parents moved in, but gentrification set in during the twenty-odd years since. Now it felt like a suburb that had been swallowed, whole and unchewed, by a big city. Damen Avenue, where the Nightshade Lounge sat on the corner of Leland, was as business district-y as the neighborhood got, lined with closed-for-the-night shops, a few parked cars, and the occasional tree. In the distance a late-night Brown Line train trundled along its elevated track. Sunnyside Avenue, where she was headed and where she now lived—again—with her parents, was quiet, with squat houses set
behind small well-kept lawns and raised front porches. Everywhere, people hung up the city flag of Chicago—two blue stripes on white, with four red stars in the middle—as if city hall was afraid that people this far north would forget where they were living.

As Bailey turned onto Leland, she felt the hairs prick on the back of her neck. She wasn’t weird about walking by herself—this was her home turf after all, and she possessed an above-average amount of street smarts thanks to a mandatory girls-only session during orientation week called “Sisters Self-Defendin’ It for Ourselves.” But while Damen was the main drag, with streetlights and shop windows and potential witnesses, Leland was more secluded, especially after last call. Despite the warm September night, she shivered and quickened her pace, glancing over her shoulder.
No one’s there
, she told herself.
Just a few more blocks
.

But the more she walked, the more certain she was that she was hearing something: a skittering noise down the block, something rustling through the leaves on the ground. Bailey thought it was probably a rat or a raccoon, but then again, she wasn’t sure she knew this neighborhood anymore. Maybe there were muggers now. Vaguely recalling her instructor’s method for self-defendin’ it, Bailey whipped out her keys, brandishing them like tiny daggers between her knuckles.

“I can hear you,” she said a little shakily. “I know you’re there.”

Confidence lets your attacker know you’re not an easy target!
the instructor had told them.
Remember the acronym S-A-F-E: stay alert, announce, f
-something.

Shit, what was
F
? Focus? Well, she was trying to. Bailey pivoted but saw nothing distinct enough to focus on.

But she could
hear
it.

And then it came out of the darkness. Whatever was following her wasn’t just another hungover coed in gym shorts. It didn’t even look human: too low to the ground, eyes too yellow. Glowing yellow.

“Good boy,” Bailey said, keys held high. “Nice b—”

But it wasn’t a dog. It was something awful that she’d never seen before.

Before she could scream, something rammed into her, hard and dense, like a cannonball to the ribs. Her head smacked the pavement, her elbow skinned across asphalt. The not-a-dog was heavy on top of her: a horrible, squirming, four-legged
thing
the size of a German shepherd, with a head like a protruding tumor and limbs covered in naked ropes of salmon-colored muscle.

Bailey scrambled under it, the world spinning from alcohol and adrenaline. The thing was pawing at her with stubby feet and she couldn’t keep it off, couldn’t wrestle away, couldn’t escape.

Oh, God
, she thought.
I’m going to die
. Here, on the streets of Ravenswood, less than half a mile from where she’d grown up, less than half a block from where she’d just scrubbed a toilet.

No
, Bailey thought.
No. No
. The slimy weight on her chest was too heavy for her to draw breath for a scream, and the world was going fuzzy around her. God, no. This was how it ended, not with a bang but with a minimum-wage job and a heap of student debt. Bailey cringed, and with all her dizzied, nauseated might, she mustered up one stupid, single, and probably final thought:

Fuck. That. Shit.

And she kicked. Hard.

It worked. She pushed the thing away with the soles of her sneakers and, before she had time to think, sprang to her feet, closed her eyes, and threw the hardest punch of her life.

It was ugly and clumsy, and her fist hooked around the thing’s side instead of slamming it head-on. But her knuckles met flesh, and in a spray of black blood, its head caved in like a rotted pumpkin.

“Shit!” Bailey yelped, and leapt back. The remains of the animal-thing’s body splatted to the concrete. Smoke curled up from the edges of its limbs, as if it were a leaf catching fire, and the night
air filled with a thick chemical stench. Bailey coughed, shielding her eyes, and before she even had time to worry about how to scrape the nasty mess off the pavement, the thing’s body collapsed with an abrupt squelch.

Bailey jumped back from the puddle, out of the street, and glanced around wildly for something else: A pack? A flock? Another pair of yellow eyes? But she saw nothing. Just a quiet street and a fizzing pool of dead-smelling … something.

She clamped her bloodstained hands over her mouth and smothered a scream. The screwdriver roiled inside her. Her arms and legs shook like it was below freezing, and her heart squeezed painfully with every breath.

She wasn’t safe. She wasn’t safe, and she was going to be sick.

Terrified and trembling, Bailey did what she apparently did best: she fled back home.

THE DEVIL’S WATER DICTIONARY.
The Screwdriver

A drink to lend gravitas to the beginner bartender

1
. Fill a highball glass with ice
.

2
. Pour glass one-third full of vodka
.

3
. Fill remaining two-thirds of glass with orange juice
.

4
. Stir once and serve
.

T
he screwdriver is one of bartending’s most basic and useful cocktails. Though one cannot oversell the importance of a quick mind and a good heart in the life of a bartender, occasions arise when the best tonic is pure brawn. In this department, the screwdriver remains unmatched.

Bartenders favor this cocktail for myriad reasons. Its ingredients are few, cheap, and easily obtainable in all but the most remote places. It can be mixed quickly, in the event that one has been caught flat-footed while also being conveniently within arm’s reach of a fully stocked bar. And though the abilities granted by the proper preparation of other libations may require years of steady practice to master, drinkers of the screwdriver have found that hitting things very hard in the face until they die is rather straightforward.

V
ODKA
.

Unfortunately, records of vodka in the pre-Blackout era are sparse; however, its use is known to date back to at least the 1400s, when its existence was first attested in Polish court
documents. Vodka (diminutive of the Russian
voda
, “water”) was then—anecdotally—the only thing known to convince Slavic men to leave their homes in the dead of winter, let alone to hunt prowling tremens. Traditionally distilled from sugar-rich cereal grains or potatoes, vodka also found a secondary medicinal use as a restorative aqua vitae, its strengthening properties being mistaken for healing ones.

Post-Blackout, vodka found its way to American shores in the saddlebags of the Polish cavalier Casimir Pulaski, who encouraged its bibulation amongst the cavalrymen he trained to fight in the American Revolution. Though he expressly forbade its use in open battle, his horsemen would frequently be dispatched with rations of vodka to patrol the fringes of his encampments and root out lurking tremens.

O
RANGE
J
UICE
.

The logistical difficulty of producing mass quantities of orange juice sidelined its use for many years as a bartending curiosity and little else. It wasn’t until the mid-twentieth century and the advent of widespread refrigerated trucking systems that bartenders were able to incorporate it regularly into their repertoires. For best results, fresh-squeezed juice is recommended; if none is available, canned orange juice, with its higher vitamin C content, is preferable to standard grocery bottles or cartons. It is unknown who created this particular combination, but the name “screwdriver” was coined by Frederick Leeds, a Florida bartender who claimed that he used the drink to help him remove from his boat hitch a screw that had rusted into place.