Somebody please kill me now.
There was a painfully awkward beat of silence, and Leonides said, “I’ll go take a look,” as though I hadn’t just made a fool of myself in front of his bartender and his lunch crowd.
“Thanks,” I said in a small voice. As soon as I was sure he’d gone, I planted my elbows on the bar and hid my face in my hands.
Seconds dragged into minutes, and a soft clink in front of me drew me out of hiding. I looked up, confronted with a square china plate containing a golden-brown sphere with a toothpick through it. A drizzle of white sauce was slowly dripping down the side, and on top of that, a few drops of a red sauce. The smell of something deep-fried and vaguely Mediterranean made my mouth water.
“Any dietary restrictions?” The bartender asked.
“No,” I said blankly.
He gestured to the plate. “Then try that and tell me what you think.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“La Bomba,” he said, rather cryptically.
I frowned. “Like the song?”
He snorted. “Not even remotely. It’s a kind of tapa. Spanish bar food. Go on. Be honest. I’m trying to develop a new menu.”
Confronted with mouth-watering free food, I shrugged and picked up the golf ball sized sphere by the toothpick. My first bite was tentative, since I was unsure if the inside would be the same temperature as magma, or the interior of the sun. It was hot, but not burning hot.
I took a larger bite. Beneath the layer of crispy, golden breadcrumbs was a layer of creamy mashed potatoes, surrounding a center of savory ground beef. The white sauce was kind of like mayonnaise, but not, while the red sauce packed a surprising kick. I swallowed, and tried not to wolf the rest of it down like a starving dingo.
“Not bad,” I said when I was finished, giving my mouth a surreptitious wipe on the back of my hand. “Bit heavy on the garlic, though.”
The corners of the bartender’s eyes crinkled. “I know,” he said. “Inside joke.”
This time, I was at least aware enough of my surroundings to catch Leonides’ approach from the corner of my eye. My heart leapt—he was holding a very familiar looking pink phone case in his hand.
“Mystery solved,” he said. “It was jammed between the sofa cushions.”
My purveyor of deep-fried meat and potatoes suddenly seemed to find the top of the bar utterly fascinating, and I realized he must think we’d been doing more than just chatting on the sofa. I cleared my throat and tried not to blush again. After all, if Leonides had been most other men, we probably would have been doing more.
Plus, the embarrassed bartender had fed me, so I figured he’d earned a few brownie points.
“Thanks. It must’ve fallen out of my purse,” I muttered, accepting the ancient piece of technology and pressing the power button. It was out of charge—no real surprise there.
“Do you have five minutes for a quick chat?” Leonides asked, looking at me with the air of someone who’d come to a decision.
I’d been seconds away from thanking the bartender for the food and making a run for it, but something about his tone pricked my curiosity. He sounded reluctant, but also... resigned? I wasn’t sure what the two of us really had to talk about at this point, but I glanced at the clock above the bar.
“Um... yes? Not much more than that, though.”
He tipped his head toward one of the many empty tables, far enough away from the patrons that our conversation wouldn’t be overheard. I followed him, my fingers lifting to rub at the garnet pendant tucked beneath my shirt—an unconscious gesture I’d picked up over the years when I was feeling stressed or nervous.
At his invitation, I sat, wondering what on earth this could be about. I hadn’t pegged him as the type to push, but I swore to myself that if the word ‘orgasm’ came out of his mouth, I was gone like the wind.
“One of my bartenders quit last week,” he said without preamble. “If you want the position, it’s yours.”
I gaped at him. “I... what now?”
He didn’t backtrack. “With tips, it should provide as much or a bit more than escort work, assuming last night was billed at your usual rates. You’ll still have to deal with a bunch of lonely assholes, of course—but at least you wouldn’t have to sleep with them afterward.”
My mind struggled to reboot, since people didn’t just randomly offer you decent-paying jobs out of the blue like this. “Um... can I have a day to think about it?”
“Sure,” he said. “But don’t take too long. I see a lot of women get into sex work, Morgan. I don’t see so many get out again unscathed.”
“My name’s actually Vonnie,” I said. “Well, I mean, it’s Morgan, too. Vonnie Morgan. I guess if I might be working for you, I can’t exactly put Morgan LeFleur on the W-4.”
“Nice to meet you, Vonnie,” he said, a bit dryly. “Now, I don’t want to keep you, and I have some things that require my attention this afternoon as well. Let me know what you decide.”
“Okay,” I said, still reeling.
Leonides excused himself and left. After a minute or two, I pushed the chair back and made my way back to the bar. Blue Fauxhawk looked up from the drink he was mixing, a question in his eyes.
“Your boss just offered me a job like yours,” I said. “Should I take it?”
He looked interested at that.
“Well,” he said. “I mean... bartending’s kind of a weird gig, really. The money’s great—even better when you’re an attractive woman, or so I hear. It’s not all roses, though. In fact, if you’re not careful, a place like this can suck the life right out of you.”
I latched onto the first part of what he’d said. The money’s great. Oh my god—could this actually be my ticket out of the mess I was in?
“I dunno,” I told my maybe-future-coworker. “The jobs I’ve got now are both pretty high on the sucking scale.”
He gave a shrug. “You’d be surprised,” he said, before turning away to deal with an arriving customer.
FIVE
JACE WATCHED ME pacing back and forth in the cramped confines of the living room. “Do you even know the first thing about mixing drinks, though?” he asked.
I made a careless gesture with one hand. “I was great at high school chemistry. I mean—how hard can it be?”
It had taken a grand total of one hour at my retail shift that afternoon before I made my decision. The two middle-aged women who’d apparently thought that yelling abuse at a random clerk would magically change the store’s return policy might have helped things along a bit, but they hadn’t ultimately been the deciding factor.
Guillermo had.
“You’re not cut out for this life, I don’t think,” he’d told me a week ago. “It’s different from the phone sex stuff. Be sure about this road before you go down it, Vonnie.”
I’d been sure, all right—but only in the sense of knowing that things were going to start hitting the fan in a very scary way if I didn’t find something to bring in some more money, and fast. But if there was a realistic alternative—
Let’s just say that the minute my phone had enough charge to power up, I’d been searching the web for information on average salary and tips for bartenders at high-end nightclubs. The numbers were... impressive.
Of course, all of the sites had been quick to point out that tips were unpredictable and not all bartenders were raking it in. But I held an extra card up my sleeve. True—the little tricks and flourishes associated with the actual craft of bartending took time to learn. However, the other way to pull great tips behind the bar had more to do with people skills than alcohol skills—and if eight months as a phone sex operator had taught me anything, it was how to draw people out and become exactly what they needed, if only for half an hour.
The best bartenders were actually unlicensed therapists... but so were the best adult voice entertainers. I knew how to make a guy I’d never met open up to me over the phone about the most intimate conceivable topics. So I
was willing to bet I could do the same thing face-to-face for people looking to unload their everyday problems on a sympathetic ear.
I totally had this.
“I’m doing it,” I said. “It’s too good an opportunity to pass up.”
Jace shrugged his agreement, trusting me to make the best decision for us. As far as he knew, I’d been picking up evening hours at a call center for the past several months. Which was... sort of true? Regardless, it would be a huge relief to have one less thing to hide from him.
I felt awful every time I made up some half-truth or evasion about my whereabouts, or about our finances... or about his father. But Jace deserved the freedom to just be a kid. He didn’t need to know that his dad had financed his last head-in-the-clouds scheme with dirty money, or that scary guys were making threats against Richard—and by extension, against me—if we didn’t keep up with the payments.
He sure as heck didn’t need to know what his mom had been doing for extra money at night.
“I wish you didn’t still have to work nights and weekends, though,” he said.
A maternal pang of guilt shot through my chest. Jace’s childhood was slipping away from me, and it had been for a while now.
“I know,” I agreed with genuine regret. “Me, too. But the crowds are biggest then, and that means more drinks and more tips.”
His deep-set eyes—so like his father’s—flicked down and to the side. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Maybe next year I can get a part time job after school, so I can help out more.”
My throat tightened. “Not unless you really want to, babe,” I told him. “Right now, your only job is to do well in school and be a kid. Money stuff is my problem, not yours.”
He looked up, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Oh, that’s my only job, huh? So I guess that means I don’t need to put the dishes away anymore, or do the vacuuming on alternate Saturdays?”
I cuffed him playfully on the side of the head, my mood lifting. “Nice try... but not a chance, brat.”
Once he headed off to do his homework and settle in for an hour or two of gaming before bed, I grabbed my phone and dialed The Vixen’s Den. It was time to let the owner know I was giving notice at my current jobs, and would be available to start tending bar in no more than two weeks.
I could feel the weight on my shoulders lightening as I contemplated a future without sex work—and eventually, without Richard’s stupid debt hanging over our heads. This plan was going to be a huge success; I just knew it.
* * *
This plan was a total failure, and I was an idiot.
“Try again,” Len said patiently, tossing out my previous attempt at a White Russian. His blue hair shone beneath the club’s subdued lighting.
“Are Gray Russians a thing?” I muttered. “Because Gray Russians should totally be a thing.”
He clunked a fresh glass down in front of me. “As a matter of fact, they are. But for one thing, they’re not on the drinks menu here, and for another, that’s not how you make one.”
I sighed, and reached for the vodka and Kahlua. The good news was, it had only taken me about an hour to pass the online ‘State of Missouri Alcohol Responsibility Training’ course, since Missouri was a hillbilly state that didn’t require any kind of an actual license to become a bartender and serve people alcohol. I now knew how to check an ID, how to tell if someone was too sozzled to serve, and how much trouble I’d be in if I accidentally gave alcohol to a minor.
The bad news was, there were a lot of mixed drinks in the world. As someone whose palate had never progressed much beyond the local offerings of Anheuser-Busch, it was all a bit eye opening, really.
This time, the layer of cream in the glass remained moderately layer-like, and I sighed in relief.
Len nodded. “There you go. Much as I hate to say it, Google is your friend until you learn the ropes. Just don’t let the customers see you searching for drink recipes. For now, though, you’ll be starting out as a barback. That way you can get a feel for the logistics during a shift without also having to worry about things on the customer end.”
I tried to bury my nervousness. Barbacks were responsible for keeping the bar stocked with booze, garnishes, and other ingredients, as well as doing other odd jobs to keep the bartender from getting bogged down during a busy shift. It was, frankly, the only way I was going to avoid falling on my face in front of the customers, because it had quickly become obvious that I had no idea what the hell I was doing.
There was, however, a pretty big and obvious problem.
“So... no contact with customers means no tips, right?” I asked, tentative.
Because no tips meant no hefty paycheck, and no hefty paycheck meant scary dudes who wanted money making my life even more miserable than it already was.
There were days when I legitimately hated Richard’s guts. Lately, there had been quite a few of those days. This was quickly turning into another one.
But Len shook his head. “Nah, there’s a tip pool for barbacks. It’s not an even split with the bartender by any means, but it makes for a livable wage. And I expect in your case, it will only be for a couple of weeks, anyway.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked—mostly to distract myself from the sinking feeling in my stomach.
Len raised an eyebrow, and metal piercings glinted. “The boss likes you. I’m guessing you’re a hard-luck case like most of the rest of us here, but usually when he hires a hard-luck case, it’s for a job they’re actually qualified for.” The eyebrow lowered. “Er... no offense.”
It stung, but only because it was true.
“And you’re a ‘hard-luck case’ too, are you?” I asked.
He dropped eye contact, and his gaze turned rueful. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “The hardest.”
If I pressed for details, it would be unspoken permission for him to press back for details about my life that I wasn’t ready to give. Rather than take the chance, I turned the conversation toward practical matters again. “So, I take it I’ll be, uh, barbacking for you tonight? Is that a word?”
He huffed softly. “If it wasn’t before, I guess it is now. But, no. These days, I’m trying to resurrect the kitchen in this place and prove there’s a market for high-end bar food at this high-end club. You’ll be supporting Kat. She can show you the ropes better anyway; she’s been doing it longer.”
I remembered the ball of fried mashed potatoes and beef he’d thrust on me the day I’d shown up looking for my phone, and mustered a smile. “Well, if all of your bar food is as good as what you fed me last week, I’m sure it’ll be a hit,” I told him.
A bit of color touched his pale cheekbones, and a crooked grin tugged at one side of his mouth. “Hope so,” he said. “It’d make me feel like a bit less of a waste of space at this place, at least.”
It was good to remind myself that other people had problems, too. I wasn’t unique in my ability to screw up my life six ways from Sunday. With a deep breath, I reminded myself that things could be worse. I still had shifts at Barton’s over the next nine days, so I’d be getting a paycheck for that. I’d decided to give my two weeks’ notice on the retail job up front, but since the schedules didn’t overlap, there was no reason not to start at the Den while I was still picking up a few hours there, as well.
The only bridge I’d truly burned was with Guillermo, and thankfully he’d taken it well enough—merely shaking his head at me and muttering, “Didn’t I tell you so, carina?”
Whatever money this gig, combined with Barton’s, managed to bring in, I’d have to make it work for a few more weeks. I’d been dodging the creeps who held Richard’s loan off and on for months now. I could do it for a bit longer.
“Hey,” I reminded Len. “Don’t talk like that. You’re not the one who can barely make a White Russian. I have one final question, though—as an employee, do I get a bar food discount?”
Len snorted. “Let’s put it this way. If the tapas don’t sell, you can help me eat the
evidence after closing time.”
“Deal,” I said, and stuck out my hand to shake on it.
* * *
Kat—the bartender I was working with—turned out to be a rail-thin black woman with braids that were dark at the tips and nearly completely silver closer to her scalp. There was no way she was more than thirty-five years old, so I wasn’t sure if it was a case of premature graying or a deliberate fashion choice. Either way, it was gorgeous.
Fortunately for me during my first days at the Den, she was also a complete sweetheart. She could’ve dumped me straight in the deep end and let me flounder, but instead she was constantly giving me tips about the best way to organize my workflow and keep various drink recipes straight in my head.
I covered a smile as I listened to her humming along with the singer of the blues quartet crooning away on the stage. There was a temporary lull in the drink orders, as most of the patrons were also entranced by the music. I’d caught a glimpse earlier of Leonides making his way casually through the crowd—surveying his domain.
“How long have you been doing this, anyway?” I asked Kat, after prepping the latest round of garnishes for her station.
She looked away from the musicians, giving me her full attention. “’Bout six months or so. I came on board when the boss opened this place.” Her normally expressive face went carefully neutral. “I needed to get out of a bad situation. He helped me do it.”
I was beginning to sense a pattern here. While I did my best not to actively seek out gossip, I’d still heard some. Len was fresh out of rehab. Two of the dishwashers had been in a street gang. One of the wait staff had lost her kid to leukemia and had to declare bankruptcy because of the medical bills.
Apparently, I’d wandered into Leonides’ Home for Neglected Strays, and I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.
“I can relate,” I said, hoping for a future where I could look back on this part of my life from firmer footing.
A man in business attire pushed through the crowd to the bar. “Two Jack and Cokes, and a bourbon on the rocks,” he said.
Vampire Bound: Book One Page 4
