by Saba Kapur
“That’s me!”
I thought I could hear a frustrated sigh coming through the earpiece, but I couldn’t be too sure. The bouncer took one last look at my beaver smile before handing me back the ID and ushering me inside silently.
With a deep breath and a few nerves, I entered the bar. Out of all the secret missions Jack and I had pulled off, I was enjoying this one the most. The Coco Club was a place I seriously regretted not discovering earlier. No drunken underaged kids pretending they had the maturity levels to be in a nightclub, no tacky disco lights and smoke machines, no seizure-causing club beats. The Coco Club oozed class, with its dark brown walls and reddish lighting. Across the left side of the room there was a long bar that spanned the entire room, with purple fluoro lights surrounding it. You could serve the whole of L.A. at that bar, and still have room for a New Yorker on the end.
The right side of the room was made up of luxury couches and perfectly square tables. There was a medium-sized dance floor among the furniture, but it didn’t seem to be in use much. People were too busy looking fancy and sipping martinis at the bar. By social standing, I definitely belonged in a place like this. But if they were letting people in based on personality, I’d be lucky to get into a Chuck E. Cheese.
“Are you in?” Jack’s voice came through the little earpiece in my ear, making me jump slightly.
“That’s what she said.”
“Really Gia? You really want to find your sense of humor now?”
“Okay, sorry. Yes, I’m here.”
“Good. Walk over to the bar and see if you can spot her.”
I nodded even though Jack couldn’t see me and obediently walked over to the bar, passing who I was about ninety percent sure was Lana Del Ray. It seemed a little inappropriate to stop her for a picture, especially if it wasn’t her. I slid into a glossy black bar stool and crossed my legs, flipping my blonde wig over my shoulder. There were cute guys everywhere. And if Milo wasn’t going to call me back then so be it. I was just going to have to find myself a new love interest.
“Do you see her?” Jack asked, and I inspected the bartenders carefully.
I was having a little trouble remembering what Claudia looked like, but I wasn’t about to tell Jack that. The last thing I needed was to be arguing into an earpiece with him, making myself look like the Ghost Whisperer in the process. The bartenders were mostly men, which helped me narrow it down to two girls, dressed exactly alike in short black skirts, white shirts, a black vest and perfectly aligned black bowties.
“What color hair does she have again?” I mumbled into the mic as subtly as I possible could.
“Brown.”
Bingo. Now that I had ruled out the blonde one I could work on getting Claudia’s attention.
“She’s on the other side of the bar,” I told Jack.
“Then move to that side.”
“Can I get you something?” A bartender asked me with electric blue eyes and a killer smile.
“Oh, no thanks. I’m not really drinking tonight.”
The moment the words left my mouth I wanted to slap myself. The bartender’s confused smile didn’t help.
“But you’re at a bar?” he said.
“I know,” I said, struggling to recover from the little blunder. “I meant I’ll need a minute to choose.”
The bartender gave me a light shrug before moving on to serve someone else and I sighed with frustration.
“You’re an idiot,” Jack’s voice came through the earpiece.
“Shut up! Oh, wait, she’s coming over to this side!” I exclaimed.
The man sitting on the barstool next to me raised his eyebrows. I gave him an awkward smile but he shuffled a little further away from me on his seat.
“Get her attention,” Jack instructed. “I’m coming in.”
“Excuse me!” I practically yelled, and Claudia and another bartender turned their attentions toward me. “Can I have a drink please?”
“Just a sec,” Claudia said, pouring amber liquid into a glass.
“I got it,” Her colleague told her.
“No, I’ll wait, thanks!” I told him, and both bartenders gave me a funny look.
Great. They probably thought I was hitting on Claudia, which I definitely wasn’t. But the man to my right had now decided it was probably safer for him to get up and move to a couch rather than sit next to the lesbian ghost whisperer. Smart decision. Claudia handed the glass she had filled to the person in front of her and walked over to me with a tired sigh.
“What can I get you?” She asked with a forced smile. She was clearly exhausted from the Saturday night madness, but knew she was getting paid to keep up good appearances.
“Um,” I racked my brains for an alcoholic beverage that would make me sound mature. “A Cosmo?”
“Sure.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jack exclaimed into the earpiece. “A Cosmo? You can’t handle a Cosmo, Gia. You can barely manage orange juice.”
“Shut. Up.” I hissed into my bra.
“Excuse me?” Claudia said, raising an eyebrow as she picked up a martini glass.
“Nothing!”
I smiled at her brightly and tightened my grip around my clutch. If I hurried, maybe I could escape through the back door and run all the way home before Jack noticed.
“Heads up,” Jack’s voice filled my ear, and I turned to the entrance, trying to act casual.
Jack walked into the bar and scanned the room, avoiding eye contact with me. I had seen him less than five minutes ago, but his stupid grey suit still floored me every time I looked at him. He looked like he belonged in a place like the Coco Club, and the smirk on his face told me he knew it. Women across the room were ogling him as if they were window shopping at Tiffany and Co., and I couldn’t blame them. Jack walked right past me, giving me a fleeting look of acknowledgement and a nod only I noticed as he chose a seat at the other end of the club. I was trying my hardest to be cool and casual, but instead I was one of the many women whose eyes were plastered on him
“We get some good ones,” I heard Claudia say.
I whipped my head back around to face her and glanced at the Cosmo she has placed in front of me.
“Sorry?”
“The guy in the grey suit?” She said, motioning toward Jack. “We get some really good looking guys in here.”
“Oh my God, I think Kate Bosworth is sitting a seat away from me,” Jack hushed voice said.
He sounded as excited as he had ever sounded, which wasn’t overwhelming, but still decent. I forced myself not to jump out of my seat and shout “WHERE?” There was no way I could compete with Kate Bosworth! It was the eyes. I had no hope.
“I’ve seen better,” I said with a fake smile on my face, making sure I spoke directly into the mic.
“I heard that,” came Jack’s reply.
“I don’t know,” Claudia said, taking a look at Jack who was sipping something that looked like whiskey. “He’s pretty amazing.”
I watched Jack smile and rolled my eyes. The last thing Jack needed was his ego boosted.
“I think I’m off men,” I told her semi-truthfully. All this drama with Milo and Jack was doing my head in.
A fifty-something man a few seats down smiled at Claudia and pointed to his empty wine glass. She nodded and returned the smile, reaching over to obtain his glass.
“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?” Claudia asked, refilling the man’s glass with more wine.
I pulled my drink toward me and ran my fingers up and down the stem of the martini glass. “They suck. They confuse your feelings and never call you back.”
“Oh, please,” Jack’s whisper came through the earpiece, and I forced myself not to shoot a glare in his direction.
“I’ve been there,” Claudia said, nodding at me with a small smile. She handed the wine glass back to the man
and leaned in to hear what he was saying to her.
“Get something good out of her,” Jack told me, and I watched him rise from the bar from the corner of my eye, and walk over to one of the couches further across the room.
I told him I’d try and watched her nod at whatever the man was saying to her. I took a sip of the Cosmo and felt it burn down my throat. “Oh my god!” I cried, spluttering. “What the hell is in this thing?”
“Keep your voice down!” Jack hissed. “People already think you’re crazy.”
I coughed some more, trying to regain some control over my esophagus, which felt like it was on fire. I pushed the drink away from me and shook my head. It was practically all vodka! No wonder Carrie Bradshaw never made good decisions. She was always drunk.
“How’s the drink?” Claudia asked me, placing a clear drink with a skewered olive through it in front of a woman who had taken the place of my previous companion, in the seat next to mine.
“It’s . . . uh, great,” I lied, broadening my fake smile. “So you said you’ve been there? With men, I mean. What happened?”
I knew I was being way perky and super stalker-esque. No one in L.A. cared about your life stories, especially in bars. All they wanted was a drink and to take you home for some sweet lovin’, depending on which bars you went to. But still, I hoped she just thought I was being friendly and not nosy.
“Oh, you know,” she said, pushing some of her wavy hair out of her face. She gave a noncommittal shrug. “The usual. Weirdos, cheaters, crazy boyfriend.”
“Crazy boyfriend, huh?” I said, nodding slowly, easing my way into the conversation. “So what happened there?”
“Good,” Jack said, and I diverted my gaze in his direction, reflexively. “Try to get as much as you can, but keep it casual.”
“Well,” Claudia said cautiously, and I turned back to her. “You know, nothing much. Things just didn’t work out.”
Okay, so she was clearly not the type who wore a “My Boyfriend is a Stalker” t-shirt and blurted her life story out to anyone who would listen. Admirable on any other occasion, but extremely inconvenient for me.
“I doubt it was worse than mine,” I told her, hoping to reduce the level of awkwardness. “He left me because he got some stupid acting job in Texas. Now he’s going to be a cowboy.”
“Nice to meet you,” I heard Jack’s voice through the earpiece, and my eyebrows knitted together in confusion. “I’m Jack.”
My eyes widened as I realized he was probably introducing himself to some girl sitting on the couch next to him. I couldn’t keep looking over at him; it would be too suspicious. But so help me, if Jack ended the night with Kate Bosworth’s number I was going to hit someone.
“That’s rough,” Claudia said, clearly unaware of the voices in my ear. “A cowboy? Wow.”
“So, was it worse than mine?” I asked her, contemplating yanking out the earpiece so I didn’t have to hear Jack make a move on someone else.
I had to wear an itchy wig, be Roxy, and interrogate the ex-girlfriend of my potential stalker, but Jack got to have an amazing night out and pick up all the girls he wanted! It was by no means a fair deal.
“I don’t know,” Claudia laughed. “A cowboy is kind of hard to beat!”
“No kidding, I love to surf!” Jack was saying.
Seriously? He was a New Yorker. New Yorker’s don’t surf. Who was he kidding? I commanded my brain to turn off whatever part was listening to Jack and focus on Claudia’s story.
“Uh, so what happened?” I repeated for the millionth time, dropping my smile and trying a more serious approach.
Claudia looked down the bar to ensure that no one was waiting for another round of drinks. But people had started to settle down and the madness seemed to have reduced. The bartenders could actually breathe and were gratefully taking rest breaks as they watched the customers nurse their drinks. She really had no excuse not to talk to me, but getting her to say the right thing was going to be a challenge.
“Well,” Claudia began, leaning in as if she was sharing some top-secret piece of gossip with me. “He used to work at this restaurant not far from here. The place was seriously creepy. I mean, it was set up like a hospital! How weird is that?” she asked, incredulously.
“Super weird.”
“It gets worse,” Claudia continued, and I leaned in closer to her. “We met at a friend’s party last year. The party was totally lame and he was kind of geek, not really my type at all. But he was sweet. I mean, everything kind of just worked.”
I sent a mental message to Jack saying, I hope you’re getting all of this. He wasn’t saying anything at all anymore, to me or Kate Bosworth, and I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.
“So then what?” I asked, urging her to continue.
“And then . . .” Claudia said. “It all went downhill the moment he got a salary raise at the restaurant.”
I looked at her with confusion. “Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked.
She smiled and said, “Not if you’re an average waiter who somehow gets a five-thousand dollar raise.”
“Wait, what?”
Claudia laughed in agreement, even though nothing was really funny. “I thought it was strange too. I mean, he was a waiter at some run-down restaurant in some dingy place. Nobody gets paid that much for that job! I work here and my pay is still crap!”
“So what did you do?” I asked. “Did you tell him you knew about the money?”
“Nope. I saw it in his bag one day when he came over. I thought he was acting a little jumpy that day, but then the money explained the behavior. But I didn’t say anything to him. He could have stolen it for all I know. I didn’t want to accuse him of anything without being sure.” Claudia shrugged, as if she was having a conversation in her head with herself.
“That’s insane!” I said.
“Tell me about it,” Claudia nodded. “Then he started working really late and naturally I assumed the worst and thought that he was cheating on me. I mean, the restaurant closes at eleven. What work could he have possibly been doing there until three in the morning?”
Alrighty then, that was super sketchy. Ao Jie Kai had clearly been getting up to no good.
“So was he cheating?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Claudia said. “To be honest, deep down, I knew that wasn’t it. It still didn’t explain the money, right?”
“Wow. That’s . . .” I failed to think of an appropriate way to describe the situation.
“Yeah,” Claudia said simply.
“So what happened next?”
Claudia shrugged and said, “I told him I had had enough. If he was going to lie to me, then he didn’t deserve me. He begged me not end things, but he refused to tell me what he was getting paid so much for. He just said something about the owner being in L.A. and offering him a kind of promotion.”
“A promotion? How does a waiter get promoted?” I asked, trying to fit all the pieces together with unsuccessful results.
“That’s what I said!” Claudia cried and threw her hands up in the air with frustration. “He told me to trust him, but I just couldn’t. It was all too odd for me. I just couldn’t deal with it anymore, so I told him it was over. He calls me all the time though. I never pick up, because I know he’ll just beg some more.”
We were both silent for a minute as I let that information sink in.
“Ask if she knows who the owner is,” Jack’s voice suddenly came through my earpiece.
“That’s a shame,” I said, sympathetically. “Ever find out who that weird owner was?”
Claudia shook her head. “Nope. And frankly I don’t care. That guy’s out of my life now; I’ve moved on. I’m trying to at least,” she replied with a sad smile.
I smiled back at her genuinely, when a man a few seats down called for another bou
rbon.
“Listen, it’ll be better soon. That guy’s gig in Texas probably won’t work out anyway,” she said with a kind smile. “Who knows, maybe you’ll end up with someone like that guy in the grey suit?”
“You never know,” I said, rising from my barstool. I tried my hardest to keep the excitement out of my voice. “I need to use the ladies’ room. All that liquid is really pressing on my bladder. Where is it?”
Claudia glanced at my basically untouched drink and pointed to the left side of the room. “Straight down ‘til the end, first door on the left.”
I thanked her and hurried across the room, eyeing Jack as I passed him. He nodded at me and began to rise from his chair. There was young woman in the bathroom when I entered, adding more mascara to her eyelashes. She smiled at me through the mirror when I walked in and I returned the smile as I locked myself in a stall.
“Jack,” I whispered as quietly as I could. “Hold on, there’s someone else in here.”
“Okay, I’m right outside,” Jack’s voice replied and I leaned against the bathroom stall.
After about thirty seconds I heard footsteps walk away, the bathroom door squeak open, and finally close quietly. It opened almost immediately after, more fiercely this time.
“Gia?” I heard Jack ask the empty room.
“Oh my gosh,” I sighed, swinging the stall door open and walking toward the sinks. “This just keeps getting better!”
Jack grinned and put a hand in the pocket of his suit. “I hear that a lot from women.”
“Could you not be a pig for like one second and listen to me, please?”
“Jeez, I’m listening. What?”
“Claudia’s story! It’s going to help us right?” I asked, leaning my back against the sinks.
Jack shrugged and said, “It’s definitely more than we had before tonight. At least now we know this AJ guy is definitely involved. Oh and by the way you are a terrible spy. You kept talking right into your bra. It looked so obvious!”
“Shut up! I was doing my best. You try having a microphone in the middle of your chest. Whatever, what do we do now?”
“I say we go home. I don’t think we can ask her any more questions without looking suspicious. I’m surprised she even went into that much detail.” Jack looked around the bathroom thoughtfully, as if distracted. “I’ve had some good memories in these places.”
