by Gabi Moore
Aurora swallowed hard and nodded her head quickly.
He smiled, perfectly white teeth against his dark skin. “Excellent. Now, I think I’d better get a move on. I’d hate to use up any more of your time with my poking around.”
And he let himself out of the lingerie section, back out onto the floor. Kylie showed him out with a purring farewell, and then the elevator door closed, and she turned to Aurora.
“How mean!” she complained, joking. “You kept him all to yourself.”
“What was happening back there?”
“Did he try to put on the moves, Aurora?”
“No, that’s ridiculous. Besides, you were listening in, anyway, I don’t know why you’re bothering to ask.” Aurora hustled back behind the counter to busy herself with the appointment book. And to slip the card out of sight.
Chapter 3
The next three hours blurred past. If Moreau had been well and present, Aurora surely would have been at least reprimanded, if not fired for dazing off. But the stranger, supposedly Mr. Fredericks, stayed in her mind consistently. In the end, Aurora backed off and let the other girls handle the afternoon’s customers. She was sure to bungle it up, with her thoughts drifting out the window every few seconds.
This wasn’t lost on her co-workers, who teased her lightly. It was rare that Aurora lost focus, Aurora who usually kept her head level, Aurora who never flirted with even the most eligible shopper. Madison in particular seemed to find it hilarious; she’d worked here with Aurora the longest, and knew how long her history of detachment stretched back.
And then, when the other girls weren’t looking, there was Aurora’s constant flipping through the orders book, where she had stashed Mr. Fredericks’ card. It was still there, still real.
And what are you going to do with that? she wondered to herself. Was she going to call up the rich married man and set a date? A date to squeeze in between this job and the next? Was she going to show up in a twenty-five dollar dress and well-worn heels? Or maybe bring him home to meet her recluse mother at their cubby-hole apartment?
She couldn’t call him back, Aurora knew that for certain by the time four o’clock arrived. It was a disappointment. It really was. She’d forgotten for a minute how limited her options, her very life, was, and it had felt wonderful and free. But the reality was that she wasn’t going anywhere with a rich guy like that.
Aurora kept the card, anyway. Not to use. Just to look at, and remember a moment where she’d forgotten all her responsibilities and been a normal twenty-three-year-old. One that had time for dates, and for whom the future was a blank page.
The girls closed up shop and changed back into their street clothes, back into normal working women with too little sleep and not enough money. They filed out, Aurora last, carrying the order book with her; she had to stop by one more place before she was done for the day.
Bundled back into her many layers, Aurora set off into the growing dusk, darkness that fell early between the city streets. She stopped at a Chinese place that sat between Moreau’s and the train station. Their eggrolls were divine, and on days when she worked both jobs, it was comforting to at least have this little bit of reprieve on her way from here to there.
Then it was on to the subway, to take the five o’clock train to Mr. Cheng’s.
Their story had never been made completely clear to Aurora. How rich French actress-turned-designer had ever met a humble, friendly old Chinese shopkeeper was difficult to explain in full. It sounded like an excellent story, but Aurora had never asked. All she knew was that when Moreau’s customers needed an alteration or a repair, the garment was taken to Cheng’s, and he fixed it. Simple as that.
Somehow, Moreau had helped him immigrate from China, that much was sure. His warehouse was set up in the next burrow, less high-end than Moreau’s and the other boutiques like it. Aurora had to admit she felt more at home here than among the well-to-do, but she still clutched her purse tightly on the way from the train to Mr. Cheng’s front door.
She let herself in; this was a part of the work day that she was familiar with. Madame Moreau had often had her take the orders to Cheng, and the routine never changed. She’d find him on the floor with his employees, probably helping someone with a seam or a button or a hem. He was short and old and extremely kind, and when he looked up and saw Aurora descending the small flight of steps into the warehouse, he smiled hugely.
“Oh! Aurora!” he called, handing the trousers he’d been picking at back to the woman next to him, sitting with several others under a set of bright lights. “You have today’s repairs?”
“Yes, right here, Mr. Cheng,” Aurora smiled as she answered, unable to help herself. He had such a good nature, and such an infectious smile. She pulled the orders out of her purse, careful to take the business card out and stash it in her pocket before handing the book over.
“Is so cold, today, no? You should wear hat, too cold for your ears,” he chattered as he looked over today’s notes. Aurora grinned, but didn’t bother pointing out that he himself only wore plain jeans and a button-up shirt, despite his warnings of the weather.
“I’ll be fine. Thank you, though. It is very cold, but hopefully not for too much longer.” She shouted just a little; Mr. Cheng was hard of hearing.
“Hopefully,” Mr. Cheng replied. He was looking over the book. His hands turned the pages precisely, wrinkled and spotted with age. Still, he was as sharp as ever with a needle and thread.
Aurora was about to ask how he’d been, but he was off all on his own, darting into the back to fetch the finished tailorings. She didn’t have to wait long; he might have had them already set out and ready, for how fast he returned with them.
“Great, great,” she nodded as she thumbed through the fabric, comparing them with the original orders made. “These look perfect, Mr. Cheng. The truck will be here in the morning to get them. Thank you so much.”
“No problem, no problem,” he insisted, grinning. “Always happy to help Madame Moreau.”
Aurora hesitated. “Have you… have you heard about what happened?”
Mr. Cheng’s smile dimmed. “No. Something happen?”
“Mr. Cheng, Madame Moreau is in the hospital,” Aurora explained gently. “I think she had a—a heart attack, or something. She was awake when she left in the ambulance, just very weak.”
Mr. Cheng was very still. “She in hospital now?”
“Yes… I can give you the hospital and her room number, I called about an hour ago—”
“This bad…” Mr. Cheng murmured to himself. “This—this very bad!”
Trying to calm him, Aurora set a hand on his arm. “Hey! It’s going to be okay! The doctors are taking care of her. She’ll be back to normal in a couple days—”
He snapped his head towards her suddenly, so suddenly that Aurora cut off her sentence in surprise. Mr. Cheng’s smile was gone now. He looked serious, more gravely serious than Aurora had ever seen.
“You—go home. Go home, now!”
“Home? I can’t—I have another job—”
“Doesn’t matter!” Mr. Cheng ushered her towards the door. He dug through his pants pocket and pulled out a roll of bills; he crumpled a fifty into Aurora’s hand. “Take taxi. Get home, right away. Not safe. I can’t explain now, but please—go home.”
Aurora stood in the doorway, staring at him, as Mr. Cheng opened the outer door to the drawing night and let in a blast of icy wind. He’d never been anything other than friendly and passive to the world’s troubles. It seemed out of place, completely out of place, that he should be so upset now. Aurora knew that he was close to Mme. Moreau, but what was this about ‘not safe’?
She tried again, calmly, willing him to listen. “Mr. Cheng, please… could you tell me—”
“No!” he cried suddenly. “Not now! Now—go home! Go!”
And he shut the door in her face.
Stunned, Aurora stood rooted to the spot. She was shivering. Her nerves were on edge
. It had already been a long day, and here she had this, now. Maybe it was Mme. Moreau’s episode, or Mr. Cheng’s unusual behavior, but mechanically Aurora walked to the street and hailed a taxi. She rarely rode anywhere in a taxi—too expensive. But she gave the cabby her address numbly, and watched Mr. Cheng’s factory slip away in the back window.
But after a few minutes’ drive, the shock wore off a little, and she was able to think. Mr. Cheng was obviously upset; Mme. Moreau was one of his oldest friends in this country. They’d been working together for decades. Of course his reaction to her illness would be extreme. Maybe he had some sort of superstition about this sort of thing. Who knew?
The years of hard work and showing up day after day, no matter how sick or upset she may be, reminded Aurora that the warnings of a possibly-confused old man were no reason to miss work. Chip didn’t accept call ins for Friday night. With Moreau in the hospital, Aurora’s future at the boutique was uncertain—she couldn’t afford to lose her other job, as well.
“Sir? I’m sorry, but I need to change the destination…”
Chapter 4
“You’re late, Potier!”
“You’re lucky I got here at all. Traffic was a disaster.” That was the God’s honest truth; Aurora had changed her destination with the driver, only to get caught in a jam for twenty minutes. Only Mr. Cheng’s fifty had kept her from stepping out of the cab and walking the whole way. She had hoped she might have a little left over, but that was a forlorn hope.
“Your shift started at 8, Aurora,” Chip reminded her, crossing his arms. He was standing by the door in the locker room, watching her change—not really a problem, since he was about as gay as it got. Tonight, in neon-orange fishnet and leather pants, he was dressed and ready for the weekend rush.
Aurora only worked four days a week at Chip’s bar, Witching Hour. When she first started, she worked seven, but in recent months she’d whittled down her schedule to the most lucrative nights, Thursday through Sunday. Whoopee.
Chip himself wasn’t terrible, but he was a hard-ass on his employees. To be fair, his other girls were used to working as slummy waitresses and strippers—it was fair to say that Aurora had the best work ethic, but he didn’t keep his staff under control by being nice. He was thirty-something and good-looking, but to run a bar in New York you had to have some of the street attitude going for you.
“Look, my other boss had a medical emergency,” Aurora explained, pulling off her own clothes. Her work uniform for Witching Hour was in the chute—the laundry chute, that is. Leather and metal accessories were tough to clean, so Chip deducted laundering from their paycheck and too k care of it himself. He’d been going to the same dry cleaners for leather and other… specialty materials… long before he bought the bar.
Chip rolled his blue eyes. “Save me the story.”
“I’m the senior employee there. I had to see to it that the orders were finished up in time.”
“Why didn’t you call to tell me?”
“I told you! I didn’t expect the traffic!” Aurora dug through the chute, dressed in only her bra and panties. She paused. “Well? I need to know, Chip. What’s it going to be? Am I hosting tonight? Or do I need to find another job?”
Aurora tried to hide her nerves. This was a bluff, but she didn’t usually test Chip’s patience, so she felt like she had some slack to pull on. He’d fired girls for being late before, first offenders, too. But Aurora had a long history of being his most reliable, most hardworking. Hopefully that was enough.
For a long time, the only sound was the pulsing bump of the bass in the main room. People were already crowding in, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock. Tonight was going to be busy, and they both knew it. Finally, Chip sighed.
“You don’t have to look for another job,” he sighed.
Aurora breathed again.
“But you’re not hosting tonight.” Her relief soured a little as Chip went on. “I already put Jeshaylah on hostess. It’s behind the bar for you. And be happy that you’re not fired. I don’t want any more surprise lates or absences from you.”
“Definitely not,” Aurora assured him, but Chip was already heading out the door. A blaring hip-hop/EDM hybrid nearly blew the door down, but then it closed, and Aurora was alone with the crate of clean uniforms.
“By the way,” Chip added, sticking his head back in the door. “Katrina borrowed your jacket.”
“What?”
But Chip was already gone.
Well, she would have preferred hostess, but better bartender than fired. And either of those was better than waitressing—Witching Hour wasn’t high on the respectable gage, and the last time Aurora had worked waitress, some asshole had nearly ripped her booty shorts trying to grab her ass. That was the waitress uniform: fishnet tights or well-ripped-up black ones, high-heeled boots, and either leather shorts or miniskirt. Witching Hour had a dangerously risqué theme of part electronica, part BDSM, like vampires on dubstep. Weird as hell, but it paid bank in tips.
Hostess was considered the cush job, hanging out right next to security all night and seeing to the VIP list. Definitely preferable, but bartending wasn’t bad. At least the bar was between herself and the clients, except for the most rowdy. There had been a couple brawlers tossed right over the bar, but that wasn’t a normal happening.
And the bartenders wore more. True, their outfit wasn’t exactly something she could walk out on the streets in, but at least her legs were covered. Full-length leather pants and boots, lots of metal buckles, and a top that qualified as a bralette, or maybe a very small crop-top. That was why she liked having the jacket, so she felt a little more like she had clothes on, but there was nothing to do about it now.
Lastly Aurora pulled on elbow-length fingerless gloves. They’d be soaked in alcohol by night’s end, but Chip insisted they matched the look. And so they did.
There was a large mirror across the back wall of the changing room, and Aurora looked over her uniform one last time. This morning, she’d gotten dressed for work in a multi-thousand dollar outfit, complete with diamonds. By night, she poured for the riff-raff and spent hours drowned in electronic beats and cigarette smoke.
At least, sometimes it was cigarette smoke.
She sighed; this was her life. Both jobs gave her something she needed, but not everything. There was always something missing. Aurora was beginning to suspect that she’d never find it.
But nine o’clock was rolling nearer, and the bar was already bouncing. She waded into the fray and joined her coworkers behind the bar. Katrina and Amy were both rushing to put glasses and bottles in hands, so busy that Katrina didn’t even have time to notice the stink eye Aurora gave her over the jacket she’d borrowed (Really, my name is stitched on the back, for Christ’s sake, Aurora thought to herself, annoyed). With a third set of hands, they managed to get on top of drink orders, and things behind the bar settled down long enough for them to catch a breath.
“Smoke break?” Katrina asked breathlessly. Her long brown hair was done up in a tight ponytail, with heavy, dark make-up around the eyes. Aurora shrugged; she didn’t smoke, and they all knew it.
“I can hold things up here for like, ten minutes,” Aurora told them.
“All right, all right.” They excused themselves without much fanfare, retreating out the back door in a burst of cold wind. Aurora didn’t envy them one bit—it felt like a freezer outside.
She did, however, begin to wonder where they were when the rush returned. Aurora was a great worker and great bartender—anything else would have been buried as a mob of the night crowd came to riot around the bar. Handing out beers, pouring shots, mixing drinks, ringing tabs, and making tips fell into a steady rhythm. Snapping selfies, orchestrating belly shots, specialty booze pours, and the occasional ice bucket into the increasingly rowdy crowd—Aurora felt like she was batting against as tsunami. The DJ saw her distress and was trying to lure people onto the dance floor to give her a break, but there was only so much she co
uld do from her booth. Aurora was good, but this was too much. Where were Katrina and Amy?
She’s just served up a round of three hurricanes and a hot saucer when the first scream hit.
Aurora spun around. Amy was back. Most of her, anyway.
Witching Hour and the panicking crowd tilted at a funny angle as what she was seeing sunk in. Aurora leaned a hand against the bar; her head felt hot. So warm… and so dizzy.
Amy had managed to wander back in from her smoke break, mumbling nonsense around what was left of her tongue. Blood gushed from her mouth, and from the sockets where her green eyes had been, blood matting into her red hair, down her neck, down her shirt, everywhere, everywhere…
An hour passed, but Aurora would have been surprised to hear it. Her mind kept taking unexpected leave, blanking out like a merciful white cloud, letting her body go through the motions. Calling Chip. The ambulance, the second ambulance today, arriving to find Aurora still holding a washrag to Amy’s eyes. It was sopping with blood. So much blood. But Aurora didn’t remember the worst of it, and when Chip was sitting with her outside some time later, reality began to catch up, and she began to cry hot tears that steamed in the biting cold.
“Breathe, honey, just breathe. The medics said to focus on taking deep breaths.”
That was Chip. He’d never sounded so caring. Aurora felt an arm around her shoulders, and knew it was his.
She looked down at her hands, the fingerless gloves gone. They’d been gone a while; the EMT had taken them off when she helped Aurora clean the blood off her fingers. There had been so much of it… Aurora could still feel it on her skin now, burning and thick and catching the light like rubies.
She felt a little sick, and gulped in frozen February air to stifle the nausea. Aurora hated vomiting ever since she was little. Besides, there was nothing left to throw up except bile and the sips of water she’d forced down.
The world was coming back into focus, a little at a time. She was outside Witching Hour, and a crime scene had been established. She and Chip were seated in the open back of a police van. Amy’s limp body had been loaded hastily into the back of an ambulance and shipped to the nearest hospital; her outlook wasn’t good. Two other ambulances waited on the scene, the medics and EMTs making rounds through the club staff and the club patrons who hadn’t run off at the sound of police sirens.
