by Logan Keys
With a feeling of dread, my mind immediately offered two horrific images. The first was a closeup of the clammy hands that had been handing across coins and accepting change back all night. Each one of those paws could be crawling with a sickness-inducing virus. The brush of a single patron’s hand against mine could literally be a brush with death.
The second was the flapping canvas of an influenza tent. The tarpaulin walls were covered in grime from the sea spray bouncing off the grubby refuse piled up on the waterfront. The sea air will do them good, a long-dead doctor recited without any trace of irony. At the time that he’d spoken those words, a third of the tent’s occupants lay dead.
Shocked, I felt the skin on my forehead with my inner wrist. My external temperature seemed perfectly fine. Not a situation paralleled with my internal body heat.
The warmth from working hard on a mild night in a room stuffed full of heavy bodies would be a normal explanation. Even to myself, I had to admit I wasn’t working hard, the night was cool, and the crowd was barely there.
“Some of us don’t have time to be ill,” I muttered. Mike either didn’t hear or didn’t care to acknowledge my words. I scrubbed down the bar with extra vigilance, like offering a prayer up to the gods.
The next day, Wally offered me the same double shift at the same double pay. He looked like hell. His skin was so pale I fancied I could see through it to the blue tint of his veins.
This time, there were no threats of checking up on me and docking wages for any time spent performing my daily ablutions during my working hours. Wally shoved an envelope with the previous day’s wages inside and stumbled away, presumably headed off to his death bed.
Except for the worry over catching whatever illness had struck the town, I felt fairly pleased with my situation. Two extra shifts at double pay would raise my head clear above the water on my rent. If I judged it right, I might even be left with a few coins for a rainy day.
If I hadn’t been so skint to start with, I might have felt bad for keeping Wally to his word of extra pay. The clientele had thinned out from the night before. Only three tables were occupied.
Drunken Mike sat on his usual stool, oblivious to whatever was ailing his fellow man.
“If this keeps up, you’ll be out of a job,” he said, displaying his usual tact. “Don’t you worry about it, though. You know you’re always welcome to kip with me.”
I busied myself restocking the washed glasses from out back into the waiting holders so Mike wouldn’t see the disgust on my face.
“Not that we’d be getting much kip if you play your cards right,” he laughed. The bile that flooded my mouth wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever tasted, but it was still a chore to suck the stinging acid back down.
“Pint of bitter, please.”
The weak voice took a moment to register. When I looked up, Steven was clinging to the edge of the bar, swaying back and forth.
“Mike, help him into a seat,” I ordered, scared the lad would fall before I could race around the other side of the bar.
I managed to reach Steven before he fell but when I tried to guide him to a table, he threw off my arm while a scowl twisted his lips. “I’m not a kid,” he whined like a toddler. “I can look after myself.”
Fair play. I held my hands up and took a step back while Steven continued his battle with gravity. The lad won, for the time being at least, and I went back to my station to pour out his request.
“You still not sleeping?” I asked, careful to keep my distance in case his bad mood traveled from his twisted lips down to his fists. Steven ignored me altogether, picking up his pint and draining half the glass.
“Do you want a chaser for that one, love? It’ll warm your chest right up and help you fight off any nasty bugs.”
I didn’t believe that old wives’ tale for a second, but I thought it might take the legs out from under him, and leave Steven pliable to guide home. No matter how grown up the lad thought he was, a night tucked up in bed would do him a world more good than an evening out drinking.
He acquiesced to my cunning plan, and I served him up the shot, making it a double. Drunken Mike almost caught me out, but I edged my shoulder to hide my actions. The last thing I needed was our best patron calling me out for favoritism.
Unfortunately, whatever ailed Steven didn’t give a jot how much alcohol he soaked up. Even when I cajoled him into a second to follow the first, the whiskey went to his head but not his legs.
Even with the few patrons in the bar, I had other things to distract my attention. Between avoiding Mike’s nimble fingers and keeping an eye on the door to keep out opportunistic children, it was closing time before I had time enough to give Steven more than a cursory glance.
“Are you alright to get home by yourself?” I asked him. Given that he was leaning heavily against the bar, it seemed a reasonable question. All I got in return was a few guttural syllables, unintelligible.
I gave Steven a poke in the arm to see if that would rouse him. He flinched, but that was the extent of his response.
“Good luck with that one,” Drunken Mike grumbled, chucking down the three shots he’d ordered just before closing bell. “These children who wander in here, pretending to be men. I can’t be dealing with them.”
“Could you not give me a hand to get him home?”
Mike gave me a lopsided smile. A sticky line of drool spread from his lower lip to connect with the top of his chin. “And what would you be giving me in return?”
“Nothing, Mike,” I said. Given that I’d asked a favor, my bluntness probably should have been held in check. I sighed with the quick exasperation born of deep concern. “Can you not help just because it’s the right thing to do?”
Good one, Phyllis. Imply that he’s immoral on top of that. What a way you have with people!
Mike heaved his trousers up to mid-abdomen and walked out the door with his standard rolling gait. I guessed that meant his answer was no.
“Come on, Steven. You can’t sleep here love,” I said sternly, giving his arm another poke. “It’s time for me to lock up.”
“I don’t want to sleep,” he cried out.
The plaintive note in his voice strummed a chord deep inside me, the vibration echoing out along my nerve endings until I couldn’t stop myself. I reached over and pulled him into a hug.
“You don’t need to go to sleep, if you don’t want to,” I reassured him. “But you must go home now, in any case. If you can get yourself over to the door, I’ll lend a hand to steady you on your feet, but you need to try. I can’t carry your whole weight on my own.”
He stumbled on numb feet to the door, and hung from the handle, panting. In all honesty, Steven looked beyond my limited capacity to steer home, but I had to give it a go. For all the men who wander in and out of the bar, there’s never any about when you need them.
“Which way, love?” I asked after securing the pub door. Steven slung his arm over my shoulder, pointing to the right, and like a four-legged man, we staggered down the street.
“I’m on Holsom Street,” he muttered in a voice so faint that only familiarity helped me to decipher it. Thank goodness, the address was near. Another two blocks, turn the corner, then another block and we’d be there.
“I’ll see you into bed, and then I’ll be out of there,” I reassured him, though Steven hadn’t asked. Perhaps the reassurance was directed more toward me. The questionable judgment of a woman helping a man into his accommodation late at night was bad enough. Him being twenty years younger than I would be a sin in anybody’s books.
Hopefully, enough of the town would be out for the count with this new sickness that there’d be nobody to watch me supporting Steven to his home.
At last, we reached his premises, then I had the excruciating wait while the lad reacquainted himself with the location of his keys. Not about his person, that would be too easy. Nor in the first few hiding places his fumbling fingers found.
I finally tried above t
he door, steeling myself against the spiders that might be hiding there in wait. Success! I felt the fat belly of an insect as I grasped the key but resisted the urge to fling everything away.
Then came the torment of the stairs. Why is it that every young person renting picks an upstairs unit? With the views on offer, they’re not cheaper and what a drag to mount those steps each night.
I don’t even want to hazard a guess at how much time elapsed while I carried and cajoled Steven up those stairs. Suffice it to say, when we reached the top, I was a lot more exhausted than he should have been.
Before tucking Steven into bed, I removed his outer clothing, leaving him in skivvies. Lucky that he’d dressed in layers. Otherwise, the awkwardness between us would have jolted up a level.
After that, I meant to leave. I had a home to go to, humble as it was. My own bed was calling out to me. When I sat down in the chair at the foot of Steven’s bed, it was just for a minute. A tiny rest to get my breath back and I would be on my way and out of his hair.
I woke up, nerves on edge, a few hours later. The moonlight streamed in through the window, a strangely metallic glow that made the room look silver plated. My hands clenched around the arms of the chair with such force that my knuckles ached. The pulse in my ears pounded like a bass drum.
For a confused minute, I couldn’t work out what had catapulted me from sleep into the frozen state of terror. I cringed back against an unknown foe, scared to the point that my brain wouldn’t process additional information. I was in a state of overwhelm—unable to move or think.
A light tapping on the window broke the spell of immobility, and I gasped. Even though we’d walked upstairs to Stevens flat, the final straw that tired me enough that I’d fallen asleep, a face peered in from outside.
Steven turned as if the tapping was a summoning. He opened the window and then lay back down, turning his head to one side. A woman flew gracefully into the room and landed on cushioned feet, not drawing the slightest creak from a floorboard. She lay down on the bed next to Steven and nuzzled into the side of his exposed neck. A second later there was a smacking sound like a baby sucking at a teat.
I shifted in my chair, and a cramp dug long fingernails into my thigh muscle, twisting it into a knot of agony. Another gasp issued from my lips and I rubbed with frantic motions at my leg. The unfathomable scene in front of me, forgotten in my momentary pain.
“I didn’t realize you’d invited company, Steven,” said the woman. “How rude of you, not to introduce us straight away.”
Steven spoke in a voice that sounded like it echoed up from an old grave. “This is old Phyllis, she brought me home from the bar.”
The tight muscle loosened in my leg and I stood, edging away from the chair to move toward the door.
“Oh, my dear,” the woman said, laughing low in her throat, so she purred. “There’s no need to leave on my account. Trust me, Steven never takes very long to satisfy me.”
Fearing a shameful encounter, scared that it could be an experience even worse, I wanted to run away. My feet were wooden, carved out of the same logs as the floor. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t scream in terror.
It hurt my eyes to look at her, she was so lovely. I turned my gaze away to stare at the ceiling, the wallpaper, my clenched hands. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Compared to the woman before me, the world was a smeared canvas of distasteful proportions and clashing colors.
The bed shifted as her weight left it. Though I couldn’t force myself to look at the extravagance of beauty, I knew she was walking toward me. Soon, the painted toenails of her bare feet snuck into the edge of my eyesight. Next, a forefinger reached out to lift my chin.
“Why, you look old enough to be Steven’s mother.” The woman’s voice was rich with delight. “You aren’t, are you? That would be a most embarrassing situation.”
Unable to trust my voice, I shook my head. Her finger remained pressed against my skin, a cold touch to soothe my otherwise flushed face.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued when the silence stretched out too long. “I don’t mind an older woman having a little flirtation with youth. If it weren’t for that, I’d find scant entertainment indeed.”
Her head angled in close beside mine, a cool breath whistling into my ear. “Please reassure me that I didn’t interrupt a dalliance. I do so hate to stop another woman from getting her fun.”
Again, I could only shake my head in the negative. The rest of me was useless, a fat slug drying in the road under the heat of the midday sun. I tried to raise my eyes, to be bold and meet her gaze. I reached as far as her luscious red lips and couldn’t force myself to look any higher.
A drop of red blood, fat and glistening, sat on the edge of her lip. I became entranced with the liquid, staring into its crimson center until the woman’s tongue snaked out and licked the drop away.
“If you’re not going to join in and you’re not going to say anything, then I think it would be rude of you to stay. Steven and I have unfinished business.” She gave another low laugh, reverberating from deep down in her throat. “Make up your mind, I’ll give you to the count of three.
“One.”
I breathed in through my nose and inhaled the scent of must and the dank perfume of the grave. Underneath the odor was another layer, heady and rich like a red wine aged for decades in an oak barrel.
“Two.”
The moonlight that streaked across the room was absorbed in the black slickness of her hair. Each individual strand seemed darker than the next, eating all the light in the room into its silken ripples.
I pushed myself up from the chair, fear sending a tremble down the length of my arms. Desire warred with it and won. I tilted my head to the side and leaned forward until my lips brushed against the silken coldness of her cheek. She gave a low laugh that vibrated so much that I could feel it where my mouth touched her skin.
My body yearned to feel hers pressed against its length. Each muscle strained inside me, tensing until it ached.
A memory of my dead daughter’s body, wrapped in a sheet to protect me against her infection, plunged into my mind like a dagger. Behind me, on the tent floor, had lain my husband and son. Gone already. Becca had held on longer, reaching out again and again to life, only to be rebuffed.
The ache of my muscles faded into nothing against the ache that twisted my heart. It choked off the blood supply until just standing wafted clouds of dizziness through my head. I stared into the drowning darkness of the woman’s eyes Fixed on them, I lost consciousness and drifted in their sweet blackness. A buzz, as strong as the cloud of flies that were constant companions in the influenza tents, filled my ears until the world was lost to static.
A pounding on the door woke me. My head throbbed like a rotted tooth, and my ears broadcast a world set to ten times the normal volume.
“Old Phyllis. You’re wanted down at the Boatshed Bar!”
I curled the pillow on either side of my head and pressed it to my protesting head. Damn the boy. If only the young scamp sold his services for dearer, then Wally wouldn’t be so quick to avail himself of them.
“Old Phyllis!”
He would go away but not for another ten minutes. The little boy was thorough as well as cheap. Usually, I’d praise him highly for his work ethic, but at that point, I wanted to throttle him into silence.
I groaned and rolled over onto my side, tentatively stretching out one leg to place it on the floor. Whatever sickness had affected the town lately, obviously hadn’t taken the bother to skip me.
The pounding on the door sounded like a battering ram trying to knock out a stone wall. If I couldn’t get to the window soon to shout down, I’d die from the meddlesome lad.
I staggered on legs made of cow bone jelly and watched in horror as the windowsill seemed to retreat away. With renewed force, in a race against the next oncoming shout, I powered forward and slumped against the wooden frame. Steeling my ears against the incipient noise, I rapped m
y knuckles on the glass and waved to the boy below. He looked up, sheltering his eyes from the strong morning sun, then grinned at me, revealing a mouth missing four front teeth.
When he stood outside for another minute, I realized that he wanted something more from me than an acknowledgment of life. I pulled up the window sash just enough to poke my sickeningly tender head outside.
“I won’t be at work today,” I whispered, and the boy cupped a cheeky hand around his ear.
I sighed and closed my eyes against the stinging needles of the bright sunshine. “I’m ill, boy,” I shouted. “Tell Wally that I won’t be in at work today.”
“Can’t do that, Missus,” the boy said, still wearing his wide smile. “Mr. Wallace gave me strict instructions that you’re to come in and open up today.”
I pulled my head back and stood up to lean my forehead against the smooth glass, still holding on to some of the night’s coolness. I tried to chide myself, It’s just a headache, you’ve faced much worse. There have been whole weeks when you drank yourself into feeling more tender than this.
“Can’t Wally do it himself?” One last excuse to beg off and get myself back into my nice, warm bed.
“He’s down with the sickness, something awful, Missus.” He hawked up a gob of spit and used it to water my wilting daisies. “The other two ain’t been in all week. Mr. Wallace said if I can’t get you to open up, then I won’t be paid.”
A note of real distress accompanied the last announcement, and I sighed and gave him a thumbs-up sign. I knew well enough what it felt like to work hard and not even reap the scant rewards you’d been promised.
“Bless you, Missus,” the lad called back up, securing my intent. I changed my night dress for more formal attire and peered at myself in the bathroom mirror. Despite my aches and pains, my skin glowed with good health, and my eyes looked bright and clear. How disappointing. If I did have to go around all day feeling like I’ve been knocked down and trampled by a horse, the least my reflection could do was honor my feelings.
