Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge

by Paul Krueger

  When Zane saw that everything was in order, he nodded. In turn he reached for each jigger and poured the contents into the glass. The ice cracked and shifted. Eyes blazing, he intoned:

  “Vodka, from potato stilled

  Gin, from juniper bush milled

  Rum, from cold, dark cask of steel

  Tequila, from—”

  “Does the chant do anything?” Bailey whispered to Bucket. She’d never needed to chant over a cocktail.

  “No,” said Bucket. “But pretty cool, though, eh?”

  Zane layered in the triple sec, the lemon juice, and a sweetener called gomme syrup. The mixture was still transparent, albeit a little yellow from the lemon juice. Apparently it was going well because triumph was written all over Zane’s face as he threw in the last liquid ingredient, a splash of cola, which stained the glass a soft brown. He caught Bailey’s eye, and they shared giddy grins that said, Holy shit, we’re doing this.

  He inserted an old-timey straw: straight and white, with a thin red stripe spiraling like a candy cane. He stirred seven times counterclockwise, then once clockwise, before releasing it. The liquid swept the straw around the glass rim before it came to a rest. Then, with a nod of thanks to Bailey, Zane selected a long twist of lemon peel and carefully slid it into the glass.

  No one breathed as they waited for the telltale glow.

  All four of them jerked forward as a light sparked inside the liquid. It died, but less than a second later another light popped in and out. And then a third, as if the drink harbored a cigarette lighter refusing to catch.

  The Long Island iced tea lit up for a seventh time, then guttered again. This time there was no spark.

  Zane’s hands fell to his sides. “No,” he breathed.

  Bailey’s heart broke. All the artifices of manliness had fallen away, and he looked more than ever like the boy who’d been her friend. She wanted to throw her arms around him, even if it was awkward, just so he wouldn’t be standing there alone and crestfallen. “Zane …”

  He seemed not to have heard her. “I was so close.” The goth punk music, so fitting a moment ago, now seemed to mock his sadness.

  “Yes,” said Mona, stepping forward. “Closer than anyone has ever come since the last time someone succeeded.” For once Bailey could read her: Mona hadn’t expected it to work, but she hadn’t expected it to be nearly as successful as it was. She looked, for the first time, rattled.

  “I was so close!” Zane pounded a fist on the table. The drink shook but didn’t spill.

  Bailey nudged Bucket. He spread his arms helplessly—And what should I say, exactly?—so Bailey took a deep breath and gave it a shot.

  “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay,” she said, putting up her hands defensively. “But you still have your eyes. You still have your mind. If you got this close, the next time will be closer. The next time will be it.”

  “What next time?” Zane said. “I had a single shot of LaRue’s private stock. That’s a chance I’ll never get again, and I fucking blew it.” He really was like a teenager again—enraged and sullen at the same time—and she was the grown-up, sensible but with no idea how to end the exchange nicely.

  “You found some once, you can do it again,” she said. She’d thought it sounded good, but Bucket gave her a tiny but violent shake of the head. She decided to take his advice and change tack. “Besides,” she said, “the important thing isn’t the Long Island iced tea. Bartending is about protecting Chicago from deliriums or whatever else is happening. It’s about service.”

  “Bailey, you don’t know the first thing about bartending,” Zane said. “You’ve been doing this for, like, a month, and for once I actually know more about something than you do. So no offense, but shut up.”

  The words hit her like a slap.

  Zane’s face fell. “Wait, I—”

  “No,” Bailey said, her voice as calm and unwavering as she could make it.

  “I didn’t—I’m just—you have no idea how frustrating—” He paced, glancing from Bailey to the drink on the table while Bucket and Mona stood silent on either side.

  “No,” Bailey said again, “you’re right. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ll shut up.”

  “Bailey.” Zane’s voice was practically pleading. “Don’t—”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Mona said, arms folded and eyes cold. “I’ve been doing this a long, long time. Longer than any of you and certainly longer than her.”

  That was ridiculous. Granted, Bailey had no idea how old Mona was—it was hard to guess when you didn’t have a four-year academic paradigm to fall back on—but she didn’t look that much older.

  “Don’t talk about me that way,” Bailey snapped. “I’m right here.”

  Bucket stepped back as far as he could. Zane stared blankly at the floor—with Mona’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Well, then,” Mona said coolly, “maybe you shouldn’t be.”

  Two minutes later Bailey hit the sidewalk and stomped toward home. She was unshowered, stringy haired, wearing smeared makeup and clothes covered in garbage. Everyone she passed, even the dogs out for a walk, gave her wide berth.

  Something buzzed in her purse. Bailey swore and dug around for her phone without breaking stride. She heard it clattering but of course couldn’t find the damn thing. If it was her parents, she wouldn’t answer. If it was Zane, she would answer and unload invective so blistering it would set his ears on fire.

  But when she finally unearthed the phone, the screen said JESS.

  “Bailey Chen!” a cheerful and familiar voice crackled. “What it is, girl?”

  “Um, fine,” Bailey said, scrambling to flip on her brain’s small-talk switch. “Fine. It is … just … fine.”

  “Right on,” said Jess. “So I know this is super late, and out of the blue, and on a weekend and stuff, but I just wanted to know: what’re you up to this Monday?”

  “You mean for, um …” Bailey struggled to remember what normal people did to socialize. “Drinks?”

  “No, dummy. To come in for your sit-down.”

  “My what?”

  “Your interview! At Divinyl!”

  Bailey looked back over her shoulder at the distant apartment building. It wasn’t a bar, and it wasn’t Zane. But it was symbolic enough.

  She cradled the phone on her shoulder and flipped off that symbol with both hands.

  “As it happens,” Bailey said, “I’m free all day. When should I come in?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Divinyl’s offices were in the beating heart that was Chicago’s famous Loop, a district named for the aboveground train lines that encircled the block inside Lake, Van Buren, Wabash, and Wells. Bailey rode in on Ravenswood’s own train, the Brown Line, which she’d always thought of as her line. Whenever she’d wanted to venture outside the neighborhood, the Brown Line was always her first step. She’d never ridden it like this, though. Back in the day, she and her friends had been just another group of loud kids swinging on poles, jumping from seat to seat, and generally annoying the commuters. Today she was the commuter.

  Bailey wore a blue pantsuit, matching heels, and her hair in a tight bun. She looked, in other words, sharp as hell. Total corporate villainess. Inside her purse she was toting twenty fresh copies of her résumé, ready to pass them out like candy the second she got through the front doors. She was a Spartan girded for battle. She was ready.

  Get used to this commute, she told herself, glancing around the quiet train car. Play your cards right, and you’ll live to see the day you get bored of it.

  She’d given herself enough time to find the building without rushing, and security was helpful in pointing the way.

  “Oh, yeah,” said the desk attendant, “I’ve been up there. Cool office.” She eyed Bailey’s outfit. “You with the IRS or something?”

  “What?” Bailey frowned. “No, why?”

  The woman shrugged. “No reason. Go on ahead to the elevat
ors. Eighteenth floor.”

  Well, that was … whatever. Bailey put the exchange out of her mind and tried to focus. This was her life now. This was what she was born to do. Not cutting lime wedges or salting margarita rims. Business. Spreadsheets, accounts payable, profit margins, spreadsheets …

  Okay, so she wasn’t even sure what her role at Divinyl would be. But she was showing up, and that was, according to a poster from the UPenn career office, half the battle. (The poster had also featured, for reasons Bailey never quite divined, an eagle winging its way across a rainbow.)

  Right off the elevator she got a good vibe. Instead of the austere white or beige or eggshell paint in most offices, Divinyl’s lobby walls were covered with, well, covers. Album art spanning six decades of pop culture had been jigsawed into a giant mosaic, connected by stylized vines, chains, and wires. At the center of each wall, like a red island in the swirl, was one of the four stars of Chicago’s flag.

  “Isn’t it just the coolest?” A young woman sidled up. “They commissioned Logik—you know, the graffiti artist?—to do the lobby. We think it’s a good way to let people know what we’re about. If they’re into it, we’ll be into them. And if they’re not, at least it’s close to the elevator, right? And also,” she added, finally taking a breath, “hi!”

  Like Zane, Jess had changed since high school, but not nearly as much. She still had the same honey-blond hair—cut into an aggressively angular bob—and the same Easter-egg-colored wardrobe. Only two things stuck out to Bailey. The first was that in the four-year interim, Jess had adopted a pair of retro glasses that gave her a mischievous, catlike air. The second was that despite working for a firm powerful enough to change the way people listened to music, she wasn’t dressed like a corporate player. She rocked a bright pink T-shirt with Divinyl’s logo splashed across the chest, plus a skirt and sneakers. No wonder the security guard thought Bailey was there to audit them. Next to Jess’s casual-casual ensemble, Bailey’s sensible, graduation present pantsuit felt like full-plate armor.

  Ignoring the hand Bailey had stuck out, Jess dove in for a hug. Bailey cringed but reciprocated. She much preferred to reserve hugging for the people who really mattered, but in the last few years society had decided that brief embraces were the best way to greet everyone everywhere.

  A dude would never have to hug his interviewer, Bailey thought and then immediately chastised herself. Get over yourself. You need something from her. And you kind of liked her once, right?

  Right.

  Just try not to look so awkward.

  “It is so good to see you again,” Jess said, stepping back.

  “You, too!” Bailey said through a forced smile. In school Jess had been, effectively, Bailey’s competition, although the feeling had never been mutual. Bailey got better grades thanks to an endless supply of Post-its, flash cards, and instant coffee, but somehow Jess breezily kept up in every class with a fraction of the effort. She’d ended up at Northwestern—not Ivy League, like Bailey, but still pretty damn good. And now Jess—the one who’d never pulled an all-nighter, who’d slept through a semester’s worth of English lectures and still got extra credit for writing a rap song based on Julius Caesar—was the one with the job.

  “And I love your outfit!” Jess looked Bailey up and down. “You look like such a grown-up. Like you’re running for election or something.”

  “Thanks,” Bailey said.

  “I’d vote for you.” Jess winked. “Let’s head back to my office, huh?”

  They rounded the corner and emerged into the kind of space that Bailey imagined an overzealous tour guide might introduce as “where the magic happens.”

  “And this”—Jess gestured grandly—“is where the magic happens.”

  “Oh,” Bailey said politely. “Um, I can tell.”

  The space was gigantic, with thirty-foot ceilings, windowed walls, and impossibly huge square footage. Instead of a cubicle labyrinth, it held every kind of workstation imaginable. Some employees sat at desks—in chairs or balanced on exercise balls. Some had settled on the floor, typing away at laptops as overstuffed beanbag chairs swallowed them inch by inch. There was even one guy off to the side who was coding while pedaling away on a stationary bike.

  “We’re big into personalized workspaces here,” said Jess. “Once we hire someone on, we have them put in a request for what they need to be comfortable. As long as it won’t kill the work flow, management will sign off on it.”

  Bailey realized she was grinning—not her precise, professional grin, but the toothy, goofy one a kid got when she walked into an ice cream shop. “What if I want a cubicle?” she said.

  Jess chuckled. “A rebel, huh? We’re not big on following the rules, but maybe we can make an exception. Hey, Kyle, come over here.”

  A slouchy guy in a knit cap walked over and gave Bailey a once-over; she stood as straight as she could without wobbling in her heels.

  “This is Bailey,” Jess said. “She’s going in for Alexis’s old gig.”

  “Alexis left?”

  “She went full-time doula.”

  “Oh. Right on, right on.” Kyle nodded rhythmically, like he was listening to a song no one but he could hear.

  “I love Divinyl,” Bailey said quickly. “I listen to—er, with it all the time.”

  “Right on,” Kyle said again.

  Bailey cocked her head. “Are you an engineer?”

  Kyle laughed. “Nah. Tastemaker, brah.”

  “Ah,” Bailey said. Was that a job title?

  “You know,” he continued, head still bobbing, “spreading the word, making the waves.”

  “Right,” Bailey said. “Cool.”

  “That’s what we do out of the Chicago office,” said Jess. “Dev stuff is mostly out in Esseff.”

  “Oh. Is that in the suburbs?”

  Jess and Kyle exchanged a look.

  “SF,” Kyle said. “Like, San Francisco.”

  “Of course.” Bailey flushed. Stupid, stupid. She should’ve known better; her parents were from Esseff. But she was determined to bounce back. “What’s your favorite part about working here, Kyle?”

  “Probably …” Kyle considered. Whatever it was—the product, the teamwork, the management style—Bailey readied herself to nod eagerly.

  “Spicy lunch club,” he said finally.

  “Oh, I love—” Bailey faltered. “What?”

  “A bunch of us order lunch and see who can get the spiciest thing. This one time, Emily? She got a ghost pepper burrito and spent the afternoon crying under her desk.”

  “Fuck you, Kyle,” called someone a few desks away. Kyle shrugged.

  “Oh. That sounds great!” Bailey said, trying not to sound too forced. “Um, lunch is my favorite part of the day, too.”

  It was, actually, but she still felt weird saying so during what was technically a job interview.

  Kyle stifled a laugh. “Cool to meet you, Hayley. Want a T-shirt?”

  Something soft and gray smacked her in the face before she could answer.

  “It’s Bailey.”

  “Yeah. Those shirts are dope,” Jess said. “They make them from that really soft Mexican cotton, you know? Here, check out the kitchen.”

  Bailey balled up the shirt and stuffed it into her purse while following Jess around another corner. In her limited professional experience, an office “kitchen” was rarely more than a fridge, coffeemaker, and microwave with a permanent garlic smell. But the cavernous fishbowl room to their right had an espresso machine, two stainless-steel refrigerators, and a six-burner oven/stove that someone was currently using to bake a pan of mac and cheese.

  “Bowie says—wait, do you know Bowie?” Jess wrinkled her forehead. “Bowen Sorensen, I mean.”

  Bailey nodded eagerly.

  “Sorensen’s the VC”—venture capitalist, Bailey was already speaking the slang (she resisted giving herself a high-five)—“with an eighty percent stake in the company. He revitalized the flagging beeper industry
in the late nineties with his idea to sell them to chain restaurants for table reservations and then broke into the app market with Fontdue, which allows users to render their outgoing correspondence in customized fonts. Since then he’s taken both calculated risks and leaps of faith on investments and built a miniature empire in the telecommunications and mobile software business.”

  Jess’s eyes widened. “Whoa. Someone did her homework.”

  Bailey grinned. She’d made flash cards.

  “Fab,” Jess said. “Anyway, he says happy employees are productive employees. If happiness means being able to cook yourself shrimp scampi for lunch, he’s all for it. Sometimes when we have to stay late, he’ll get a guy to come by and do a whole hibachi thing.” She mimed chopping meat on a grill and tossing it in the air.

  “Does Mr. Sorensen work out of the Chicago office?” Bailey asked.

  Jess blinked. “Yeah, sometimes. Right now he’s in Belgrade. Or Belarus. Which one has that offshore tax exclusion thing?”

  Bailey barely had time to shrug.

  “Anyway, he’ll be back soon. He wants to build a movie theater here that shows nothing but kaiju cinema.” She did a little fake Godzilla stomp, then frowned. “Assuming that whole women’s arena-football thing doesn’t fall through. Hang on.” She whipped out a phone, furiously thumbed out a message, then stuffed it back in her pocket with a smile. “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay,” Bailey said. The sooner they could slip into the routine of questions and answers, the sooner she’d feel at ease. “I don’t need the hard sell. You can just go ahead and start, uh, interviewing me—”

  “Interview. Right.” Jess laughed huskily. “Cute. Want to step into my office?”

  “What is it, a pillow fort?” said Bailey.