Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy

by Shelley Singer

  Jo waved it away, ruffled the girl’s stripes, and stepped inside her sister’s office.

  Judith, holding a cup of that imported San Francisco black tea she liked so much, sat behind her six-foot desk, squeezed into her oversized and overstuffed green chair, looking like a beefsteak tomato sitting in its own leaves, big and round and powerful in her red dress.

  “Want some tea?”

  Jo shook her head. “Just wanted you to know Samm’s gone until tomorrow. Sent him to pick up the vax. And I’ve got a fixer coming to see me. I hear she’s good.”

  Judith looked pleased. “When?”

  “When she has time.”

  They both laughed again. “Could be months,” Judith said.

  Jo shrugged. She half turned. “I’m going down to talk to Waldo now. See you later.”

  “Good luck. You tell him from me I’m sick of losing the help because he’s a lecher. Costs too damned much.” She held up an index finger, scanning her desk. “Oh… wait, there was something…” She fanned a pile of papers like a poker hand and jabbed at one scribbled note with a blunt forefinger. “Yes. Rica Marin. Came from the Riverboat Queen over on the Delta. They say she can wait tables and she can sing, too. Just sent her to Waldo.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “We’ll see. Why don’t you check her out. See if she really can sing.”

  Jo trotted down the steps back into the main room. Some old guy had hit the jackpot on a nickel slot. He was hopping around like a puppy. Good. Good for business.

  The dimly-lit restaurant was beginning to fill up for dinner. Cousin Waldo was at his station trying to look the part of a maître d’. Out in the kitchen, the two cooks were banging utensils. The food smelled good, basil and rosemary and garlic. “Waldo.”

  “Jo.” He didn’t look up. He knew what was coming. She thought about what she was going to say, studying the pink scalp that showed through the thin red and black hair on the top of his narrow head.

  Chapter Five

  Right Down to her Velvet Knickers

  The restaurant salary was standard, which Chief Graybel had already mentioned and which meant it was low. But I discovered in the first few hours that the tips weren’t bad, and it turned out that Blackjack was a very good employer, better than most. The free lodging brought the pay up to more than reasonable. Drew, the busboy, mentioned in passing that people who stayed past six weeks got benefits worth more than the pay—vaccines, certificates, and yearly boosters. Neither Judith nor Waldo had mentioned that. Stupidly, I’d never thought to ask about benefits at all. Someone really looking for work and expecting to stick around would have. Maybe I’d been so overwhelmed by Judith’s snow globes, or by Judith herself, that I’d forgotten the drill. I’d have to do better. A distracted merc is a dead merc.

  Timmy confirmed the vax.

  “It’s one of the things that’s kept us working here.” He sneered in the general direction of Waldo, who was seating a man and woman at one of Tim’s busy tables. The place had first started filling up around eight, just as Timmy had predicted it would. And now, after eleven, people were coming in for a late supper. Timmy grabbed a couple of menus from the host station. “That and the free rooms. A suite because there’s two of us.”

  He had now used the word “us” twice. “Us?”

  “Me and my sweetie Fredo. You’ll meet him later.”

  Well, he and Gran could still like each other. “I guess you and Waldo don’t get along?”

  He snorted and shook his head. “We get along. I do what he says and ignore his nasty self.”

  Tim went off, menus under his arm, before I could ask more. And although we spoke briefly on and off through the rest of my shift, I never got a chance to hear more about the “nasty self.”

  I was serving a half-drunk party of three at about eleven o’clock when a pretty woman wearing knickers came in, approached Waldo at his station, and spoke to him. He listened to her, scowling. She stopped talking and looked my way, turned back to him again. He nodded and waved me over.

  The woman watched me coolly as I walked across the room. I had been stared at by much less interesting people, but I wasn’t intimidated by the scrutiny, I was intrigued by it. She had nerve. Maybe even power. Pretty didn’t half describe her.

  She glared at Waldo. “You can leave us now.” He lumbered back to his station by the door, where a pair of customers stood looking around the room. She turned back to me. “I’m Jo Coleman. Judith’s sister.” Ah. She did have power. Lots of it. And warm brown eyes. And a soft, deep voice. “She tells me you’re going to be working here.” I nodded. “And that you want to sing for us, too.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Are you any good?” A challenging half-smile. I smiled back, agreeably, with less challenge, allowing Jo to be alpha bitch.

  “I’m very good.” Our eyes locked for a second before I looked away. I could feel heat rising to my face.

  “When is your shift over?”

  “One o’clock.”

  “Fine. Meet me in the lounge.” She waved her hand in the direction of the unlighted room I’d noticed earlier. “Sing something sad.”

  A slight nod, the smile only in the eyes now, and Jo walked out. This time, I was the one doing the watching, and I wondered if she knew it.

  I had guessed the place probably closed at one, but when Timmy told me they stayed open through the night I thought it must be the most popular eating spot in Tahoe. Or pretty much anywhere.

  “It’s really busy all night?”

  “No. We can get good crowds up ‘til two or so but it’s pretty darned dead by three. Judith wants to provide the service anyway. She’s very smart, you know.” I was beginning to see that. She kept the restaurant open all night for a dozen diners, but if those dozen diners were up all night gambling, and they gambled enough, the place more than paid for itself. Blackjack not only stayed in business it built its rep as an old-style always-hot casino.

  Fredo, it turned out, was my relief. Just before the end of my shift, when I was pushing hard to cover my filled tables, Timmy mentioned that he wished Waldo would let Fredo start after three a.m., when things were really quiet, because he had a tendency to fall asleep.

  I thought that was funny, but only until I realized it was one o’clock. Then I got nervous. Had he fallen asleep before he even got to work that evening? By the time he tottered in, ten minutes late, I was tense with waiting, sure that Jo expected me to be exactly on time for our meeting in the lounge. And I had to pee.

  “You’re late,” I snapped, handing him a plate I was carrying to table 12.

  He shook his head, dislodging the few hairs he’d combed across his nearly bald head. “Well, aren’t we cranky?”

  “Yes. We are.”

  He shook his head again. I could have sworn his big ears flopped, but that was probably just a hallucination. I was exhausted. The long drive, the long evening, and a performance still to come.

  “Sorry, princess.” He seemed to mean it. Guilty, I mumbled and shrugged, and he smiled, taking my inarticulate response for the apology it was. He balanced table 12’s steak plate on his palm and set off slowly across the room.

  Trying to gather my energy, I made a quick stop at the restroom and leaned for a moment against the sink, closing my eyes. I saw lightning in Nebraska, sunlight in Nevada, and long miles of road passing under the car. I felt my chin drop to my chest, shook off the half-dreams, and splashed cold water on my face.

  I’d just have to keep my eyes open while I was singing.

  The lounge was definitely not finished, but at least someone had turned on a light, a temporary-looking globe that dangled from a beam and washed out the shadows and contours. The room stank of fresh paint. Jo was sitting on the edge of the small stage at the far end of the room, drinking a glass of red wine. I walked toward her. She wasn’t smiling. Two tall stepladders stood against a wall. One row of spotlights lay on the floor near them, wires trailing, another was attached near t
he ceiling to the left of the stage.

  “Sorry I’m late, I—”

  “Never mind.” She waved a graceful hand at the stage. The steps to it were half finished, missing the last two treads. I made the stretch. Jo moved to the back wall, flipped a switch, and the room was dark. She flipped another one and a single spotlight lasered through the darkness to blind and illuminate me. On the stage, in the spotlight, dressed in old black pants and a white shirt with beet stains on the sleeve, I felt underdressed even for a construction site.

  “Sing, Rica.”

  Jo had said she wanted to hear a sad song. All evening, waiting tables, I’d leafed mentally through my repertoire. There were a few good new sad ones; I’d picked up a couple in Middle a year or so ago, in a village on the Mississippi. But the mid-Twentieth Century was enjoying a romantic revival these days, in Redwood and probably in Sierra, too. Jo might follow the fashions in music, as well as in clothing and hair, and somehow I didn’t think she’d be inclined toward Twenty-Teen, so mid-twentieth seemed right. I had settled first on “I’ll Be Seeing You,” rejected that as possibly too hopeful, and veered briefly toward “I’ll Walk Alone,” before I decided finally on the torchiest tragedy of all— “I Wish You Love.” I’d heard Marlene Dietrich’s version of that once on a remake of a very old disk. Dietrich was legend, a god of torch. The song bled tragedy.

  Picturing Sylvia’s sad good-bye face, tight with held-back tears, and breathing deeply to relax and call up reserves of energy and passion, I sang. By the time I got to the bridge— “my breaking heart and I agree”— I was deep into the song, knowing it was right, sure the performance would touch a chord in my audience of one if Jo had ever loved anyone at all and lost for whatever reason. My exhaustion didn’t get in the way, it carried the message.

  I sang into the darkness beyond the glare, and when the song was done, dropped my head, my arms, my shoulders in a spent bow that I hoped looked humble. And waited.

  A second passed. I held my breath.

  The sound of two hands clapping.

  “Brava, Miss Rica. Brava.” The spotlight went out, the ceiling globe came back on, Jo was walking toward the stage. She reached her hand up, helping me down.

  “Lovely. Damned near broke my heart. I hope you’re not really that sad.”

  “Well—”

  “Never mind. The room will be finished, we think—” she emphasized the “think,” raising one dark eyebrow to show that the workers were perhaps not as efficient as she might have wished— “In three days. Be ready to do an hour. We’ll reschedule your restaurant shift around it. Does that suit you?”

  If Jo, perfectly groomed right down to her velvet knickers, said an hour, I thought, she meant exactly an hour.

  “Suits me fine. Thank you.”

  She glanced at the beet stains on my shirt. “Guess we’ll wait until tomorrow to take a photo.” She shot me a quick half-smile to soothe the sting of that. “I’ll set it up. Probably around noon. Wear something gorgeous.”

  We talked about pay, and it wasn’t bad. Another hundred reals a week. Adding it to the restaurant gig made a living wage.

  “Are you vaxed?”

  I thought about saying no, to conceal my income. But then she might have gotten nervous about my health. “Yes.” She didn’t show any reaction at all.

  “Did anyone tell you? —if you stay here, we’ll take care of your boosters.”

  “You’re generous, Jo.”

  She grinned, showing a dimple in her left cheek, a dimple that seemed to be out of character somehow. I wasn’t sure I liked it. Too cute, maybe. “Yes, I am. And so is Judith. You look tired. Go to bed. I’ll let you know when and where on the photos. And when you’ll be starting. Exactly.”

  We walked out of the lounge together, not speaking. With a little salute, Jo turned off and headed toward the mezzanine and Judith’s office. I was on my way to the back door, planning to grab what I could from my car in one trip, when I heard a commotion from the direction of the front of the casino. Yells, cries, metal crashing, glass shattering. Shots and the sssst of lasers! As I ran to the end of a row of slots to take a look, Timmy the headwaiter dashed by, shrieking, Fredo behind him, part of a crowd running for the back door, right toward me.

  Behind them, two big ugly men, heads shaved, dressed in heavy black boots and jackets, one of them clutching a broken chair from the restaurant, the other waving a laser pistol, were shoving their way toward the wide aisle, where they joined a stream of a dozen more just like them crashing through the front door, knocking people down, pushing them aside, blasting holes in slot machines, roaring like hungry cougars. I stepped aside, out of the traffic, half-concealed behind a slot machine. What should I do, run with Timmy and the others?

  Customers were dashing in all directions, screaming; some of them were bleeding. One man, apparently not in the mood to run, grabbed his beer bottle, broke it against the bar, raced between two rows of slots to the wide aisle and lunged for the invader with the chair, who brought it down hard on the brave customer’s arm. He shrieked and dropped to the floor, but got up again and fled. I saw a middle-aged woman in a flowered dress half sitting, half lying against a poker table, holding her right wrist, eyes wide with shock; her shoulder looked wrong; dislocated, probably. I went to her, helped her to shelter behind the bar.

  “Someone will come to take care of you,” I said. She nodded and I turned and looked back at the melée, hoping I’d find a way to make good on that promise.

  That wasn’t going to happen any time soon. At least three of the marauders were armed with guns like mine: new and effective, capable of stunning or killing. One was waving a large blade-studded club wildly in sweeping, bloody arcs as wailing customers tried to run past him out the door, tried to huddle under tables or hide behind machines. Two of the bandits doubled back for the cashier’s cage on the west wall, jumping the counter. Robbery? Was this whole thing about robbery? Two dealers jumped the counter after them, fighting beside the cashier.

  What was I going to do? Wade in, start beating them off? I stood there, undecided, adrenaline firing my weary cells, afraid to show I could fight, even more afraid to show the new, very uncommon weapon I had tucked in my boot. I was supposed to be a waitress, a singer, not a soldier, a cop, a merc. I seemed to be out of the way of the path of destruction, but how much of this could I watch before I had to pull out my pistol and start burning holes through ugly shaved heads? And how would I explain that? Innocent people were getting hurt and I was crouched behind a bar like a victim. I was holding myself so tightly my neck cramped.

  Shouts erupted from the back hallway, access to the stairs and elevator. A tall man with black and yellow striped hair came charging through, leading a gang of half-dressed men and women— all of them, I guessed, employees pulled from their beds to defend the turf— on a collision course with the invaders. He had a gun, I couldn’t tell what kind, and some of the others were carrying knives and guns too. The young busboy, Drew, was with them, racing into battle wielding a cleaver. When they passed, I stepped out into the aisle and grabbed Drew’s shoulder.

  “Who…” I started to ask.

  Drew pulled away, glaring, his eyes wide with excitement and fear.

  “Dunno! Bandits! Mercs!” he yelled back at me. Mercenaries? Could be. There were some who didn’t rely on brainpower to do their jobs. Thugs. The kind who liked to say, “Merc don’t stand for mercy.”

  But if they were more than just bandits, who did they work for? I might have been sent there to spy on the Colemans, but I hated standing by and watching their casino being attacked by guys who looked more like the enemy than they did. I couldn’t stand it any more. I was just reaching into my boot for my laser when Jo, a laser pistol in her hand, raced down from the mezzanine, followed by a wild-eyed teenage girl who seemed to be unarmed except for what looked like one of Judith’s paperweights clutched in her right hand.

  Jo caught up with the tall man’s group just as Drew, howling like
a dog, threw himself onto a wildly shooting merc. The boy went down, still howling, the cleaver dropping from his hand, red blood spreading across his shirt.

  Chapter Six

  About time you got here

  Jo, trembling with adrenaline and rage, pointed her laser at the broad khaki backside of a retreating enemy but in the next second she forgot all about that target. A gut-piercing shriek spun her around, eyes searching desperately for the source of the cry. Lizzie, young Lizzie, still screaming, had dropped to her knees beside a black-clad body, reaching for a cleaver on the floor. A merc stood only a few feet away, taking aim at Lizzie.

  Racing toward him, Jo stumbled over the leg of a broken stool as she fired, only grazing his thigh, but it was enough of a distraction to turn him toward her. Before either Jo or the merc could shoot again, Liz had flown at the invader and chopped him across the neck, dropping him in a wide spray of blood.

  And the man on the floor— wait a minute. Drew! Dressed in his restaurant black. Jo lunged toward him through a red tunnel of rage. Shouts near the door cleared the haze and pulled her eyes back toward the battle, tearing her in two. Samm, fighting hand to hand with two mercs, one of them huge, bigger and heavier than her six-foot-three General. She forced a deep breath, swallowed her sickening fear for Drew, raced to clear-shot range and burned a hole in the giant’s chest. By the time she turned again toward her niece and nephew, Lizzie was back at Drew’s side, bloody footprints marking her trail from the dead merc back to her brother, and that new singer, Rica, was reaching down to Drew.

  Yes! He was shaking his head. Moving.

  Jo exhaled.

  Alive, then.

  He waved Rica away and began trying to get up on his own, blood dribbling down his arm. Maybe not hurt too badly after all.

  Jo focused again on the sounds behind her, the hiss of a laser, the pop-pop-pop of an old pistol, a man screaming, something heavy crashing metallically into something else. Thick glass breaking. A merc ran past her with a big overfilled sack dribbling reals. She shot and winged him, but he kept on running. Damn! Pulled between what was left of the battle and a desire to touch Drew, speak to him, assure herself, she looked around, desperately, and noticed Waldo peeking out from behind a slot machine.