by Chloe Garner
“Any other questions, gentlemen?”
“How’s the producing mine doing?” someone called. Jimmy shook his head.
“We settle the books monthly. That’s when we’ll take our charge for protection.”
“That’s private information,” Sarah said indignantly. “We aren’t going to share among any of the rest of you. Why would we tell you about that one?”
“Because that’s your evidence,” Maxim said. “If that one fails, what expectation do we have that any of us are going to find absenta?”
She looked at him.
“That’s not just gambler logic. That’s bad gambler logic. We used what we knew about the existing claim to help identify likely pockets of absenta in other areas, but it’s nowhere near as strong a correlation as you’re implying. The best-performing claim could very easily be one of yours.”
Maxim looked at her wrists. She slapped him. It wasn’t a big slap, but it was enough to let him know she’d seen it and she was done with it. He raised an eyebrow, not at all put off, and she tipped her head back to look down her nose at him.
“Any other questions?” Jimmy asked. He glanced at Sarah, then looked around the room again. “Sarah and I will stay for another thirty minutes. Choose your bids, get them to her, and we will be in contact once we’ve matched bids to foremen. We will both be unavailable for at least the next several days, but you are claim owners. Feel free to do whatever you think you need to, to get your mines up and running, including sending people to Lawrence, or visiting in person. Petey and the rest of the boys are there, and they can put you up at the house, if that’s what you want.”
“They know where our claims are?” someone asked. Jimmy shook his head.
“Not until they go active. When you’ve got men up there putting holes in the ground, we’ll start a patrol that will stop in routinely, but until then, less men up in the hills means it’s easier to keep those locations secret. Right now, only Sarah, you, and any individuals you choose to tell know where your individual claims are.”
That seemed to satisfy them, and Jimmy settled in his chair, signaling the end of the meal. Several men left straight away, and others mingled, picking up conversations around the room. Maxim scribbled something on a piece of paper and slid it over in front of Sarah with a wink, then stood and left. Sarah took her time flipping it over.
“Fifty-fifty it’s something obscene,” Jimmy murmured, and Sarah nodded without looking at him.
She got eight more bids, in all, including the one at the end of Maxim’s suggestive note, and she tucked those away in with the money, waiting for the rest of the men to leave. She looked at Jimmy.
“Well?”
He nodded, still watching the empty room.
“It’s going to be tricky for a while,” he said. “But that was well done. You put your stake in for the boys of Lawrence, and we’re getting them closer to pulling ore out of the ground.”
“If there is any,” Sarah murmured, and he stood, offering her a hand. She stood, picking up the case of money and carrying it to the curtain. Delphus was standing on the other side.
“Your meal was satisfactory?” he asked. Jimmy took out a stack of bills - Sarah intentionally avoided knowing how much money those bills represented - and then shook Delphus’ hand.
“Thank you for your accommodation,” Jimmy said.
“Will you be in town long?” Delphus asked. Jimmy shook his head.
“No, we won’t be back through, this trip. How’s business?”
“Good, good,” Delphus said. “Well, we look forward to serving you, next time.”
Jimmy gave him a nod and they were walking again.
Outside, Sarah paused, indicating it was time for Jimmy to summon a car, but Jimmy just kept walking, the way she’d known he would.
Her fingers brushed against his jacket when he took her hand in his, and she sensed more than felt the gun there, but it didn’t make enough difference.
“Every one of those men knows how much is here,” she said, and Jimmy gave her a playful smile without looking over at her.
“None of them would cross me for that,” he answered. “And you cut a striking figure, like that. No one’s going to stop you, not to mention both of us.”
“Risk with no purpose,” Sarah said.
“I like it,” he answered, again just the corner of his mouth coming up, and his fingers wrapping tighter around her hand. She let the half cape settle over her shoulder, but it left the case completely visible. There was a knack to not having your entire posture point at something like that, and it revolved around forgetting that you were even carrying it. The more she thought about it, the more she was painting herself as a target. For his part, Jimmy walked casually enough, his thumb playing across her knuckles.
The sunlight was nearly gone from the sky, and the stars were visible overhead. It wasn’t like in Lawrence, where the view felt like something had opened the box that normally contained the sky. Here, street lights and buildings and noise made the stars just look like pinpricks of light keeping the moons company.
“We’ll use the safe at the hotel,” she said.
“There’s one at the room,” he said. “I set the combination while you were dressing.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“The same as your father’s safe,” he answered, and she nodded. The safe in the floor under her pa’s desk was old-school, just a mechanical lock, one that assumed that the safe would never contain anything really worth getting out of it. Presumably, the safe at the hotel would have a biometric scanner on it of some kind. Technically, she could have insisted that Jimmy let her reset the safe to her own settings, given the contract they had, but she wasn’t going to push it. Good faith went both ways.
“Are you comfortable in that?” he asked.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she answered.
“We aren’t staying in. Yet.”
“Is that so?”
He nodded.
“More places to be seen.”
“By whom?”
“Everyone.”
--------
Everyone turned out to be a night club with a blue-lit bar and a blue-skinned bartender.
“Is that back in?” she asked, sitting down at a small table across from Jimmy.
“What’s that?”
“The whole-body skin dye thing. It was just going out of style when I was in Oxala. The richer a kid was, the more likely he was to make fun of it.”
“Never saw it,” Jimmy said. “I guess it’s back.”
She looked around.
“Either that or this isn’t as prestigious a club as you think it is.”
He narrowed his mouth a fraction, then put up a finger. A waitress came to stand next to him.
“What can I get for you, Mr. Lawson?”
“Two absenta freefalls,” he said, and the woman glanced at Sarah with mild, polite curiosity, then left.
“Mr. Lawson?” Sarah asked.
“Even after all this time,” Jimmy said with a shallow smile.
“You spend a lot of time here?” she asked. He wiggled a shoulder, looking out at the room.
“Nuke has done a good job with it,” he said. “He ought to, though. I pay him enough.”
“You…?” Sarah said, and Jimmy nodded.
“Welcome to my Preston nightclub and onetime base of operation,” Jimmy said, looking around the room with memories in his eyes. “If there were one accomplishment in my time away from Lawrence I wanted you to see, it’s this one.”
Sarah leaned back in her chair, trying to see what he saw.
A blue-lit bar. A blue-skinned bartender. Black carpet. Wall lighting that invoked great sea creatures, and a dance floor and stage that were, at present, both empty.
“Didn’t figure you for the dance scene type,” she said. He gave her a sideways smile, watching her face.
“I don’t dance,” he said. “But men like women who do, and women like m
usic to dance to.”
He spread his hand to the side, as if introducing her to the stage, then let it fall back to the table.
“Just… unexpected.”
“What would you have expected?” he asked.
“A bar, maybe.”
One eyebrow ticked up a fraction.
“After what my mother thought of them?”
“You have a bar here, Lawson,” Sarah said. “All you did was try to make it trendy instead of pragmatic.”
The corners of his mouth dropped just a bit and he looked at the dance floor again.
“A bar is a place that men go to get drunk. A night club with a live band just has alcohol to help with enjoying yourself.”
She could see it in his eyes, just for a moment. Lust. Looking at dancers in his mind. His eyes jerked back to her and she tipped her head back, letting him know she’d seen it.
“Who?”
He shook his head.
Pressed his lips.
The waitress brought two glasses, each as far across as they were tall, with a clear fluid that might have been blue. She gave Jimmy a little nod and left, and Jimmy sipped his drink, nodding.
“Still as good as it always was.”
Sarah watched him. He shook his head once more, acknowledging the unanswered question.
“It isn’t a who,” he said, swallowing and looking off to the side again as he held himself over his drink. “It was a buffet.”
Sarah snorted, touching her glass with a fingertip.
“Might have been better for you to lie and say it was just one.”
He shook his head.
“We were young. New. Leaving Lawrence… Suddenly we weren’t looking around at two dozen women trying to figure out who was going to get who. There were more women than we could even remember, night to night.” He looked at her, his tongue pinched between his front teeth. “We gorged.”
She nodded slowly.
“I see.”
He sat back in his chair again, the memory passing.
“I would have given anything for you to be here with us. Like your first few letters from college.”
She nodded, remembering that same feeling. That the whole world was hers, and that no one there was conditioned with anything near the same precision as her to consume it whole. Looking back, it had always been that way. People had always put money in her hand, buying hope.
“You get past it, though,” she said. Not having him there, for the first time in her life, she’d been lonely, and not having someone to talk to about her plans, her ideas, her exploits… It was like losing the other half of her own mind. But by the end, everything existing only in her own mind, not having to worry about what sharp turn Jimmy was suddenly going to take, expecting her to just adapt and keep going… It had been free. He could see it, and he nodded.
“Yes.”
“I missed you, but I didn’t need you,” she said simply.
“Yes. This was when I still needed you,” he told her.
She’d been back in Lawrence, watching her pa die.
He’d been here, raptoring after women.
“How many?” she asked after a moment of silence. He took another sip of his drink.
“How many what?”
She raised an eyebrow, and he shook his head.
“You weren’t here.”
“I didn’t say I was.”
He looked around, mischief in his eye when he came back to her again.
“It was a score-six, back then,” he said. Twenty-six and over. No restrictions of any kind on the activity that could go on publicly in a twenty-six and over establishment, so long as it was legal and they didn’t have windows.
“So Thomas and Yip?” Sarah asked.
“Just Yip,” Jimmy said. “Thomas turned twenty-six that year. We’d leave Yip at home and we’d come here, all five of us in one car, and we wouldn’t leave until there were ten of us. Sometimes Petey would be on his second or third by then.”
She nodded. It was a slap. Intentional, open-handed, and cool. The mischief had slipped to stone, at some point, just there. She swallowed, watching hard gray eyes.
“I’m not going to pretend I’m not surprised,” she said. “I expected more from Thomas.”
There was the surprise, as her rebound struck him, and then humor.
“Try your drink,” he said.
“I’m not thirsty.”
“I named it for you,” he said, letting his eyes drop as he took another drink, then looked away. Somehow that - that - was more exposed than telling her about taking women home for nothing more than sex.
“Absenta…” she said, not remembering what he’d called it.
“Absenta freefall,” he said.
“Blue,” she said. He nodded.
“All of the branding around absenta is blue. I didn’t know why until more recently, but I knew…”
She looked around the room once more.
Methane blue.
“You sentimentalist,” she said, still looking. She heard him laugh.
“Jimmy Lawson?” someone asked. “Is that you? How long has it been?”
“Six years, give or take,” Jimmy said, putting his feet down on the floor and sliding down from his chair to shake hands with a man Sarah hadn’t seen before. Jimmy motioned to her.
“Garth, this is my wife, Sarah Todd. Sarah, this is an old friend from our Preston days, Garth Warcress.”
She gave him a tight smile.
“Hello.”
“Hadn’t heard you’d gotten married,” Garth said.
“Hadn’t thought that kind of news would make the rounds, anyway,” Jimmy answered, and Garth laughed.
“You know Jemima still has intentions for you,” he said. Jimmy laughed, just a little too open, a little too careless. Garth didn’t matter. Sarah turned her attention away as the two men talked for a few minutes, then the stranger was gone and Jimmy was sitting across from her again.
“So have you been seen yet?” she asked.
“I wanted you to like this place,” he said.
“Why would I?” she answered. “It’s a sex temple to the riches you left Lawrence to chase.”
His face went hard.
“I have never loved anyone but you,” he said. “You know that.”
She had a hard time even explaining to herself why it bothered her, and she certainly wasn’t going to try to put it into words for him. Being with him felt natural and easy and right, and Sarah had never considered herself to be an insecure woman, but knowing the number of women he’d been with in his life, the experience that they had, the knowledge that they had that you only got firsthand… It made it feel like he was patronizing her, and it that all by itself made her angry.
Mercifully, someone else recognized Jimmy and approached to talk to him. This time, Jimmy didn’t introduce her. That was fine enough for her. Unthinking, she took a big swallow of her drink. It hit her completely differently than she would have expected.
There was no heat, no burn that made her breath stop when the alcohol hit the back of her throat.
She breathed it for several moments, closing her eyes to find the flavor that was eluding her.
There was alcohol there, she could feel it, she could smell it, but it wasn’t liquor.
“It’s called loft,” Jimmy said. She opened her eyes, finding that the new man had moved on again and Jimmy was in his seat once more.
“I don’t…” she said, twisting her head to the side and blinking, trying to work it out.
“It’s expensive,” Jimmy said. “I think we might be the only club in Preston that serves it.”
“What is it?”
He shrugged.
“Loft. It’s a native plant.”
It had a soft, breathy feel at the back of her throat, like she could taste air.
“Do you like it?” he asked.
“Wasn’t what I was expecting,” she said, taking another sip.
“You thought I’d n
ame a drunkmaker after you?”
“If you wanted it to be popular,” she answered, and he smiled.
“It’s a connoisseur’s drink,” he agreed. “But it’s popular enough.”
She did like it.
She didn’t want to admit it, even if she knew he already knew, but she did like it. It suited her. It had a distinct flavor, rather than just going for as much alcohol as possible.
“Why is it blue?” she asked.
“It flowers blue,” he answered. “There’s a city way upcoast that has a loft festival every year when the crop comes in, but we buy it fresh from a greenhouse all year.”
She nodded, allowing herself one more sip, then pushing it away again. She was still angry at him.
“Are you done?” she asked.
A man came out onto the stage.
“Good evening, everyone. Hope you’re enjoying your night, here at Wild Blue. We have a special act for you tonight. You know them as Right Peeled Toads, but we launched them eight years ago as Underlight, and they’re back tonight as a special tribute to the club that started their career. So. I give you, Right Peeled Toads.”
He took a step to the side, and a man with shoulder-length hair and black clothes came out from behind a curtain, humming with his eyes closed. Musicians appeared one at a time, setting up as he hummed, and one by one, they began playing.
“Dance with me,” Jimmy said.
“No,” Sarah answered.
She couldn’t look away from the lead singer, something about the way he stood, the way he made noise that was hypnotic. There were words, now, but she only understood them at a subconscious level. She couldn’t identify them individually.
“Please,” Jimmy said. “I’ve wanted to dance with you here…”
She looked at him finally.
“We don’t dance, Jimmy. Either of us.”
“I can think of a lot of things we don’t do, but there’s no reason why not.”
“There’s a reason,” she said, looking back at the singer. The music was picking up tempo, the tone of the song was changing, a story forming about breaking and coming back from it, strength and beauty and confidence. Idealistic, certainly, but artistically enchanting. Sarah didn’t like being taken away from herself like that.
