Helluva Luxe

by Essary, Natalie

  The answer is yes.

  Several hundred people showed up to bury her. We had the service in an old university chapel that was set to be demolished. Rubble, dust and cobwebs everywhere, like a tomb. It was every little Goth girl’s fantasy funeral, complete with broken stained-glass windows and a crumbling roof. Lily covered the place in black flowers and lit so many candles the fire marshal should have shut us down. Instead, he showed up with his wife and kids. All of the regulars got up to speak. It took hours, and nobody left.

  All the time she created was returned.

  When the service ended, Ash fired up the tables, and we had a balls-out bash in the chapel courtyard.

  Scandalous, right? It helps to have connections.

  I thought somebody might have to bury me the next morning. Instead, we all went back to an empty bar without our mama. None of us knew what to do with ourselves, or each other, so we shut down, literally and figuratively, for a couple weeks. Until the reading of the will.

  When the lawyer said Zayzl’s name, I almost came up out of my chair. Yeah, that’s right. Mofet left the controlling percentage of the bar to Zayzl. He got forty-six percent. Lily, Ash and I each got eighteen.

  I know it sounds like bullshit at first, but Mofet knew she was our glue. The four of us never would have stayed together after her death without some pull from the grave. She wasn’t a fool for leaving him the bar—she was a mother. And her priority was always her kids, kid number five being the Luxe.

  She wanted Ash in the booth, Lily on the dance floor, and me behind the bar. But she couldn’t snub her only son, so she handed him the keys to the castle. I’m sure she thought he’d grow up eventually. Instead, he hooked up with this greasy-eyed groupie he met at the funeral party. She was giggling too loud and wearing a backpack shaped like an animal. I hated her on sight.

  Zayzl’s ego had no boundaries once he took over the bar. He moved that slimy girlfriend of his in upstairs as soon as the remodel was complete. The remodel was Mofet’s parting gift. She designed a separate room for each of us by extending the old attic, and she installed an antique spiral staircase that led up to a catwalk. Lily’s room was next to Ash’s, while I shared a wall with Zayzl and his tart. Never heard anybody fake it like that in my life. Lily was the only one who even bothered to learn her name. I doubted it was worth the time. Anybody that would go trolling at a funeral… For fuck’s sake, where’s the self-respect?

  It didn’t take long for the regulars to lose interest in her. And for her to get bored sitting alone every night while her boyfriend pretended he could run a bar. When she finally walked out on him, he was floored, never saw it coming. And he was embarrassed. She bounced her stuff down the stairs during business hours, spitting and frothing the whole way out the door.

  So he took it out on Ash.

  He snitched some of her shifts, claiming they were special format nights that required guest DJs. She just took off with Lily. Then he started scheduling her to work the door once a week. So she just got it covered and took off with Lily. See the pattern here? It wasn’t long before the regulars started talking.

  People were afraid Ash wasn’t around because she lost her edge over Mofet’s death. That she didn’t want to be here anymore, and neither did Lily. Zayzl saw his opportunity and fed the rumors, but they didn’t stick. On the nights he did get out of her way and let her spin, she clearly hadn’t lost a thing. In fact, she just kept getting better. The cooler she was, the more he fought to get a rise out of her, but nothing worked.

  There were many theories concerning why she didn’t kick his bony ass on more than one occasion: loyalty to Mofet, loyalty to the bar, she had nowhere else to go, needed the dough, blah, blah, blah.

  I knew the real reason.

  Lily.

  Ash put up with all of it for Lily.

  If the bar was closed, those two were nowhere to be found. They’d take off on Ash’s bike at dawn and come rolling through the doors right when they opened. It drove Zayzl nuts, partly because he was a control freak, and partly because he felt left out. He thought they were up to something, and he scheduled excuses to keep them hanging around, but they were laughable. Like cleaning day. Like Jyhad night.

  He had a valid point, though.

  It felt like the family was fragmenting. But then the sun set, happy hour hit, and the house came to life. Our ability to pack the place was solid, even when nothing else was, and all’s well until dawn.

  But then one night Ash and Lily didn’t show.

  Chapter 10

  I didn’t think anything of it, at first.

  Zayzl stomped up to the booth to put on some music, grumbling about Ash being late. It was such a farce. Everybody knew he’d use any excuse to hop on the board. He annoyed the hell out of my regulars with some off-format crap for about an hour, and then people started trickling through the door, asking for Ash at the main bar. They wandered up to the DJ booth like sheep, confused, disoriented and overdressed, requesting songs Zayzl wasn’t playing. It got nasty. He could’ve won them over that night just by following the damn list, but he was so pissed off they were asking for Ash he didn’t see his opportunity.

  And then I glanced up, and she was standing at the back door alone, dripping all over the floor, dressed in leather with bits of leaves stuck to her face. She looked like the Lady of the Lake’s hot girlfriend. She scanned the room, a little crazy around the eyes. I waved her over with one hand and poured her a shot with the other. My gut told me we were about to get to know one another better, and sure enough, she ducked under my bar, avoiding her usual seat. She tossed back the shot, motioned for another, leaned against the cooler, and lit a cigarette. She didn’t say a word, so I just kept pouring. Finally she looked up at me with an awkward laugh, wiped her nose with the back of her hand and rolled her eyes.

  I knew exactly what she meant.

  Then Zayzl train-wrecked “Enjoy the Silence” into “Personal Jesus,” and Ash’s head snapped around like Beetlejuice. Several painful gasps came from the dance crowd, followed by a round of shrieking from the Moders.

  “He knows that’s the same band twice, right?” I asked.

  “Tough to say.”

  “I’ll get a sitter and meet you in the booth.”

  “Yeah,” she said. She didn’t look away from Zayzl. “Bring the bottle. And one to break over his head. Something cheap.”

  Somehow she made it across the dance floor and up the stairs to the booth without getting ambushed by any crazed dancers with unanswered prayers. I saw her lips move, and then Zayzl took off down the stairs. He grabbed the register tape as he went by the front door and stomped off to the back office like he had work to do. Three of my girls volunteered to step up so I could follow Ash. They’d do anything to keep Zayzl off the board.

  I got the booze she wanted and another pack of smokes. As I was crossing the dance floor, Depeche Mode faded out, and Ash mumbled something over the mic. The bar roared back to life at the sound of her voice. Then she kicked on “Dead Stars,” and they screamed so loud the hair stood up on my arms. I climbed the stairs and sat down in the shadow of a speaker. Ash was bent over the board, setting up the next song. I offered her a smoke when she turned. She looked me dead in the eye, took it, and leaned into my light.

  “Thanks,” she said. She smelled like a thunderstorm.

  I nodded and leaned back against the wall, waiting for her to start talking, tell me where Lily was. Eventually she did.

  “We crashed an art show on the West Side. It was in some empty condo. There were pictures of hot Asian women wearing bugs for clothes.” Then her eyes wandered off a little. “Mofet would’ve dug it. ‘Infectious,’ I think it was called.”

  I nodded. I knew where she was headed already.

  She took another drag, turned away and mixed in “Wasted” by And One. The crowd blew up again. Somebody screamed her name, and she rolled out this grin to beat the devil. When she turned back to me, I got a full dose of it. Almost knocked
me off my seat. She leaned back against the deck and went on with her story.

  “It was the most pretentious bunch of bullshit I’ve ever seen,” she said. “Not the art—the people. The art was decent. We looked around. Then we got a drink and went outside to smoke. It was raining. Lily said she was cold, so I went in for her coat. I got back outside, and she was on the ground. She fell. She was hurt. And instead of helping her up, the bitch got out his camera.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Kendol Strike.”

  She looked like she wanted to hit something, and I thought it might be me. “That’s the one,” she said.

  “You took Lily to a Zombarbie show.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “So you’ve heard of them?” I said.

  “Who hasn’t?”

  She turned like she sensed there was a guy in a skirt and eyeliner coming up the stairs. He leaned over the wall and held out a twenty, said he wanted to hear “A Daisy Chain 4 Satan.”

  “I’m your white rabbit,” Ash replied. She winked at him and slipped the bill in her back pocket. The guy was drooling. He tripped a little when he went back down the stairs. All I could do was shake my head.

  “So where is she?” I asked.

  “She’s with him. At the after-party.”

  I tried not to scowl.

  “Didn’t you say she was hurt?”

  “That, I did.”

  Kendol and Zombarbie were notorious step-siblings, a photographer and his muse, trust-fund babies. They made their name here and then moved out to LA. Every time they blew back through town, the designer elite would piss themselves.

  Kendol could get almost anybody to drop trou for his camera. I’m convinced he struck a deal with somebody higher up than the devil. There were other theories, of course. I heard he doled out illegal party favors, along with cash and clothes. I also heard he had a really big dick, but I prefer to stay in the dark on that one.

  Zombarbie was his first muse. Twisted sister, indeed. I gotta say, that girl makes gore look good, but nobody should be looking at the camera like it’s meat when their brother’s on the other side. They wanted people to wonder. And their scantily-clad scandal nicked the local art world’s attention until higher ups in higher places could see Kendol actually had talent under all that trash. They got so much notoriety off the first show that Z stopped modeling and became Kendol’s full-time promoter, part-time bait. And all of his shows became known as “Zombarbie” shows, even though he’d retired his flesh-eating hottie. I think there’s a print of her left on the office door.

  Anyway, Kendol always had his lens poking out of his pants, looking for the flavor of the month.

  Which is about how long Lily was gone.

  A little over a month.

  Chapter 11

  Later that night, I got the rest of the dirt from my crew. Lily did slip and fall. Got her heel stuck between a rock and a hard place. In fact, her precious, vintage, tea-colored Victorian lace-up had to be cut from her foot. But beforehand, the twisted ankle looked damn good through a camera.

  Her stockings were ripped. Her sheath soaked through with black water. Wet hair plastered across her pale skin. She had a broken cigarette in her hand that was still smoldering, and those purple eyes of hers were on fire. Probably because nobody was helping her.

  You’re damn right Kendol grabbed his camera.

  Can you blame the guy?

  He and his sister had Lily packed in ice and on a plane to LA before the negatives were dry. I’m sure she was crocked those first few days. Kendol’s always been a mobile pharmacy. Who the hell knows when she actually made it to a hospital to get her ankle checked out. Kendol’s assistant called the Luxe two days later to let Zayzl know that Lily wouldn’t be back anytime soon, because she was scheduled for the second half of her shoot. The shoot that was never planned in the first place. We didn’t even get a phone call from Lily herself. It was all cleverly orchestrated.

  And Ash came undone.

  To this day, I still don’t know what all she got mixed up in while Lily was gone. She started drinking a lot more than I’d ever known her to drink. Almost immediately. And her attitude was scaring the shit out of the entire staff. She wasn’t mean, of course. Just unapproachable. Watching her self-destruct was a real bitch, and I was scared it was only a matter of time before she wrecked the booth.

  Zayzl was holding his breath, waiting for exactly that.

  He and Ash started fighting for sport. Whittled it down to an art form, actually. They were like two big open wounds, armed with shakers of salt. It made me nuts. I don’t know how we held onto our crowd. Any other bar would’ve gone belly-up with all the bad mojo flying around.

  Then one night, when I’d decided things couldn’t get any lousier, a purple Escalade rolled up at the door and Lily got out.

  Not the Lily I knew. This one was different.

  Her ankle healed. She wasn’t moving very quickly, but I think the outfit was at fault. She was wearing some scraps of PVC that might have passed as a dress as long as she didn’t try to sit down. She had a tan, for crying out loud, and gold hair extensions to make a mermaid jealous. The didactic duo had given her a wicked makeover.

  The room turned like the tide when she walked in. By that point, everybody had seen the infamous Kendol Strike photographs and heard the tale of Lily’s great discovery. They all wanted a piece of her, more than ever. But she smiled politely and pushed her way forward. I knew who she was looking for.

  The booth was dark. Ash was up there somewhere, in theory, on auto-pilot and whatever else she’d swallowed. I’d seen her right before the doors opened, and she clearly hadn’t slept or showered with any enthusiasm in a long time. I think she might have even been wearing a flannel shirt. No offense, Salem.

  Lily walked right by the booth and came straight for my bar. She crooked a finger at me and leaned over as if she wasn’t being eyed by a huge crowd. “Where is she?” she said.

  “Hello to you, too, sis. How you been?”

  “Didn’t you get my message, Rorke?”

  “Ash is up in the booth,” Zayzl said. He had a nasty leer on his face, and he’d appeared out of nowhere, like a good villain should. “You ought to have a look-see, gorgeous. But I wouldn’t poke the tiger, if I were you.”

  I considered punching him in the mouth.

  Lily just stared at him.

  Zayzl nodded and reached to take her hand. He still had that stupid look on his face, so I grabbed one of my girls to fill in and hopped the bar to follow them. I had a feeling I was about to bust up a fight that had been brewing for a long time.

  Zayzl stepped aside at the bottom of the stairs to the DJ booth and let Lily go up alone. I put myself between them. She stopped at the doorway, staring into the dark. I heard her whisper something, and Ash appeared in front of the board like a phantom. Lily stiffened. She looked back at me, and I nodded toward Ash.

  But it wasn’t Ash. It was Ash’s evil twin who oughta be locked in the attic eating fish heads.

  Lily reached to touch her but pulled her hand back. “You’re wasted,” she said.

  Ash started smiling, but she didn’t look up from the board. And it wasn’t a healthy smile. It was the kind of smile that shows up instead of angry words. She had part of the deck broken open, and a bunch of tools were scattered all over the booth. Bits and pieces and parts everywhere. I was amazed the music was still playing. She had a cigarette dangling from her lip and a screwdriver buried in the board somewhere. I don’t know how the hell she could see what she was twisting at in the dark.

  “You’re filthy, Ash. What’s wrong with you?” Lily’s voice was cold.

  Zayzl moved a little further up the stairs behind me.

  Ash picked up her beer. She drained half of it and leaned in to change the song. She still hadn’t said a word. Lily grabbed her by the shoulder and tried to lock eyes, but it didn’t work, so she started talking fast. I couldn’t make out what she was saying because Ash had l
oaded up “Eat My Dust You Insensitive Fuck” and was sampling it over Tricky.

  It actually sounded pretty good.

  Zayzl started laughing.

  Lily realized what she was hearing and her hands fluttered to her hips. “What are you on? Oh my god.” She held up one of Ash’s shaking hands to prove her point. “Look at you.”

  Ash jerked away and told her to back off so low I almost missed it. I stepped into the booth and Zayzl grabbed my arm.

  “Let Lily see the truth,” he said.

  And that little snap did it. Ash heard him. She yanked her jack out of the board, with the headset still around her neck, and shoved him into the doorframe. When he only smiled, she shoved him again. Then she mumbled something in his ear, pushed her hand into the front pocket of his pants and took off down the stairs.

  He moved toward the board without missing a beat, and Lily just stood there, staring after Ash with her mouth hanging open like she was the one who got shoved.

  “Let her go,” I said.

  She whirled on me. I thought I was about to get an earful, but she looked scared. Finally. And it was clear she had no clue what she’d done to Ash, leaving like she did. Which only made me wonder what else she didn’t know about Ash.

  “Could one of you get the light, please?” Zayzl said.

  I hit the switch a little hard.

  “Easy, Trigger.”

  “Shut up. You’re lucky you’ve got so many witnesses right now,” I said.

  “Jesus, what did she do to this place?”

  All three of us looked around the booth. Once the light was on, we could see it looked like the board exploded.

  “Maybe something is broken,” I said. “I wouldn’t touch any of it. Here. Play this.” I flipped through one of the compilation books and pulled out an old faithful. “Just let it run through. Don’t try and be a hero tonight, please. My heart can’t take it.”