Helluva Luxe

by Essary, Natalie

  You can imagine what it was like around here without her. Bleak and depressing. The worst waiting line ever. The fact that she took off was a big screaming hole in the room. In every room. If it weren’t for Chance, I’d have gone nuts or gone after her myself. But he took over the booth, and I wasn’t about to leave him alone with Zayzl and Lily, for crying out loud.

  The worst bit was that it didn’t get any easier without her. Time heals all wounds, my ass.

  When I wasn’t fantasizing about jumping off bridges, I felt like something was watching me. Seriously, we should’ve lost half our regulars. I got so surly I’m surprised my crew wanted anything to do with me. But we didn’t lose anybody. They just kept showing up and asking about Ash. And the family just kept smiling and pouring everybody lies. We didn’t know what to do, other than act like she was coming home. Even after months went by and still no one had heard from her.

  Kendol and Zombarbie started showing up more often. In their defense, they seemed legitimately worried about Lily. She was nearly a ghost. She put on a pretty good show, but I don’t know who she thought she was fooling. Underneath it all she was broken.

  Kendol saw his opportunity and took it.

  He rented a penthouse here in town and made a big show of giving Lily a key in front of everyone. She didn’t move out of her room upstairs, but I started seeing less and less of her. Art shows, rock stars and after-parties. She didn’t have a reason to turn down any of it anymore. And she was making a pretty fortune off her new lifestyle. I knew because she stacked it up in one of our wall safes instead of taking it to a bank. When I asked about her piles of cash, she waved me off.

  “What if something happened to the bar, Lily? We’re not insured for this kind of cash. You’d lose it all.”

  “Nothing is going to happen to the bar. But if it makes you uncomfortable, I can move it.”

  “It’s your comfort I’m curious about.”

  She sighed. “I want you to have access to it, Rorke. You never know what you might need it for that doesn’t belong in the books. Comprendre?”

  “Oui. But now you’re scaring me.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Lily, I swear, if you take off, I’ll close the bar and hunt you down.”

  “I’m not chasing her, Rorke.”

  After that she stopped mentioning Ash in front of me. I could still see right through her, and I wasn’t the only one. Chance had an entire list of songs he pulled from the books for fear they’d send her flying over the edge again if she heard them. She stopped doing her work. Stopped decorating. Stopped dancing. Stopped charming the room. Luckily, Zayzl wanted Kendol and Z around so badly, he didn’t say shit to Lily about incense and string lights. It was enough for him if she just showed up. And since he decided Ash was gone for good, he’d moved on to the second part of his scam. He wanted Lily married to Kendol as soon as possible so he’d have a guaranteed invitation to the proverbial party. He was on his best behavior. When Kendol and Z were watching, at least.

  So things were quiet, you know?

  Not the good kind of quiet.

  Waiting at the bus stop is a shitty place to be.

  But you know about that, don’t you, Nick?

  I leaned forward, pushed a bite of truffle into her mouth, and looked her dead in the eye. I was not about to answer her question. She smiled like she was on to me and slowly licked her lip.

  “Sometimes the bus is the only way,” I said.

  “Nonsense. That’s what Ash thought, too.”

  “Then, where did she go?” I asked.

  “To clean up,” she said. “And come back loaded.”

  Chapter 21

  We’d just opened. My favorite time of night is the beginning, but this night was different.

  Light spilled in through the open doorway onto the worn rug. The city birds were flipping out over the September sunset. Huge flocks of them circling all over downtown. Hitchcock would’ve cracked a smile, for sure. There was a zap in the air. I could smell it. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but something was going to happen. Even if I had to go looking for Lady Trouble myself.

  Honestly, it was the first time I felt moderately okay since Ash walked out the door. And I was scared out of my mind to acknowledge it, because then it might disappear. So I tiptoed around myself.

  Chance hoofed it to the bar up the road to get us chicken-fried steaks, and I said I’d spin a few in his place. The booth was cool and dark. Zayzl was gone for the whole weekend. This all seemed like reason enough to party to me.

  I lit a stick of Lily’s incense and flipped through Chance’s stuff. I had a smoke in one hand and a drink in the other. I slipped on some Wolfsheim before I had a chance to talk myself out of it. The Ernst Horn remix of “Heroin She Said” makes me feel… Well, it makes me feel. Ash used to play it for me. She always seemed to know when I needed it.

  So I was listening. Not just hearing, but listening. And the club was still empty. I started to zone out a little. I remember my vision shifting out of focus. I was fighting to remember her face. Her voice. Her smile. Something. I needed her.

  Then a red light cut hard with the beat. And there she was. Leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed over her chest like she’d never left.

  Fire jumped from my boots to my gut.

  She grinned. Then she took a long tug on the bottle in her hand and said, “Nice choice, bartender.”

  I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw my arms around her and scream like a little girl, but I was scared she wasn’t real.

  Seven nasty long months.

  My god, she hurt my eyes. She looked incredible, an amped up version of her former self.

  “I don’t know where you’ve been,” I said. “But it suits you.”

  “You don’t want to know where I’ve been.”

  We watched one another for a long time without saying anything else. Out loud, at least. Then the song tapered down, and she leaned into me. “Where is she?”

  I looked away.

  “Get her here, Rorke. Please. And don’t tell her I’m back.”

  I nodded.

  The music kicked up. The lights cut across her face, and she took another tug on her bottle. Then she leaned around me and melted the beginning of “Fascination Street” to the end of Wolfsheim. She had her fingers on the controls. Fade one in. Fade one out. When she turned her head, her face was inches from mine.

  “Here’s to Helluva,” she said. And then she disappeared down the stairs.

  My heart stopped. Just for a second.

  My next instinct was to go kick Lily’s ass for being so stupid. But instead I decided to raid Chance’s stash. You never know what you’re gonna find inside those speakers, and I had to stop shaking before I went looking for Lily at Kendol’s.

  Chance came back with our food, and the jig was up the second he saw my face. He shook his head at me.

  “First of all, yes, you can have some of my shit.”

  I snorted. I’d snuck out back to spark up a pin bone during “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” It’s the bathroom break song for Goth DJs the world over, because it’s about a billion minutes long. And if you loop it nobody notices.

  “And secondly?” I could feel my hair growing.

  “You tell me, toots. You only multi-medicate when things get interesting.”

  “Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down,” I said. I flicked my eyebrows at him, but I’m not sure they both went up at the same time.

  “Jesus, how much did you smoke?”

  I slowly shook my head.

  His mouth fell open. “Shit. You’re not kidding, are you?”

  “I wouldn’t kid about this.”

  “Where’s Lily?”

  “Kendol’s.”

  “Did you tell her that?”

  “Not in so many words. I’m sure she figured it out.”

  “Wanna ride the board some more?”

  I nodded.

  “Be back in a bit. Don’t eat my p
ickle spear.”

  I handed him my car keys, and he left to get Lily, shoving a handful of fries in his face and taking the stairs two at a time.

  I popped in “Sparks are Gonna Fly.”

  One of my girls brought me a shot, but I fed it to an obliging Drakondia. And Chance’s ass was gone for-freaking-ever. Way more than a bit. He bounded up the stairs, did a little bump and grind to the Ministry I was playing, and then explained what took so damn long. Since he didn’t tell Lily why he needed to steal her away, she insisted on a shower and a change of clothes. He was eyeing his untouched takeout from the bar up the road and fondling his lukewarm beer as he talked.

  “Was Daddy home?” I said.

  “Noooo. Gone for the weekend with Z.”

  “Where’d you park Lily?”

  “At your bar. She knows nothing. She’s waiting to say hello to you.”

  “Clever man.”

  “I have my moments. They’re even better with coagulated gravy.”

  “Did you spot Houdini?” I handed him the box.

  “Nada.”

  “Shit. What if I hallucinated her?”

  “You didn’t. She’s here. I can feel her lurking. I’d bet my pickle on it.”

  “‘Keep your pickle in your pants, college boy, and leave the hard stuff to me.’”

  “Swayze. Seriously dude, how much did you smoke?”

  “I’ll bring you another beer,” I said.

  “And a dart gun, if you’ve got it. All Lily did the whole damn way over here was talk about the fashion show and that manly man of hers with the jet in his pants.” He rolled his eyes and ate a fry. “If they’ve done it, I’m Captain Kangaroo. I liked her better when she was a dyke.”

  “Yeah, honey. Me, too.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “You know those songs you haven’t played since Ash left?”

  He nodded. “They’re under three inches of dust.”

  “Spin ’em all. One right after another.”

  His face lit up. “Right on, sister.”

  I clinked his bottle and left the man alone with his pickle.

  Chapter 22

  Ash was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, leaning against the wall in her leather pants with one boot kicked up on the doorframe. Her eyes flashed when she saw me. She was definitely up to something.

  “Lily’s at my bar.”

  “I know.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Yep. But I might not answer.”

  “You heard us talking the night you left, didn’t you?”

  “That I did.”

  “She hasn’t married him,” I said.

  She took a drink from her bottle, watching me. I couldn’t read her at all.

  “Don’t give her any more room, okay?”

  “She left me no choice, Rorke. I had to split.”

  I nodded.

  I figured if she wanted me to know where she went, she’d tell me. “Your room’s where you left it. I think I had it cleaned last week.” I was stalling. I wanted her to swear to me she’d never take off again. “Um, there’s something else you need to know about Lily.”

  She reached for the cigarette in my hand and took a drag.

  “She’s…not well. When you aren’t here, I mean.”

  “I do know what you mean.”

  “But I don’t think you do, Ash. I’m not talking about a few extra beers and a little dirty hair. This is something else.”

  “What did you see?”

  “She’s fragmented. And carved like a pumpkin under all those fancy clothes. Sometimes she seems like she’s somebody else, and she’s been showing up less and less. I don’t know how much longer she can hold it together.”

  Ash’s expression remained completely unreadable.

  “You knew,” I said.

  “Why do you think I do what I do?” She drained her beer. Then she put her arm around me and said a few creative phrases about how good it was to see me again. When I went looking for Lily, Ash disappeared up into the booth with Chance.

  He was right. Lily was waiting for me behind my bar. She was chatting up three of my girls about the history of fairies in France and serving everybody drinks. She kept looking wistfully up at the DJ booth. The music was getting to her.

  I played dumb. “You okay, hon?”

  She nodded, but her smile was off. “I haven’t heard this song in a while, is all.”

  I ducked under the bar to take over, but she stopped me. “No, Rorke. You sit down with your friends for once. I need to do this right now. If that’s okay.”

  “Of course it’s okay.”

  She smiled, seemed relieved, and went back to mixing drinks.

  “You look incredible tonight, Lily. I don’t know what it is. Something’s different.”

  She cocked her head at me like she wasn’t falling for my line. I waggled my eyebrows at her, and she giggled.

  “I like it,” I said. “That’s all I meant.”

  Her mermaid mane was down for once. She looked like a creature that should be put back in the wild, an endangered species of downtown. And she was wearing a black and silver drummer dress that probably doubled as lingerie. But what really tipped me off was the red brocade kimono. She left it hanging open. She couldn’t seem to stop fingering the silk.

  “Yes, it’s hers. It’s Ash’s. If that’s what you’re wondering. She left it behind. I don’t know why I put it on. I can smell her.”

  I was scrambling for a response to that when Chance arrived just in time to save my ass. He slid onto the next barstool and nudged me in the ribs. He had a meat-eating grin on his face.

  “She’s riding the board?”

  He nodded. “Grab us some booze, baby. Hurry.”

  I think I frowned or scowled, whichever is more assertive.

  “Seriously, dude. You don’t wanna miss this. Trust me.”

  He pointed his empty beer toward the dance floor and then hopped the bar himself. He was lightning quick. He lit a smoke, handed it to me, and was back at my side with liquor in seconds.

  Lily resumed flirting with my crew. She was oblivious.

  The song ended, and silence followed, which usually only happens by mistake. Then the lights over the dance floor hissed and flickered off like the power had gone out. Chance nudged me again just as something lilting trickled down through the speakers. Lily’s lips quit moving, mid-word, and she turned toward the music.

  She knew what it was.

  “Inertia Creeps.”

  Ash’s finest weapon. A massive attack, indeed. A song that could lure Lily to the dance floor, even if she were six feet under. She looked over at Chance like she thought there might be two of him. He grinned at her, and she nearly dropped the drink she was pouring.

  A murmur rippled through the room.

  She looked back up at the booth. It was black as night. Then she looked over at me, and I nodded. That was all it took.

  She lifted the gate and started toward the dance floor, floating like a funeral march. Her boots hit in time. She never took her eyes off the DJ booth.

  A halo of red light kicked up with the beat.

  And there she was. This silhouette high above the dance floor.

  Unmistakably Ash.

  The bar went mad.

  She was leaning against the deck, all leather and attitude, ropes of hair falling across her face, a cigarette hanging from her lip.

  I heard the breath catch in Lily’s throat, heard it inside my head. She stalked out to the center of the empty dance floor, and red light flooded the space where she stopped. She started to move just as the words began, and the crowd came undone.

  Then a sheer black drape fluttered over the wall of the booth to the dance floor, and the lights flashed again. Fucking Ash dropped fifteen feet, and Lily hit the ground like a jungle cat, crouching in her thigh-high boots.

  Their eyes locked.

  They circled one another, tangled together like licks of fire an
d circled again.

  I’m telling you, I’ve never seen two bodies move that tightly and never actually touch. It was agonizing. I couldn’t blink. We should’ve sold tickets. There wasn’t a soul in that bar who wasn’t hypnotized. It was as if Ash and Lily were completely alone on that dance floor. In front of three hundred people.

  Lily shed her red kimono, and it fluttered to the floor in a bloody puddle. Then Ash snaked an arm around her neck and bent her backward. She whispered something in Lily’s ear, and I’d have given a limb to hear it.

  When the song ended, the cheering was of the caliber only dogs can hear. Lily and Ash slipped right out the back door.

  And Chance and I just stared at one another.

  “You knew about that?” I finally said.

  “No. No, I didn’t. I knew what song she was playing. And I saw her shimmy out onto the catwalk and switch the bulbs over the dance floor. I did not, however, know she could bend like that. And I certainly didn’t know she could fly.”

  “You should’ve guessed.”

  “I see that now.”

  “My life will never be the same. My standards have skyrocketed.”

  “Ditto.”

  “Where do you think they went?”

  He cocked his head like a dog and listened for a beat. “Well, she set us up with the extended remix of ‘Hot!Hot!Hot!’ I’d say they won’t be back anytime soon.”

  “Well, get on up there, DJ.”

  “I can’t stand up right now.”

  I fake frowned at him. “Wanna trade places for the night?”

  “No. No way. Your ladies likey the fresh meat. They’re gonna be all wound up, and I haven’t got the strength. I need some alone time. I need Poésie Noire.”

  “‘Pity for the self’?”

  “Not tonight, baby.” He winked and disappeared.

  Chapter 23

  Ash and Lily were gone for three days.