Mr. Montgomery certainly looked tough, Sailor Kingston thought, and his curt law enforcement Q & A style made a nice contrast with the rugged country-boy exterior. She briefly imagined him in a cowboy hat, tight jeans with a big buckle on a leather belt, and rattlesnake-skin boots. In Brooklyn. Riiiiight. He wasn’t a cowboy; he was a security man, and yet underneath the professional exterior, he was probably a mixed-up marshmallow like his cousin, Harper.
As she snapped her laptop shut, Sailor managed to block out the drunken bellowing that penetrated her office door from the barroom. The stink of smoke – since The Hole was now a city-licensed smoking-allowed establishment – was harder to ignore. Both her parents had smoked like factory stacks, but she didn’t care for those things, unlike some of her college girlfriends who had smoked to avoid eating so they could keep fitting into skintight outfits and balancing their skeletal forms atop $1500 Jimmy Choos. None of those girlfriends were in her life anymore. Her parents were gone since their two-engine plane went down. Her sister was in Australia as an anthropologist pretending to care about aborigines. No one was in her life anymore.
She told herself that her bouncer, Axl, was there to deal with the noisy bellowing. Axl was tall and had tattooed arms. Those were plusses for barroom brawling, weren’t they?
A blast of music entered her office as her cocktail waitress Gabby burst in, and subsided as the door clicked shut. Gabby was holding her phone, an older model LG, which was still lit with a text message. Her face was wet. Had Ugly Ike, the one-eyed ex-firefighter, splattered beer in her face again? If so, Ugly Ike was due to be thrown out once more, assuming she could get Axl to stir himself to do it. But no, those were tears. Tears were uglier than Ugly Ike. There should be no crying at work; in fact, as she saw it, there should be no crying.
No one named Kingston ever cried or complained. After all, her mother said, that doesn’t really help, does it? When you’re done crying, the problem is the same. Mother Kingston’s motto was, “Solutions not sadness.” She also said, “Brush away your bad feelings; they are unworthy of someone of your stature.”
Gabby wiped her tears with the back of her hand. “Sailor, I have a family emergency.”
Yeah, right, Sailor thought. With her lip piercing and leather vest, she was the type who’d get a call to bail her bullying boyfriend out of jail. #GetAGripOnYourLifeGirl. “It’s busy. I need you.”
“I know.”
“Tips will be better.”
“I’d rather stay, Sailor. But it’s an emergency. I have to go. I’m just letting you know.”
What would it take to strengthen the young woman’s commitment to her job? “Gabby, you know I’d like to pay you extra, but I already pay a better salary than other bars in the area.”
“It’s not money, Sailor!” Gabby wiped her eyes again, waved her phone. “It’s an emergency, I told you. I’m going. You won’t fire me, right?”
“No, I won’t fire you. I really can’t, can I? I mean, you know what to say, playing the family emergency card.”
Gabby pounded her thighs with her fists. “C’mon, Sailor. Shit! It’s serious.”
Sailor reached into the open safe on the floor behind her, sorted a twenty and a fifty from the loose cash there. She stuffed it in Gabby’s hand. “Go take care of the emergency. Here’s a little extra if you need it. Okay? Give me a call later and let me know you’re okay.”
Gabby snorted. “Yeah, okay. Okay, thanks, Sailor.” She turned on her heel to leave and left the door open.
Sailor slammed the safe shut, then tied on a waitress apron. She’d be doing Gabby’s job tonight – again – and would have to stay late to do the books. At least The Hole was making money, for now. She headed out into the brouhaha that was her place of business.
In the barroom she found Pippi, the bartender, whose silk shirt was open in the front to reveal a red bra and breasts tattooed with one broken heart apiece. There also was Axl, the bouncer, a towering lean man with too many buttons undone to expose his pale soft chest, and his sleeves torn away to show off heavily tattooed arms. Both were leaning on the bar engrossed in the messages on their phone screens. Axl was just setting down a shot glass. He’d long claimed he only drank club soda from those, and Sailor hadn’t been able to find evidence otherwise, but it was still annoying.
The brightly painted walls in the interior of The Hole were stained with beer and food spills that sponge and soap would not get out. The crazy geometry, like the giant projecting corbel of pipes hanging over the stage and the triangular skylight over the ladies’ room, were a nice match with the shiny chrome and red vinyl barstools ringing the circular bar, but did too little to erase the atmosphere created by raucous laughter and shouted profanities.
Ugly Ike occupied one side of the circular central bar area on his own. He smelled, and he spilled his drinks on others with aplomb. A knot of bikers was hanging out at two tables near the jukebox. Sailor’s twice-a-week guitarist, the wispy-bearded Amsterdam transplant, Pieter, had already finished his set and was having a burger at a table near the stage. There was a couple drinking on another side of the bar, a rangy muscular man with shiny boots and a sour-faced woman in an unseasonable sweater, a black skirt, and, naturally, shiny boots that were an absurd shade of lavender. Next to them, two businessmen in shirt sleeves and loosened ties kept scanning the room for potential dangers. A few more patrons were less noticeable: jittery-looking couples on dates, two biker women with tall-boys, an old man who had achieved stuporous slumber with his head tilted back.
Sailor moved from table to table and took a few orders. Rum Collins, Russian River Blind Pig IPA – that was moving pretty well, based on her POS system – two vodka and Cokes, “whatever you got on tap that’s cheap,” a hot dog with five different condiments, a bag of potato chips. She was going to mark up the chips, since they were a brand rarely seen in Brooklyn, and people were curious about them.
She gave the orders to Pippi, and added, “You want to close a couple of buttons, please?”
“I’m too sore from the new ink,” Pippi answered.
“Then put on a sweatshirt, okay?”
“I don’t have one.”
“Look – this place isn’t about showing off your tits – or your tats. Look it up in the employee manual.”
Pippi smirked as she filled a mug with draft. “It has too many typos in it.”
Sailor’s neck flushed hot – something her late mother had used to complain about that she had unluckily inherited. Sailor turned her body, felt her ankle twist as one of her feet did not follow suit. Her heel was caught in a hole in the floor – the hole made by the steak knife a drunk had dropped while trying to slash another drunk the week before. The tray with the mug wobbled as she regained her balance, and beer sloshed out and splattered the sour-faced woman in the stupid outfit.
“The hell?” the woman demanded. “Watch what you’re doing, you clumsy twit!”
“I’m sorry,” Sailor said.
“Sorry, huh? Sorry about my cashmere sweater?”
“Yeah, I bought her that,” said the tall man, whose shiny boots had a red and orange fire pattern on the side. #ThatsTackyDude
Sailor’s neck burned as she blurted, “Looks more like a cotton-polyester blend.” Whoops. #Don’tBitchAtBitches #TheyBitchBack
“Goddamn it,” the man barked.
“Where’s the manager?” the woman demanded. “Get me a manager right now.”
“I’m the owner,” Sailor admitted. “Seriously, I’m sorry. I’ll help out with getting the sweater cleaned.”
“Damn right you will. And don’t expect to see me back here any time soon. Let’s go, Dick.”
Dick, the tall man, threw two twenties on the counter. “Your place is disgusting,” he said, “and the music sucks, too. Next time, we’re going to Trash Bar.”
Sailor waited for them to leave, then gave Pippi a pointed look. Pippi swept the money into the cash drawer. She had closed a button on her blouse in the meantime.
Sailor looked at Axl. He was pouring club soda into his shot glass. “Were you ready to step in if they got serious?”
Axl shrugged. “You had it handled.”
“Right. Well, just so you know, I’ve hired a head of security starting later next week. He’ll be your direct report.”
Axl shrugged again. “It’s your money, Sailor.”
There was only a second in which Pippi’s mouth formed an O at something over Sailor’s shoulder, and raw shouts came at her in a wave, followed by a crash of bodies into her flank. The tray tumbled and the half-spilled beer became fully spilled, and Sailor struck hard into the side of the bar. Pain shot through her waist as she slid sideways, grabbed a stool to avoid a full tumble. As she came upright and her mind turned to the mess she was about to mop, in her peripheral vision she spotted one of the biker women lurching in her direction. The fist knocked the sight out of her left eye, she tumbled backwards, and one of her shoes fell off. Pain and blood followed.
“Look what you did,” said the other biker woman. “I’m twice her size and you still missed me and hit her instead.” Her punch connected with her opponent, and the two women scuffled. Over by the jukebox, the male bikers cheered. This same group were the only bikers who'd ever caused trouble in her bar. Most of them were pretty decent people.
Sailor pulled herself up as best she could as hot blood trickled past her stunned eye and her twisted ankle pulsed with pain. She took stock of the situation. Axl was talking on his phone, one finger jammed in his ear to block out the noise that he should have prevented in the first place. Pieter the musician and Pippi the bartender were trying to wrestle the scrapping bikers away from each other.
“Cops are coming,” Axl told her. “Hey, you should probably wash your face.”
Pieter’s guitar roared. One of the bikers had taken advantage of the distraction to hook it up.
“Hey!” the musician shouted. He was still entangled with the biker chick. “Axl, come on, man. Help me out.”
Axl looked over his shoulder. “Hey, dude, put the guitar down,” he called.
Sailor reached over the bar for a towel and a handful of ice, wrapped the ice in the towel, and retreated to the bathroom.
Seated in a stall, she held the makeshift compress against her face and wept salty, bloody tears. Sobbed till her throat was raw.
The sound of walkie-talkies outside announced the arrival of the police. Sailor took deep breaths, wiped her face free of wet, flexed her ankle, and force-marched herself back into the barroom to talk about pressing charges.
She couldn’t go on like this, and she didn’t want to fail. Ace Montgomery had better be worth the money.