Hazel staggered down the street manhandling her bags and the worthless portfolio case. She had wandered a distance from the Blackwell and Crawley office and now found herself in a part of the city she didn’t recognize. Making a left onto a downtown street she had never been on before, and probably shouldn’t be on right now, she found herself in front of a glass door that had been blacked out from within, obstructing the view to the interior There was a hand-lettered sign above the grimy door to inform her that this particular establishment was called “Liquor Street.” She didn’t know if it was a bar or a liquor store, but either way, she needed a drink.

She heaved her left shoulder into the door, and it swung open to reveal a cave-like room; pale yellow light from colored bulbs hung on bare wires from a low, oppressive ceiling, and there was a stale smell of smoke and sweat. As was normal for Florida, the air-conditioning was blasting. The walls and ceiling of the place seemed to be moving closer to her as she headed toward the long bar against the wall. A robustly built woman with orange, frizzy hair and bright red lipstick was leaning against the shelf behind her. Her ample bottom was inching dangerously close to the rows of liquor on display, and Hazel had an image of the first bottle toppling and the rest of the row going down like dominos. The lady was staring at a TV above the end of the bar and didn’t even seem to register her presence. There were only two other people at the bar; probably fewer drinkers than usual for this downtown neighborhood, it being only 11:37 am. Hazel had never been drinking at 11:37 am. In fact, Hazel rarely drank at all, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

She perched on the edge of a grubby bar stool and cleared her throat, “Um… can I have a Cosmopolitan, please?”

One of the two day drinkers at the end of the bar, a bearded guy in a black leather biker jacket and a neck tattoo, snorted.

The frizzy-haired woman didn’t move or take her eyes off the TV but shouted, “Wrong bar, honey. We don’t make fancy stuff here. You wanna shot of something? Or a beer?”

Well, she wasn’t ordering a beer. She hadn’t just spent $500 she couldn’t afford for a gym membership to go and ruin it all with a beer. But a shot? What did one take shots of? She racked her brain back to her college days of seven years ago and came up with nothing. She was just about to ask for a recommendation when a name popped into her head.

“Jägermeister!”

Very slowly, like that girl in that horrible Exorcist movie, Frizzy Hair turned her head and gave Hazel a once-over, her eyebrows raised. “You want a Jägermeister, honey? You sure?” The guy at the end of the bar snorted again, but she couldn’t tell if it was with approval or disgust. Either way, she didn’t care. She needed some alcohol in her body right now.

“Yes. Thank you!”

Frizzy walked over and deposited the shot in front of her. She sniffed carefully and recoiled instantly. Ah yes, Jägermeister. She remembered it now.

“Get that down ya, honey. You look like you need it. The next one’s on the house.”

This was fine. She could do this. As long as she didn’t breathe in, she wouldn’t even taste it, right? Holding her breath and trying to resist pinching her nose, she tossed the shot down her throat. Frizzy kept her eyebrows raised as Hazel swallowed, coughed, and her taste memory pulled up an image of herself - throwing up, in a bush, outside a friend’s party. The taste and smell of licorice enveloped her like a swamp creature trying to drag her down into the mud. Now she remembered why she knew the name. She had made sure to remember it so she would never forget that she should never drink it again. Bile rushed up her throat. She hated Jägermeister!

“Not your thing, huh?” Frizzy asked, giving her an amused, but not unsympathetic, grin. “I’ll get you a shot of vodka on the house, how’s that? Might go down a little easier.”

“That would be amazing,” Hazel said, feeling a pleasant little buzz start to take over her brain. “I got fired today.” Frizzy turned her back and pulled a bottle down from the rows on the back wall. Hazel kept speaking. “I mean, I guess I wasn’t really fired because, you know, I didn’t technically work there. But I was going to work there. I was going to be a partner. But I think it’s all wrecked now. And I don’t have any money.”

Frizzy turned back and handed her the shot glass. “You know that thing about bartenders being like therapists?” Hazel nodded and looked at Frizzy gratefully. This woman looked like a genius. It was so great to have someone to talk to. Maybe she could help her figure it all out. “Well, that’s just on TV, honey. We ain’t. Sorry you got fired and don’t have money, but as long as you have money to drink, you can drink right here with us. Therapy not included.”

“But I don’t even watch TV,” Hazel said just as her phone vibrated in her pocket. She threw down the vodka shot, the liquid burning her throat quite nicely, thank you, and pulled out her phone. Indigo. Great. Just what she needed.

“Hello, Mother,” She said as she motioned to Frizzy for another vodka. She always craved alcohol when she talked to Indigo.

“Oh, sweetheart, what is it with you and this “mother” stuff? You used to call me Mama, you know?”

“When I was four, Mother. I’m twenty-nine.”

“It sounds weird, sweetie. Where are you? Are you at work?”

“No. I’m not at work. I may never be at work again. Is that why you called? To see how it went?”

“How what went?”

“The pitch? For the most important project of my life? I told you about it yesterday?” She didn’t know why she would expect Indigo to remember. Indigo rarely asked questions about her job. She had such distaste for her oldest daughter “working for the man,” as she put it. Indigo wasn’t listening right now, in fact. It sounded like she was ordering a coffee at the Dunkin Donuts drive-through window. Her disdain for corporations and “empty-souled, capitalistic, greedy franchises” didn’t extend to Dunkin Donuts. They had the best coffee. “Anyway, Mother, you’ll be happy to know that I didn’t get it. I’m officially out of work.”

Her mother gave a whoop. “Well that’s great!”

Where the heck was that other shot? She stared down the bar at Frizzy who had been distracted by the TV again. “No, it’s not great, Mother. It means that I have no income until September, at least, which means you won’t have rent money for the next two and a half months.”

“Oh, I don’t need rent money, sweetheart. I gave up my lease.”

“Why did you give up your lease?” It was a rhetorical question. Indigo did what Indigo did. There was rarely any rhyme or reason to her journey through life. ‘I’m like a butterfly’ she often told Hazel, ‘light and free enough to just blow where the wind takes me and look gorgeous while I’m doing it!’

“Because, Sweetie, we’re going to Italy.”

“Mmmm hmmm,” Hazel said, and threw back the shot that had just appeared in front of her, slid down the bar from Frizzy like in some cowboy movie.

“No, seriously. You and I are going to Italy. I would invite your sister too, but I’m not exactly sure where she is.” Hazel’s sister, Sylvie, was about as flighty as their mother. She had taken off on a backpacking trip to Europe about six months ago. Hazel had sent her emergency funds twice, but neither Hazel nor Indigo had much of an idea what she was doing. She had promised that she would be back in September to attend Community College (at Hazel’s insistence), but for right now, the travel bug had bitten her badly.

“Mother. I have $900 in the bank. We aren’t going to St. Augustine, let alone Italy.”

“I’m paying,” Indigo squealed. She got loud when she got excited. “You’ll never believe what’s happened. Your father’s… great uncle Giuseppe passed away and left me his house and his bank account. It’s not a lot, , but it’s enough to get us over there and enough to renovate the house. The lawyer said that it needed quite a lot of work but that it was livable. I figured if we did it ourselves, then sold it, I could give you half, to pay you back some of the money you’ve lent me over the years.”

Even without the fuzzy head, Hazel couldn’t do the math it would require to calculate how much money she had “lent” her mother over the years. Starting with the few dollars in her piggy bank from her paper route when she was only twelve. ‘Just for a pint of milk, sweetie. I’m out now, but I’ll put it right back in your piggy next week.’

“Mother. Stop. You need to explain more. Who is Giuseppe? And our last name is Blakemore. Dad wasn’t Italian.”

“Of course your father wasn’t Italian. I would never marry an Italian. Why would I want a husband who is more attractive than me? I mean, if there is a guaranteed method of putting a dent in your self-esteem, then ‘marrying up’ is the way. Wait. You aren’t dating someone more attractive than you, are you? Is that what you are trying to tell me?”

Hazel looked frantically around for another shot, but Frizzy was nowhere to be seen.

“I’m not trying to tell you anything, Mother. You called me, remember? With a crazy story about some guy… Giovani, was it? leaving you his house? Who is Giovani?

She heard Indigo sigh in frustration and felt a flash of annoyance. Indigo was frustrated with her? “Oh, I don’t know, sweetie, what does it matter? He’s some distant relative. Your dad’s dad’s cousin’s brother-in-law I think.

Hazel had listened to her mother’s stories long enough to know exactly when she was lying, or ‘embellishing for your enjoyment’ as Indigo would call it. “You just made that up, didn’t you, Mother?”

“Well, yes, I made that part up but not the part about it being our house now!”

“Which part did you make up then?”

“I can’t remember.”

Where the heck was that vodka? Hazel thought.

Indigo kept talking.  “But it doesn’t matter. The house is ours. And now you just got fired. It’s like fate! Kismet wanted you to come with me, sweetie. The universe is sending you a message.”

“I didn’t get fired, Mother.”

Frizzy appeared in front of her, like a visiting angel and deposited another shot in front of her. She looked at Hazel in confusion, “I thought you just told me you got fired?” she said. Hazel gave her the death glare. “What?” Frizzy matched Hazel’s glare. “I brought you another shot!” Hazel dropped the glare and downed the shot.

“Who’s that talking, sweetie?” Indigo inquired curiously. “What kind of shot? You don’t drink liquor!”

Hazel felt a sudden and almost irresistible urge to sit down on the sticky, grey floor of this bar and never get up again. She would close her eyes, curl up under a stool and sleep herself into oblivion, far away from the Samuels, and Frizzy Hairs, and Indigos of this world. She would spend the rest of her life right here in her own little, protected cocoon.

She slammed the shot glass on the counter and wiped a sweaty hand across her face, hard. No doubt her face was now covered in smeared mascara. “Mother, I’m not going to Italy. I have lots of very important work to do here if I plan on paying my own rent next month, let alone yours.”

“I told you, sweetie, I don’t need rent, I just…”

Hazel hung up swiftly and dropped her phone. Her stomach was a roiling sea, churning up the half-digested Snickers bar she had eaten for breakfast that morning. Probably not the best choice, but she’d been in a hurry. As she raced toward the back of the bar, she spotted a door with a ladies sign on it and charged through. It took about as long for the Snickers to come up as it had to go down, which was not long at all.

Hazel sat, dirty and shivering on the greasy tiles with her arm thrown over the toilet as though it were an old pal. She loved this toilet. It was cold and very close to her. It would never desert her. Granted, she would need about five showers before she ever felt clean again, but the icy porcelain on her head at this moment was worth the risk of cholera, or whatever horrible disease one could get from disgusting toilets.

But she couldn’t stay here forever. She couldn’t stay here, and she couldn’t go to Italy, and she couldn’t go back to work. She started to feel teary again, the vodka that remained in her stomach was making her head spin and her sadness swell. She was sad, this was sad. She couldn’t sit in a dive bar bathroom with a toilet as her best pal for the rest of the day. She had to take action. She had to figure out what to do next. But right now her fuzzy mind wasn’t cooperating. She needed five showers. She needed a plan. She needed $20,000 for the equity buy-in because she couldn’t lose this partnership. Samuel was guaranteed to screw up the project, then Liz would do her magic, and Blackwell & Crawley would offer her the partnership! Right?

She turned to her best porcelain pal for approval, and suddenly there were two of them bouncing up and down in front of her. They must be nodding.