MY BAR IS called Tag’s because it’s mine. Simple as that. When I bought it, I thought about the name for a couple of weeks, trying to think of something catchy, something intelligent, but in the end, I just slapped my name on it. Makes sense, doesn’t it? When something is yours, you give it your name.
As a recovering alcoholic, owning a bar could be considered masochistic, but I don’t own it for the booze. I own it because every time I walk in, look around, tend the bar or pour a drink, I feel powerful. I feel like I’ve conquered my demons, or at least beat them back. Plus, I’m a man, and the bar is a man cave to surpass all man caves. Flat screens hang on walls and in thick clusters overhead so that customers can keep an eye on several games at once, with sections of the bar dedicated to different sports. If you come in to watch a particular fight or a football game, there’s a screen tuned in just for you. It smells like expensive cigars and leather, like pine needles and stacks of cash, all scents that make a man grateful for his testosterone. The décor consists of rock walls, dark wood, warm lighting, and pretty waitresses. And I’m extremely proud of it.
But I don’t just own the bar. The whole block is mine. The bar on the corner, the small indoor arena where local fights take place every Tuesday night and once a month on Saturdays, the gym beyond that, and at the end of the block, a sporting goods store, filled with Tag Team gear and equipment with my label emblazoned across every surface. My own apartment and two others, occupied by people of my choosing, sit above the training gym. The city block is my whole world, a world of my creation. And it’s all connected, each business playing off the others.
Even the bar and the fight arena are connected, and on the nights when there aren’t fights, the arena seats are cordoned off by a wall of metal accordion doors, and the cage becomes a stage in a back room, a private alcove filled with a dozen small tables and booths, the bar easily accessible just around the corner, and waitresses keeping you comfortable and in your seats. Four nights a week, the little arena is home to a totally different kind of show, a completely different kind of sporting event. A pole is erected in the center of the cage and there are no fighters allowed inside, just one woman after another, spinning and writhing on the pole in time to the throbbing pulse of music that is muted throughout the rest of the establishment. I keep it classy—as classy as stripper poles and half-naked ladies can be. The girls dance, they don’t strip, and they don’t mingle beyond the cage. But it’s just hot enough, just risqué enough, that I keep it separate from the rest of the establishment. It’s the back room for negotiations—I do more business there than anywhere else—and the cherry on the top of an establishment that caters to hard-working men who feel appropriately sheepish and grateful just to be there.
Tag’s opened two years ago, corresponding with the launch of the clothing line and my first big fight, the fight where I beat someone I had no business beating. I knocked him out cold and became a hot commodity. I timed it all, capitalizing on one success to launch another. I was a rich kid turned businessman, a cowboy more suited to riding a wave of adoration than riding a horse, and more interested in taking on the world of ultimate fighting and mixed martial arts than in taking over my father’s holdings. I could have. It was a golden-paved path that stretched out before me, a road of privilege and entitlement. But it was a road I hadn’t built, and I’m convinced you can’t ever be completely happy walking on someone else’s road. Someone else’s path. The way to true happiness is to forge your own, even if your road isn’t straight. Even if there are bridges to build and mountains to tunnel through. Nothing feels as good as paving your own way.
I’d come to Salt Lake City ready to start building roads three years before. I had money—some of it my own, money I’d earned with Moses, and some of it money I hadn’t earned. I was a rich kid, but I wasn’t a stupid kid. I knew I needed capital to build an empire. Sometimes it takes money to make money. So I took the money my dad gave me and promised myself that I would give it back before I died or before I turned thirty. Whichever came first.
At twenty-six, I didn’t have much time or wiggle room. But I was on track, and the bar was doing extremely well. The evidence was all around me when I walked in the front door that Monday night—typically the slowest night of the week—to full stools and tables, to the happy thrum of relaxed customers. The place hummed and my heart warmed to the music. Two of my waitresses pranced by, dressed like ring girls in Tag Team booty shorts and halter tops, delivering rounds instead of announcing them. They sent identical smiles my way and tossed their hair, almost as if it were part of the job description. Maybe it should be . . . or maybe it was just common sense. You always smile at the boss.
I wasn’t there to flirt, though I smiled automatically. Instead, I calculated the mood of the room, the number of men bellied up to the bar, the number of tables filled, the flow of the alcohol and the efficiency of the wait staff. When I approached the bar to touch base with Morgan, my manager, a pulsing beat began to throb from down the hall, from around the darkened corner where the girls danced and the music was louder.
“Who’s dancing tonight?” I inquired, not really caring, but asking anyway.
“Justine. Lori. And the new girl.” Morgan smirked like he had a secret, and I was immediately suspicious. He slid a Coke in front of me as I sat down and I took a long pull before I gave him a response.
“Oh yeah? Judging from that shit-eating grin, I’m guessing there’s something you need to tell me about the new girl.”
“Nah. Nothing. She’s beautiful. Great dancer. Great body. She’s been on the schedule for the last two weeks, though you’ve missed her every time. She’s always on time, never says two words. She dances, doesn’t drink, doesn’t flirt. Just how you like ‘em.” Again with the smirk.
“Huh.” I pushed my Coke away and stood, knowing I might as well go see what he was up to. Leave it to Morgan to dress up one of my Tag Team fighters and put him in the cage in a bikini. He loved a practical joke. But he was a damn good bartender . . . even if he drove me crazy with the pranks.
I called out to a few customers, shook some hands, kissed Stormy’s cheek as she delivered icy bottles of cold beer, and waved to Malcolm Short, who obviously hadn’t taken the time to change after work and looked slightly ridiculous in his three piece suit and his Utah Jazz ball cap. But the Jazz were playing, and he was getting in the spirit, happy as a clam sitting on his stool, eyes fixed on the screen. He was one of my Tag Team sponsors and it was good seeing him happy.
I was almost as good at working the room as I was at working the octagon, though I’d rather be fighting any day. But my thoughts were on business as I strode across the room and through the arch that separated the dancing girls from the sports bar. My eyes went straight to the cage, expecting the worst. But it was Justine at the pole, finishing her number with a swivel of her hips and a final turn around the cage. Justine strode off, hips swaying arms waving, as if she’d just announced the next round, and the lights went dark.
When they came up again, the new girl was at the center of the octagon, hands on the pole, head down. As the music began to swell, she immediately swung into her routine, and I scowled in consternation. The girl was slim and lithe, smooth muscles moving beneath taut skin. Her straight, dark brown hair was silky under the lights, her oiled limbs glistening, and her barely-there shorts and bikini top no different from the girl who danced before her. I watched her for a moment, waiting for the punch line. There had to be one.
She was beautiful—delicate-featured with a small nose, a rosebud mouth, and a heart-shaped face, and I felt a sudden flash of fear that she was only fifteen or something equally alarming. I dismissed the thought immediately. Morgan was a prankster, not an idiot. Something like that would ruin the bar. Something like that would cost Morgan his job. And Morgan loved his job, even if he didn’t always love me, even if I didn’t always appreciate his sense of humor.
Nah. She was at least twenty-one. That was my rule. I pursed my lips and tipped my head, studying her. She worked the pole as well as any of the other girls, maybe even better, but her dancing was more acrobatic, more athletic, than it was overtly sexy. Her eyes were closed and she had a soft smile on her lips, which could be interpreted as sultry, especially considering that she was dancing for an audience of mostly men. Scratch that. An audience of all men. But her smile wasn’t sultry. It was . . . dreamy, like she was imagining she was somewhere else, a tiny ballerina spinning in place inside a child’s snow globe, endlessly dancing alone. Her small smile didn’t change, and her eyes stayed closed, the heavy sweep of dark lashes creating half circles of shadow on her porcelain cheeks.
The lighting was strategic, hiding the viewers and displaying the dancer. Maybe the lights hurt her eyes. Or maybe she was a little shy. I chuckled. Um . . . no. The shy pole dancer was as big an oxymoron as the timid fighter. But someone should probably say something. The men in the audience loved to believe that the dancers were looking right at them, and though the dancers never mingled with the men, at least not in the bar, eye contact and subtle flirting were part of the job. I wondered if that was Morgan’s joke. If so, Morgan was losing his touch.
I turned away as the song ended and the cage lights went black, indicating the end of the set. Three girls danced a fifteen minute set each hour, with another fifteen minutes between sets from nine to midnight. It was Utah, after all, not Vegas. The dancers were off two, sometimes three, nights a week for fight nights and club nights, when the octagon was needed for bouts or disassembled to create a dance floor. With four dancers, now five, on my payroll, it wasn’t a full-time job by any means. Most of the girls had day jobs and grabbed extra hours and good pay announcing the rounds and bouts on fight nights.
“So whaddaya think, Boss?” Morgan grinned and slid a glass to a waiting patron as I rounded the bar and sat back on the same stool, my eyes shooting up to check the score, not giving Morgan the attention he wanted.
“‘Bout what?”
“About the new girl.”
“Pretty.” He didn’t need all the other adjectives that had run through my mind as I watched her dance.
“Yeah?” Morgan raised his eyebrows as if my one-word assessment was surprising.
“Yeah, Morg,” I sighed. “You got something you wanna tell me? ‘Cause I’m not gettin’ it.”
“No. No siree. Not a thing.”
I shook my head and groaned. Morgan was definitely up to something.
“So how many weeks, Boss?”
“Eight.” Eight weeks until I fought Bruno Santos. The fight that would give me a shot at a Vegas title fight. The fight that would catapult the Tag Team brand into living rooms across the US. Eight weeks of perfect focus—no distractions, and no decisions beyond one fight. After I won the fight, I would face what came next. After I won that fight the world could end, for all I cared. After I won.
“Hey, Boss. Lou called in sick tonight. He usually makes sure the girls get to their cars. You wanna fill in? Since you’re here?”
All the women on my staff are escorted to their vehicles at the end of their shifts. Always. This part of town is changing, but it isn’t there yet. Tag’s is situated close to the old Grand Central train station in a refurbished district that is still caught somewhere between restoration and dilapidation. Two blocks north there is a row of mansions built in the early 1900s, two blocks south there’s a strip mall complete with bars on all the windows. A high-end day spa takes up the corner of the block to the left and a homeless shelter is two blocks down on the right. The area is a conglomeration of everything, and there are some elements that aren’t safe. I feel responsible for my employees, especially the girls. So I imposed some rules, even if it means I am sometimes accused of being overprotective, sexist, and old-fashioned.
“Yep. I can do that.”
“Good. That was their last set. I’d do it, but the drinks won’t fill themselves, ya know. Kelli’s boyfriend came in and picked her up ten minutes ago, and Marci and Stormy are closing with me, so I’ll walk them out. You’ve just got Justine and Lori and Amelie.”
“Ah–muh–lee?” I parroted, eyebrows quirked.
“Yeah. The new dancer. Amelie. Didn’t I say?”
“Nah. You didn’t. What is she, French?”
“Something like that,” Morg said, and I could see that he was trying not to laugh. “She lives close by and she walks, though. Lou complains about it, but it really is just around the block. I tell him it’ll do his fat ass some good.”
“Huh.” So that was the funny part. I would be walking the new girl home, and it was starting to snow. The French girl. Fine with me. I was too antsy to sleep anyway. I was considering hitting the speed bag until I could wear myself out enough to shut down for a few hours.
On cue, Justine and Lori appeared in the entryway between the lounge and the bar, winter coats belted, duffle bags in hand.
“Where’s Amelie?” Morgan asked, looking beyond them.
“She said she’d meet Lou out front,” Justine answered.
“Lou’s not in tonight. Tag is walking you out. Right, Boss?”
“Right, Morg.” I tamped down my irritation as Morgan laughed again and winked at the girls.
I escorted Justine and Lori to their vehicles in the back parking lot, watched as they pulled away, and then walked around to the front the building, opting not to go through the bar, eager to avoid Morg for the rest of the night. As I rounded the building, I could see the new girl waiting on the sidewalk, face tilted up, letting the fat flakes land on her cheeks as if she enjoyed the sensation. She waited for me, as if she weren’t in any hurry to get out of the cold, her hands wrapped around a long stick that, in the soft light spilling from the bar and the snow falling around her, made her look like a shepherdess in a Christmas pageant.
“Hello?” There was a question in her voice as I approached, and she slid her staff forward just a bit and nudged my foot as I halted. “Lou?”
“Lou’s sick, so I’ll be walking you home.” I answered slowly, flooded with shocked realization as she turned her face toward me. Her eyes were wide and fixed, and I felt a surprising pang from somewhere behind my heart. She had beautiful eyes. They were large and luminous, fringed by black lashes that swept her cheeks when she closed her eyes. But they were vacant, and looking in them made me inexplicably sad. So I looked away, studying her mouth and the straight dark hair that framed her face and spilled over her shoulders. Then she smiled, and the pang in my heart sliced through my chest once more and took my breath.
“Ah, the long pause. I always get those. My mom always said I was beautiful,” she said drily, “but just in case I’m not, will you promise to lie to me? I demand detailed lies regarding my appearance.” She said all this good-naturedly. No bitterness. Just acceptance. “So you pulled blind girl duty, huh? You don’t have to walk me home. I got here all by myself. But Morgan told me it’s the rule with all the girls. He said the boss insists.”
“He’s right. It’s a great neighborhood, but you and I both know it’s still pretty rough around the edges,” I responded, refusing to feel sheepish, refusing to apologize for staring.
She stuck out her hand and waited for me to grasp it.
“Well then, I’ll introduce myself. I’m Amelie. And I’m blind.” Her lips quirked, letting me know she was laughing as much at herself as at me. I reached out and wrapped her ungloved hand in my own. Her fingers were icy, and I didn’t release them immediately. So she wasn’t French, she was blind, and somehow Morg thought that was hysterically funny.
“Hello, Amelie. I’m David. And I’m not.”
She smiled again, and I found myself smiling too, the pang of sympathy I’d felt for her easing considerably. I didn’t know why I told her my name was David. No one called me David anymore. The name David always made me feel like I’d failed without even trying. It was my father’s name. And his father’s name. And his father before him. David Taggert was a name that carried weight. And I had felt that weight from an early age. Then my friends had started calling me Tag. Tag set me free. It allowed me to be young, free-spirited. Just the word itself brought to mind images of running away. “I’m Tag . . . you can’t catch me.”
“Your hands are calloused, David.”
It was an odd thing to comment on when shaking hands with someone for the first time, but Amelie curled her fingers against my palm, feeling the rough ridges that lined the base of my fingers like she was reading braille.
“Exercise?” she guessed.
“Uh, yeah. I’m a fighter.”
A slim eyebrow rose in question, but her fingers continued to trace my hand intimately. It felt good. And weird. The roof of my mouth started to tingle and my toes curled in my boots.
“The callouses are from the weights. Pull-ups. That sort of thing.” I sounded like an idiot. Like a dumb, Rocky wannabe. I might as well yell, “Yo, Adrian!”
“Do you enjoy it?”
“Fighting?” I asked, trying to keep up. She didn’t converse like the girls I knew. She was so direct. So blunt. But maybe she had to be. She didn’t have the luxury of learning through observance.
“Yes. Fighting. Do you enjoy it?” she clarified.
“Yeah. I do.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I’m big, strong, and angry,” I said honestly, smirking.
She laughed, and I expelled all the air I’d been holding since she’d held out her hand in greeting. Her laughter wasn’t girlish and high, tinkling and sweet. It was robust, healthy, the kind of laugh that came from her belly and had nothing to hide.
“You smell good, David.”
I half-gasped, half-chuckled, surprised once more. But she kept right on talking.
“So I know you are big, strong, angry, and you smell nice. You’re tall too, because your voice is coming from way over my head. You’re also from Texas and you’re still young.”
“How do you know I’m young?”
“Old men don’t fight. And your voice. You were singing Blake Shelton under your breath when you approached. If you were older you might sing Conway Twitty or Waylon Jennings.”
“I sing them too.”
“Excellent. You can sing while we walk.” She flicked her stick with a practiced hand and it collapsed neatly into thirds. Then she tucked it under her left arm while reaching toward me with her right. Then she wrapped her hand around my bicep as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And we were off, walking slowly but steadily through the silent streets, the snow falling, the wet seeping into our shoes. I am a guy who can make conversation with the best of them, but I found myself at a complete loss.
Amelie seemed completely comfortable and didn’t offer up conversation as we walked, arm and arm, like two lovers in an old movie. Men and women don’t walk that way anymore. Not unless a father is walking his daughter down the aisle or a boy scout is helping an old lady across the road. But I discovered I liked it. I felt like a man of a bygone era, a time when men would escort women, not because women couldn’t walk alone, but because men respected them more, because a woman is something to be cared for, to be careful with.
“There was a time when everything in the world was more beautiful.” The words fell from my mouth, surprising me. I hadn’t meant to think out loud.
“What do you mean?” She seemed pleased at my statement. So I went with it.
“Well, if you look at old pictures . . .” My voice drifted off awkwardly, realizing she couldn’t actually look at old pictures.
She saved me, gracefully. “If I could look at old pictures, what would I see?”
“They had less. But they had more. It seems like people took more care with their possessions and their appearances. The women dressed up and the men wore suits. People wore hats and gloves and were well-groomed. The way they talked was different, more careful, more cultured. Same language, but totally different. Even the buildings and the furniture were beautiful—well-crafted with attention to detail. I don’t know . . . The world had more class. Maybe that was it.”
“Ah, the days when men didn’t fight for a living and women didn’t dance on poles,” she said, a smile in her voice.
“Men have always fought. Women have always danced. We’re as old-fashioned as it gets,” I shot back. “We’re timeless.”
“Nice save,” she giggled, and I laughed quietly.
We walked in companionable silence for several minutes when it occurred to me that I had no idea where we were going.
“Where do you live?”
“Don’t worry, big guy. I know where we are. Turn right on the next corner. I’m the old house thirty paces in.”
“You live in one of the old mansions?”
“Yes. I do. My great-great-grandfather built it, speaking of a time when the world was more beautiful. I’m guessing my house isn’t quite as lovely as it once was. But everything looks amazing in my head. Perks of being a blind girl.”
“You said thirty paces. What? Do you count steps?” I could hear the amazement in my voice and wondered if she could too.
“Usually. But I’m less observant when someone is walking with me. I know where the sidewalk ends, where the trees are, the potholes too.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Well, I grew up here and I could see, once. I can still see it in my mind. It’d be harder if I had to start over in a whole new place.”
“So what happened?”
“A rare disease with a fancy name you would probably forget as soon as I said it. We didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. And even if we had known sooner, there probably wouldn’t have been anything anyone could do.”
“How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
I swallowed. My life had changed at eleven too. But in a totally different way. Before I could comment, Amelie came to a stop.
“This is me. This is it.” She snapped her stick back out and tapped it in front of her, turning toward a little wrought iron fence and stopping as her stick rattled against it. She released my arm and stepped away, feeling for the latch on the gate and releasing it easily. The house was old, turn-of-the-century old, if not older, and it was still stately, though the smattering of snow and the darkness camouflaged the yard and the large, wrap-around porch that had seen better days. Light shone from the upstairs windows, and the walk and the steps were clear. Amelie seemed comfortable traversing them, so I stayed by the gate, waiting until she was safely inside. She stopped about half-way down the path and turned slightly.
“David?” she asked, raising her voice as if she wasn’t sure I remained.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for walking me home.”
“You’re welcome.”
I waited until the front door closed behind her before I turned away. The snow had stopped and the world was so still I sang to keep myself company, closing my eyes now and then and counting my steps, wondering how it would be to not see at all, and wondering how a blind girl had ended up dancing in my club.
(End of Cassette)
Moses
MILLIE REACHED FOR the tape recorder, sliding her fingers along the buttons until she reached the one she wanted. Then she pressed it down and Tag’s voice ceased. She sat gripping the player as if she were holding onto the memory. The room was filled with expectancy, with anticipation. I’d heard it in Tag’s voice, felt it in the care with which he remembered the details, and felt his wonder as he retraced his steps. He’d pulled me in, and I’d forgotten for a moment where I was. But now I felt awkward, intrusive, and I wanted to put my hands over my ears.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and I couldn’t get that Blake Shelton song out of my head,” Millie said softly. “He was nice. And strong. I could feel his strength as he walked beside me. That night I actually dreamed about the way his arm felt against my hand. Right after I lost my sight I still dreamed in pictures. I loved it because I could see when I went to sleep. But as the years have gone by, my dreams have started to look more like my reality. I still dream in pictures sometimes, but more often than not, I dream in smells and feelings, in sounds and sensations.”
Millie’s voice was hushed like she was thinking out loud, like she’d forgotten I was there at all. I thought maybe I should speak up, before she told me something she would rather keep private, but she continued suddenly.
“I’ve gone on a few blind dates.” She smiled in my general direction, letting me know that she was aware of me after all, and I laughed, which is probably what she intended.
“Blind, blind dates, I mean. And I’ve gone on a few dates with blind guys I actually knew beforehand. One guy I dated insisted on being called ‘visually impaired.’” Amelie made finger quotes in the air. “I don’t really understand that. To me it’s like calling someone ‘melanin deficient’ instead of calling them white. People are so weird. I am a white, blind girl. I am a twenty-two-year old, white, blind girl. Can we just call it like it is?”
I laughed again, wondering where she was going with this, but happy to let her talk. I wondered briefly if she knew I was black. It was kind of an amazing feeling knowing that for once, it truly didn’t matter.
“I’ve dated guys who can see too—you know, the visually unimpaired.” She smiled at the label. “Not many of them. But a few. My cousin Robin usually sets me up. And I’m pretty sure every one of them has been extremely unattractive. Ugly, strange, warty, and generally rejected by other women. Which is okay. I can pretend they all look like a million bucks, and I’ll never know any different. The image in my head is the only one that counts, right? But once Robin tried to set me up on a date with a deaf guy, and I put my foot down. It wasn’t that he was deaf, exactly, but how did she think we were going to communicate? Robin sometimes thinks that because I’m disabled, I can only date guys with disabilities. Because, of course, no one else would want me, right?” Millie’s voice caught, and she smiled immediately, laughing at herself. “Uh oh. Struck a nerve there.”
“That isn’t true,” I challenged.
“It’s true sometimes,” she whispered, and I could tell she was wondering if the truth had gotten to be too much for Tag.
“I found myself hoping David wasn’t a good looking guy. I hoped he wasn’t good looking because it didn’t matter to me, and it would make him less desirable to everyone else. I thought if he were homely, it would make him more open to someone like me.” She let her breath out slowly, almost sadly.
“But I knew he was beautiful. It was in the way he carried himself, his confidence, his kindness. I thought about asking the girls at work about him. But I chickened out. I didn’t want them to laugh at me or to feel sorry for me. I told myself maybe we could be friends. He seemed open to that.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was fascinated. But I didn’t know what to say. Millie just sat, gripping the tape recorder between her forearms. Then, without further comment, she pushed play once more.